While I was bringing water from a spring in order to seek to revive the Flaming Tinman, his wife and the young woman violently quarrelled, for the latter took my part vehemently.  When at length my enemy recovered sufficiently to look about him, and then to stand up, I found that his wife had put an open knife in his hand.  But his intention could not be carried out, for his right hand was injured in the fight, and was for the time useless, as he quickly realised.

The couple presently departed, cursing me and the young woman, who remained behind in the little camp, and, as I was in an exhausted state, offered to make tea by the camp fire.  While we were taking the repast, she told me the story of her life.  Her name was Isopel Berners, and though she believed that she had come of a good stock, she was born in a workhouse.  When old enough, she had entered the service of a kind widow, who travelled with small merchandise.  After the death of her mistress, Isopel carried on the same avocation.  Being friendless, and falling in with the Flaming Tinman and his wife, she had associated with them, yet acknowledged that she had found them to be bad people.

Time passed on.  Isopel and I lived still in the dingle, occupying our separate tents.  She went to and fro on her business, and I went on short excursions.  Her company, when she happened to be in camp, was very entertaining, for she had wandered in all parts of England and Wales.  For recreation, I taught her a great deal of Armenian, much of which was like the gipsy tongue.  She had a kind heart, and was an upright character.  She often asked me questions about America, for she had an idea she would like to go there.  But as I had never crossed the sea to that country, I could only tell her what I had heard about it.

* * * * *

The Romany Rye

      In this work, published in two volumes in 1857, George Borrow
     continued the “kind of biography in the Robinson Crusoe style”
     which he had begun in the three volumes of “Lavengro,” issued
     six years earlier.  “Romany Rye” is described as a sequel to
     “Lavengro,” and takes up that story with the author and his
     friend Isopel Berners encamped side by side in the Mumpers’
     Dingle, whither the gipsies, Mr. and Mrs. Petulengro and their
     relations, shortly afterwards arrive.  The book consists of a
     succession of episodes, without plot, the sole connecting
     thread being Borrow’s personality as figuring in them.  Much of
     the “Romany Rye” was written at Oulton Broad, where, after his
     marriage in 1840, Borrow lived until he removed to Hereford
     Square, Brompton.  At Oulton, it is worthy of record, gipsies
     were allowed to pitch their tents, the author of “Romany Rye”
     and “Lavengro” mingling freely with them.  As a novel, the
     “Romany Rye” is preferred by many readers to any of Borrow’s
     other works.