“I certainly do.  This place isn’t like the woods at all, it’s more like, regular country, that you can find by just taking a trolley car and riding a few miles out from the city.”

“It used to be just as it is now around Long Lake, I suppose,” said Bessie.  “But they’ve cut the trees down, and made room for tennis courts and all sorts of things like that, and then, I suppose, they needed wood to build the hotel, too.  It’s quite a big place, isn’t it, Dolly?”

“Yes, and I’ve heard of it before, too,” Dolly.  “A friend of mine stayed up here for a month two or three years ago.  She says they advertise that it’s wild and just like living right in the woods, but it isn’t at all.  I guess it’s for people who like to think they’re roughing it when they’re really just as comfortable as they would be if they stayed at home.  Comfortable the same way, I mean.”

“Yes, that’s better, Dolly.  Because I think we’re comfortable, though it’s very different from the way we would live in the city, or even from the way we lived at the farm.  But we’re really roughing it, I guess.”

“Yes, and it’s fine, too!  Tell me, Bessie, did you ever see any gypsies like these when you lived in the country!”

“There were gypsies around Hedgeville two or three times, but the farmers all hated them, and used to try to drive them away, and Maw Hoover told me not to go near them when they were around.  She usually gave me so many things to do that I couldn’t, anyhow.  You know, the farmers say that they’ll steal anything, but I think one reason for that is that the farmers drove them into doing it, in the beginning, I mean.  They wouldn’t let them act like other people, and they didn’t like to sell them things.  So I think the poor gypsies wanted to get even, and that’s how they began to steal.”

“What do you suppose they’re doing up here, Bessie?”

“They always go around to the summer places, and in the winter they go south, to where the people from the north go to get warm when it’s winter at home.  They tell fortunes, and they make all sorts of queer things that people like to buy; lace, and bead things.  And I suppose up here they sell all sorts of souvenirs, too; baskets, and things like that.”

“Don’t they have any real homes, Bessie?”

“No; except in their wagons.  They live in them all the time, and they always manage to be where it’s warm in the winter.  They don’t care where they go, you see.  One place is just like another to them.  They never have settled in towns.  They’ve been wanderers for ages and ages, and they have their own language.  They know all sorts of things about the weather, and they can find their way anywhere.”

“How do you know so much about them, Bessie, if you never saw anything of them when you were in Hedgeville?”

“I read a book about them once.  It’s called ‘Lavengro,’ and it’s by a man who’s been dead a long time now; his name was Borrow.”