‘Of the school of Blake, perhaps?’ I asked.

’Of the school of Blake?  No.  He was on the right road; but he was a writer of verses!  Art is a jealous mistress, Mr. Aylwin:  the painter who rhymes is lost.  Even the master himself is so much the weaker by every verse he has written.  I never could make a rhyme in my life, and have faithfully shunned printer’s ink, the black blight of the painter.  I am my own school; the school of the spirit world.’

‘I am very curious,’ I said, ’to know in what way my father and the spirits can have inspired a great painter.  Of the vignette I may claim to know something.  Of the spirits as artists I have of course no knowledge, but as regards my father, he, I am certain, could hardly have told a Raphael from a chromolithograph copy.  He was, in spite of that same vignette, most ignorant of art.  Raxton Hall possesses nothing but family portraits.’

IV

By this time we had reached the encampment, which was close by a waterfall among ferns and wild-flowers.  Little Jerry Lovell, a child of about four years of age, came running to meet me with a dead water-wagtail in his hand which he had knocked down.

‘Me kill de Romany Chiriklo,’ said he, and then proceeded to tell me very gravely that, having killed the ‘Gypsy magpie,’ he was bound to have a great lady for his sweetheart.

‘Jerry,’ said I bitterly, ’you begin with love and superstition early; you are an incipient “Aylwinian”:  take care.’

When I explained to Wilderspin that this was one of the Romany beliefs, he said that he did not at present see the connection between a dead water-wagtail and a live lady, but that such a connection might doubtless exist.  Panuel Lovell now came forward to greet and welcome Wilderspin.  Sinfi and Cyril had evidently walked at a brisk rate, for already tea was spread out on a cloth.  The fire was blazing beneath a kettle slung from the ‘kettle-prop.’  The party were waiting for us.  Sinfi, however, never idle, was filling up the time by giving lessons in riding to Euri and Sylvester Lovell, two dusky urchins in their early teens, while her favourite bantam-cock Pharaoh, standing on a donkey’s back, his wattles gleaming like coral in the sun, was crowing lustily.  Cyril, who lay stretched among the ferns, his chin resting in his hands and a cigarette in his mouth, was looking on with the deepest interest.  As I passed behind him to introduce Wilderspin to Videy Lovell (who was making tea), I heard Cyril say, ’Lady Sinfi, you must and shall teach me how to make an adversary’s bed—­the only really essential part of a liberal education.’

‘Brother,’ said Sinfi, turning to me, ‘your thoughts are a-flyin’ off agin; keep your spirits up afore all these.’

The leafy dingle was recalling Graylingham Wilderness and ’Fairy Dell,’ where little Winifred used to play Titania to my childish Oberon, and dance the Gypsy ‘shawl-dance’ Sinfi’s mother had taught her!