“They had their reasons, brother.”

“And you are not English?”

“We are not gorgios.”

“And you have a language of your own?”

“Avali.”

“This is wonderful.”

“Ha, ha!” cried the woman who had hitherto sat knitting at the farther end of the tent without saying a word, though not inattentive to our conversation, as I could perceive by certain glances which she occasionally cast upon us both.  “Ha, ha!” she screamed, fixing upon me two eyes which shone like burning coals, and which were filled with an expression both of scorn and malignity,—­“it is wonderful, is it, that we should have a language of our own?  What, you grudge the poor people the speech they talk among themselves?  That’s just like you gorgios:  you would have everybody stupid single-tongued idiots like yourselves.  We are taken before the Poknees of the gav, myself and sister, to give an account of ourselves.  So I says to my sister’s little boy, speaking Romany, I says to the little boy who is with us, ’Run to my son Jasper and the rest, and tell them to be off:  there are hawks abroad.’  So the Poknees questions us, and lets us go, not being able to make anything of us; but as we are going, he calls us back.  ‘Good woman,’ says the Poknees, ‘what was that I heard you say just now to the little boy?’ ’I was telling him, your worship, to go and see the time of day, and to save trouble I said it in our language.’  ’Where did you get that language?’ says the Poknees. ‘’Tis our own language, sir,’ I tells him:  ‘we did not steal it.’  ‘Shall I tell you what it is, my good woman?’ says the Poknees.  ‘I would thank you, sir,’ says I, ’for ’tis often we are asked about it.’  ‘Well, then,’ says the Poknees, ’it is no language at all, merely a made-up gibberish.’  ‘Oh, bless your wisdom,’ says I with a curtsey, ’you can tell us what our language is without understanding it!’ Another time we meet a parson.  ‘Good woman,’ says he, ‘what’s that you are talking?  Is it broken language?’ ’Of course, your reverence,’ says I, ’we are broken people; give a shilling, your reverence, to the poor broken woman.’  Oh, these gorgios! they grudge us our very language!”

“She called you her son, Jasper?”

“I am her son, brother.”

“I thought you said your parents were ...”

“Bitchadey pawdel; you thought right, brother.  This is my wife’s mother.”

“Then you are married, Jasper?”

“Ay, truly; I am husband and father, You will see wife and chabo anon.”

“Where are they now?”

“In the gav, penning dukkerin.”

“We were talking of languages, Jasper.”

“True, brother.”

“Yours must be a rum one.”

“’Tis called Romany.”

“I would gladly know it.”

“You need it sorely.”

“Would you teach it me?”

“None sooner.”

“Suppose we begin now?”

“Suppose we do, brother.”