“You teaches him the speech of gentlefolk, and the airs of gentlefolk, and the learning of gentlefolk.

“You crams his head with religion, which is a thing I doesn’t hold with, and with holy words, which I thinks brings ill-luck.

“You has the advantages of silver and gold, to make a fine gentleman of him, but the blood that flies to his face when he hears the words of insult is gipsy blood, and he comes back to the woods where he was born.

“Let me be, my daughter, I say I will speak—­(Heaven keep my head cool!)—­it’s good for such as them to hear the truth once in a way.  She’s a dainty fine lady, and she taught him many fine things, besides religion, which I sets my face against.  Tell her she took mighty good care of him—­Ha! ha! the old tinker-woman had only one chance of teaching him anything—­but she taught him the patteran!”

The clergywoman had never moved, except that when the tinker-mother shook off her hand she locked her white fingers in front of her as before, and her eyes wandered from the old woman’s face, and looked beyond it, as if she were doing what I have often done, and counting the bits of blue sky which show through the oak-leaves before they grow thick.  But she must have been paying attention all the same, for she spoke very earnestly.

“Good mother, listen to me.  If I bought him, you sold him.  Perhaps I did wrong to tempt you—­perhaps I did wrong to hope to buy for myself what GOD was not pleased to give me.  I was very young, and one makes many mistakes when one is young.  I thought I was childless and unhappy, but I know now that only those are childless who have had children and lost them.

“Do you know that in all the years my son was with me, I do not think there was a day when I did not think of you?  I used to wonder if you regretted him, and I lived in dread of your getting him back; and when he ran away, I knew you had.  I never agreed with the lawyer’s plans—­my husband will tell you so—­I always wanted to find you to speak to you myself.  I knew what you must feel, and I thought I should like you to know that I knew it.

“Night after night I lay awake and thought what I would say to you when we met.  I thought I would tell you that I could quite understand that our ways might become irksome to Christian, if he inherited a love for outdoor life, and for moving from place to place.  I thought I would say that perhaps I was wrong ever to have taken him away from his own people; but as it was done and could not be undone, we might perhaps make the best of it together.  I hope you understand me, though you say nothing?  You see, if he is a gipsy at heart, he has also been brought up to many comforts you cannot give him, and with the habits and ideas of a gentleman.  You are too clever, and too fond of him, to mind my speaking plainly.  Now there are things which a gentleman might do if he had the money, which would satisfy his love of roving as well.  Many rich gentlemen