“Mother, you don’t know me.  I did not come here to listen to fortune-telling.”

To which came the prompt reply, “I don’t know what the gentleman is saying.”  I answered always in Rommany.

“You know well enough what I am saying.  You needn’t be afraid of me—­I’m the nicest gentleman you ever saw in all your life, and I can talk Rommany as fast as ever you ran away from a policeman.”

“What language is the gentleman talking?” cried the old dame, but laughing heartily as she spoke.

   “Oh dye—­miri dye,
   Don’t tute jin a Rommany rye? 
   Can’t tu rakker Rommany jib,
   Tachipen and kek fib?”

“Avo, my rye; I can understand you well enough, but I never saw a Gipsy gentleman before.”

[Since I wrote that last line I went out for a walk, and on the other side of Walton Bridge, which legend says marks the spot where Julius Caesar crossed, I saw a tent and a waggon by the hedge, and knew by the curling blue smoke that a Gipsy was near.  So I went over the bridge, and sure enough there on the ground lay a full-grown Petulamengro, while his brown juva tended the pot.  And when I spoke to her in Rommany she could only burst out into amazed laughter as each new sentence struck her ear, and exclaim, “Well! well! that ever I should live to hear this!  Why, the gentleman talks just like one of us! ‘Bien apropos,’ sayde ye ladye.”]

“Dye,” quoth I to the old Gipsy dame, “don’t be afraid.  I’m tacho.  And shut that door if there are any Gorgios about, for I don’t want them to hear our rakkerben.  Let us take a drop of brandy—­life is short, and here’s my bottle.  I’m not English—­I’m a waver temmeny mush (a foreigner).  But I’m all right, and you can leave your spoons out.  Tacho.”

      “The boshno an’ kani
      The rye an’ the rani;
   Welled acai ’pre the boro lun pani. 
      Rinkeni juva hav acai! 
      Del a choomer to the rye!”

“Duveleste!” said the old fortune-teller, “that ever I should live to see a rye like you!  A boro rye rakkerin’ Rommanis!  But you must have some tea now, my son—­good tea.”

“I don’t pi muttermengri dye (’drink tea,’ but an equivoque).  It’s muttermengri with you and with us of the German jib.”

“Ha! ha! but you must have food.  You won’t go away like a Gorgio without tasting anything?”

“I’ll eat bread with you, but tea I haven’t tasted this five-and-twenty years.”

“Bread you shall have, rya.”  And saying this, the daughter spread out a clean white napkin, and placed on it excellent bread and butter, with plate and knife.  I never tasted better, even in Philadelphia.  Everything in the cottage was scrupulously neat—­there was even an approach to style.  The furniture and ornaments were superior to those found in common peasant houses.  There was a large and beautifully-bound photograph album.  I found that the family could read and write—­the daughter received and read a note, and one of the sons knew who and what Mr Robert Browning was.