“Avo,” I replied.  “He’s the man who has been twice in America.”

“But d’ye know how rich he is?  He’s got money in bank.  And when a man gets money in bank, I say there is somethin’ in it.  An’ how do you suppose he made that money?” he inquired, with the air of one who is about to “come down with a stunner.”  “He did it a-dukkerin’.” {171} But he pronounced the word durkerin’; and I, detecting at once, as I thought, an affinity with the German “turkewava,” paused and stared, lost in thought.  My pause was set down to amazement, and the Ancient Henry repeated—­

“Fact.  By durkerin’.  I don’t wonder you’re astonished.  Tellin’ fortunes just like a woman.  It isn’t every man who could do that.  But I suppose you could,” he continued, looking at me admiringly.  “You know all the ways of the Gorgios, an’ could talk to ladies, an’ are up to high life; ah, you could make no end of money.  Why don’t you do it?”

Innocent Gipsy! was this thy idea of qualification for a seer and a reader of dark lore?  What wouldst thou say could I pour into thy brain the contents of the scores of works on “occult nonsense,” from Agrippa to Zadkiel, devoured with keen hunger in the days of my youth?  Yes, in solemn sadness, out of the whole I have brought no powers of divination; and in it all found nothing so strange as the wondrous tongue in which we spoke.  In this mystery called Life many ways have been proposed to me of alleviating its expenses; as, for instance, when the old professor earnestly commended that we two should obtain (I trust honestly) a donkey and a rinkni juva, who by telling fortunes should entirely contribute to our maintenance, and so wander cost-free, and kost-frei over merrie England.  But I threw away the golden opportunity—­ruthlessly rejected it—­thereby incurring the scorn of all scientific philologists (none of whom, I trow, would have lost such a chance).  It was for doing the same thing that Matthew Arnold immortalised a clerke of Oxenforde:  though it may be that “since Elizabeth” such exploits have lost their prestige, as I knew of two students at the same university who a few years ago went off on a six weeks’ lark with two Gipsy girls; but who, far from desiring to have the fact chronicled in immortal rhyme, were even much afraid lest it should get into the county newspaper!

Leaving the basketmakers (among whom I subsequently found a grand-daughter of the celebrated Gipsy Queen, Charlotte Stanley), I went up the river, and there, above the bridge, found, as if withdrawn in pride, two other tents, by one of which stood a very pretty little girl of seven or eight years with a younger brother.  While talking to the children, their father approached leading a horse.  I had never seen him before, but he welcomed me politely in Rommany, saying that I had been pointed out to him as the Rommany rye, and that his mother, who was proficient in their language, was very desirous of meeting me.  He was one of the smiths—­a Petulengro or Petulamengro, or master of the horse-shoe, a name familiar to all readers of Lavengro.