The Romany Rye | Page 5

except the hawk. Man it looked upon as a

protecting friend.
As Borrow and his friend were gazing at the bird a woman's voice at
their elbows said--
"It's lucky to chivvy the hawk what chivvies a magpie. I shall stop here
till the hawk's flew away."
They turned round, and there stood a magnificent gypsy woman,
carrying, gypsy fashion, a weakly child that, in spite of its sallow and
wasted cheek, proclaimed itself to be hers. By her side stood a young
gypsy girl of about seventeen years of age. She was beautiful--quite
remarkably so--but her beauty was not of the typical Romany kind. It
was, perhaps, more like the beauty of a Capri girl.
She was bareheaded--there was not even a gypsy handkerchief on her
head--her hair was not plaited, and was not smooth and glossy like a
gypsy girl's hair, but flowed thick and heavy and rippling down the
back of her neck and upon her shoulders. In the tumbled tresses
glittered certain objects, which at first sight seemed to be jewels. They
were small dead dragon-flies of the crimson kind called "sylphs."
To Borrow and his friend these gypsies were well known. The woman
with the child was one of the Boswells: I dare not say what was her
connection, if any, with "Boswell the Great"--I mean Sylvester Boswell,
the grammarian and "well-known and popalated gipsy of Codling
Gap," who, on a memorable occasion, wrote so eloquently about the
superiority of the gypsy mode of life to all others "on the accont of
health, sweetness of air, and for enjoying the pleasure of Nature's life."
But this I do remember--that it was the very same Perpinia Boswell
whose remarkable Christian name has lately been made the subject of
inquiry in The Guardian. The other gypsy, the girl of the dragon-flies, I
prefer to leave nameless here.
After greeting the two, Borrow looked at the weakling child with the
deepest interest, and said, "This chavo ought not to look like that--with
such a mother as you, Perpinia."

"And with such a daddy, too," said she. "Mike's stronger for a man nor
even I am for a woman"--a glow of wifely pride passing over her face;
"and as to good looks, it's him as is got the good looks, not me. But
none on us can't make it out about the chavo. He's so weak and sick he
don't look as if he belonged to Boswells' breed at all."
"How many pipes of tobacco do you smoke in a day?" said Borrow's
friend, looking at the great black cutty pipe protruding from Perpinia's
finely cut lips, and seeming strangely out of place there.
"Can't say," said she, laughing.
"About as many as she can afford to buy," interrupted her
companion--"that's all. Mike don't like her a-smokin'. He says it makes
her look like a old Londra Irish woman in Common Garding Market."
"You must not smoke another pipe," said Borrow's friend to the
mother--"not another pipe till the child leaves the breast."
"What?" said Perpinia defiantly. "As if I could live without my pipe!"
"Fancy Pep a-livin' without her baccy," laughed the girl of the dragon-
flies.
"Your child can't live with it," said Borrow's friend to Perpinia. "That
pipe of yours is full of a poison called nicotine."
"Nick what?" said the girl, laughing. "That's a new kind o' Nick. Why,
you smoke yourself!"
"Nicotine," said Borrow's friend; "and the first part of Pep's body that
the poison gets into is her breast, and--"
"Gets into my burk?" said Perpinia; "get along wi' ye."
"Yes."
"Do it pison Pep's milk?" said the girl.

"Yes."
"That ain't true," said Perpinia; "can't be true."
"It is true," said Borrow's friend. "If you don't give up that pipe for a
time the child will die, or else be a rickety thing all his life. If you do
give it up, it will grow up to be as fine a Romany chal as Mike
himself."
"Chavo agin pipe, Pep," said the girl.
"Lend me your pipe, Perpinia," said Borrow, in that
hail-fellow-well-met tone of his which he reserved for the Romanies--a
tone which no Romany could ever resist. And he took it gently from the
woman's lips. "Don't smoke any more till I come to the camp and see
the chavo again."
The woman looked very angry at first.
"He be's a good friend to the Romanies," said the girl in an appeasing
tone.
"That's true," said the woman, "but he's no business to take my pipe out
o' my mouth for all that."
She soon began to smile again, however, and let Borrow retain the pipe.
Borrow and his friend then moved away towards the dusty high-road
leading to the camp, and were joined by the young girl. Perpinia
remained, keeping guard over