in love with Winnie's early
friend, Rhona Boswell. It was not exactly an 'uncanny' expression,
yet it suggested a world quite other than this. It was an expression
such as one might expect to see in a 'budding spae-wife,' or in a
Roman Sibyl. And whose expression was it that it now reminded me of?
But the remarkable thing was that this expression was intermittent;
it came and went like the shadows the fleeting clouds cast along the
sunlit grass. Then it was followed by a look of steady self-reliance
and daring. This last variation of expression was what now suddenly
came into her eyes as she said, scrutinising me from head to foot:

'Reia, you make a good git-up for a Romany-chal. Can you rokkra
Romanes? No, I see you can't. I should ha' took you for the right
sort. I should ha' begun the Romany rokkerpen with you, only you
ain't got the Romany glime in your eyes. It's a pity he ain't got the
Romany glime, ain't it, Jim?'

She turned to a young Gypsy fellow who was sitting at the other end
of the settle, drinking also from a pot of ale, and smoking a cutty
pipe.

'Don't ax me about no mumply Gorgio's eyes,' muttered the man,
striking the leather legging of his right leg with a silver-headed
whip he carried. 'You're allus a-takin' intrust in the Gorgios, and
yet you're allus a-makin' believe as you hate 'em.'

'You say Winifred Wynne is back again?' I cried in an eager voice.

'That's jist what I _did_ say, and I ain't deaf, my rei. How she
managed to get back here puzzles me, poor thing, for she's jist for
all the world like Rhona's daddy's daddy, Opi Bozzell, what buried
his wits in his dead wife's coffin. She's even skeared at _me_.'

'Why, you don't mean to say Winnie's back!' cried the landlord. 'To
think that I shouldn't have heard about Winnie Wynne bein' back. When
did you see her, Sinfi?'

'I see her fust ever so many nights ago. I was comin' down this road,
when what do I see but a gal a-kicking at the door of Mrs. Davies's
emp'y house, and a-sobbin' she was jist fit to break her heart, and I
sez to myself, as I looked at her--"Now, if it was possible for that
'ere gal to be Winifred Wynne, she'd be Winifred Wynne, but as it
ain't possible for her to be Winifred Wynne, it _ain't_ Winifred
Wynne, and any mumply Gorgie [Footnote] as _ain't_ Winifred Wynne may
kick and sob for a blue moon for all me."'

[Footnote: Gorgio, a man who is not a Gypsy. Gorgie, a woman who is
not a Gypsy.]

'But it was Winni