I
can get away from Nurse, I always take them off. I like to feel what I'm
walking on, and in the wood I like to scuffle with my toes in the dead
leaves. There's a quarry at the top of this wood, and I should so have
liked to have thrown my shoes and stockings and my cap into it; but it
vexes mother when I destroy my clothes, so I didn't, and I am carrying
them.'

"Those were the very words he said, my daughter. He had a swiftness of
tongue, for which I am myself famous, especially in fortune-telling;
but he used the language of gentility, and a shortness of speech which
you will observe among those who are accustomed to order what they want
instead of asking for it. I had hard work to summon voice to reply to
him, my daughter, and I cannot tell you, nor would you understand it if
I could find the words, what were my feelings to hear him speak with
that confidence of the young clergywoman as his mother.

"'A green welcome to the woods and the fields, my noble little
gentleman,' says I. 'Be pleased to honour the poor tinker-woman by
accepting the refreshment of a seat and a cup of tea.'

"'I mayn't eat or drink anything when I am visiting the poor people,'
says he, 'Mother doesn't allow me. But thank you all the same, and
please don't give me your stool, for I'd much rather sit on the grass;
and, if you please, I should like you to tell me all about living in
woods, and making fires, and hanging kettles on sticks, and going about
the country and sleeping out of doors.'"

"Did you tell him the truth, or make up a tale for him?" asked Sybil.

"Partly one and partly the other, my daughter. But when persons sets
their minds on anything, they sees the truth in a manner according to
their own thoughts, which is of itself as good as a made-up tale.

"He asks numberless questions, to which I makes suitable replies. Them
that lives out of doors--can they get up as early as they likes, without
being called? he asks.

"Does gipsies go to bed in their clothes?

"Does they sometimes forget their prayers, with not regularly dressing
and undressing?

"Did I ever sleep on heather?

"Does we ever travel by moonlight?

"Do I see the sun rise every morning?

"Did I ever meet a highwayman?

"Does I believe in ghosts?

"Can I really tell fortunes?

"I takes his shapely little hand--as brown as your own, my daughter, for
his mother, like myself, was a pure Roman, and looked down upon by her
people in consequence for marryi