ut 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