a criminal offence
for any woman to smoke in excess while she is suckling a child."

"Say it ought to be a criminal offence for a woman to smoke at all,"
growled Borrow. "Fancy kissing a woman's mouth that smelt of stale
tobacco--pheugh!"

Now, so far from forgetting this incident, Borrow took quite as much
interest in the case as though the child had been his own. He went at
short intervals to the camp to see Perpinia, who had abandoned her pipe,
for the time being. And when after a fortnight the child, either from
Perpinia's temporary abstention from nicotine, or through the "good luck"
sent by the magpie, or from some other cause began to recover from its
illness, he reported progress with the greatest gusto to his friend.

"Is not Perpinia very grateful to you and to me?" said the friend.

"Yes," said Borrow, with a twinkle in his eye. "She manages to feel
grateful to you and me for making her give up the pipe, and also to
believe at the same time that her child was saved by the good luck that
came to her because she guarded the magpie."

If it were needful to furnish other instances of Borrow's interest in
children, and also of his susceptibility to feminine charms, I could
easily furnish them. As to the "rancorous hatred that smouldered in that
sad heart of his," in spite of all his oddities, all his
"cantankerousness," to use one of his own words, he was a singularly
steadfast and loyal friend. Indeed, it was the very steadfastness of his
friendship that drove him to perpetrate that outrage at Mr. Bevan's
house, recorded in Dr. Gordon Hake's "Memoirs." I need only recall the
way in which he used to speak of those who had been kind to him (such as
his publisher, Mr. John Murray for instance) to show that no one could be
more loyal or more grateful than he who has been depicted as the
incarnation of all that is spiteful, fussy, and mean. There is no need
for the world to be told here that the author of "Lavengro" is a
delightful writer, and one who is more sure than most authors of his time
to win that little span of life which writing men call "immortality." But
if there is need for the world to be told further that George Borrow was
a good man, that he was a most winsome and a most charming companion,
that he was an English gentleman, straightforward, honest, and brave as
the very best exemplars of that fine old type, the world is now told
so--told so by two of the few living men who can speak of him