nmost
grain of the Romany, and especially of the _diddikai_, or half-breed.
Anything and everything--trickery, wheedling or bullying, fawning or
threatening, smiles, or rage, or tears--for a sixpence. All day long
flattering and tricking to tell fortunes or sell trifles, and all life
one greasy lie, with ready frowns or smiles: as it was in India in the
beginning, as it is in Europe, and as it will be in America, so long as
there shall be a rambler on the roads, amen!

Sweet peace again established, Mrs. Brown became herself once more, and
acted the hospitable hostess, exactly in the spirit and manner of any
woman who has "a home of her own," and a spark of decent feeling in her
heart. Like many actors, she was a bad lot on the boards, but a very
nice person off them. Here in her rolling home she was neither a beggar
nor poor, and she issued her orders grandly. "Boil some tea for the
_rye_--cook some coffee for the _rye_--wait a few minutes, my darling
gentleman, and I'll brile you a steak--or here's a fish, if you'd like
it?" But I declined everything except the corner of a loaf and some ale;
and all the time a little brown boy, with great black eyes, a perfect
Murillo model, sat condensed in wondrous narrow space by the fire, baking
small apples between the bars of the grate, and rolling up his orbs at me
as if wondering what could have brought me into such a circle,--even as
he had done that morning in the greenwood.

Now if the reader would know what the interior of a gypsy van, or "drag,"
or _wardo_, is like, he may see it in the following diagram.

[Picture: Interior of gypsy van]

_A_ is the door; _B_ is the bed, or rather two beds, each six feet long,
like berths, with a vacant space below; _C_ is a grate cooking-stove; _D_
is a table, which hangs by hinges from the wall; _E_ is a chest of
drawers; _f_ and _f_ are two chairs. The general appearance of a
well-kept van is that of a state-room. Brown's is a very good van, and
quite clean. They are admirably well adapted for slow traveling, and it
was in such vans, purchased from gypsies, that Sir Samuel Baker and his
wife explored the whole of Cyprus.

Mrs. Brown was proud of her van and of her little treasures. From the
great recess under the bed she raked out as a rare curiosity an old Dolly
Varden or damasked skirt, not at all worn, quite pretty, and evidently of
considerable value to a collector. This had belonged to Mrs. Brow