to me
in the house like two wild birds, and tropical ones at that, in a cage.
There was a tawny-gold, black and scarlet tone about them and their garb,
an Indian Spanish duskiness and glow which I loved to look at.

Every proceeding of the tinker and Anselo was veiled in mystery and
hidden in the obscurity so dear to such grown-up children, but as I
observed after a few days that Lee did nothing beyond acting as assistant
to the tinker at the wheel, I surmised that the visit was solely for our
benefit. As the tinker was devoted to his poor wife, so was Anselo and
his dame devoted to their child. He was, indeed, a brave little fellow,
and frequently manifested the precocious pluck and sturdiness so greatly
admired by the Romanys of the road; and when he would take a whip and
lead the horse, or in other ways show his courage, the delight of his
parents was in its turn delightful. They would look at the child as if
charmed, and then at one another with feelings too deep for words, and
then at me for sympathetic admiration.

The keeper of the house where they lodged was in his way a character and
a linguist. Welsh was his native tongue and English his second best. He
also knew others, such as Romany, of which he was proud, and the Shelta
or Minklas of the tinkers, of which he was not. The only language which
he knew of which he was really ashamed was Italian, and though he could
maintain a common conversation in it he always denied that he remembered
more than a few words. For it was not as the tongue of Dante, but as the
lingo of organ-grinders and such "catenone" that he knew it, and I think
that the Palmer and I lost dignity in his eyes by inadvertently admitting
that it was familiar to us. "I shouldn't have thought it," was all his
comment on the discovery, but I knew his thought, and it was that we had
made ourselves unnecessarily familiar with vulgarity.

It is not every one who is aware of the extent to which Italian is known
by the lower orders in London. It is not spoken as a language; but many
of its words, sadly mangled, are mixed with English as a jargon. Thus
the Italian _scappare_, to escape, or run away, has become _scarper_; and
a dweller in the Seven Dials has been heard to say he would "_scarper_
with the _feele_ of the _donna_ of the _cassey_;" which means, run away
with the daughter of the landlady of the house, and which, as the editor
of the Slang Dictionary pens, is almost pure Italian,--_