nd inclining to olive
in complexion; his nose rounded, but not too large; his mouth good and
well-moulded; his eyes dark brown and noticeable indescribably, either
through their light or through the curve of the eyelids across them. "You
have a flash about that eye of yours," says the old apple woman, and it
is she that notices the "blob of foam" on his lips, while he is musing
aloud, exclaiming "Necessity!" and cracking his finger-joints. He had an
Irish look, or so thought his London acquaintance, Ardry. He looked
"rather wild" at times and he had a way of clenching his fist when he was
determined not to be put upon, as the bullying coachman found who had
said: "One-and-ninepence, sir, or the things which you have brought with
you will be taken away from you." Yet he had small hands for his size
and "long white fingers," which "would just serve for the business," said
the thimble-rigger. Though ready to hit people when he is angry, "a more
civil and pleasant-spoken person than yourself," says Ursula, "can't be
found." His own opinion was "that he was not altogether deficient in
courage and in propriety of behaviour. . . . That his appearance was not
particularly against him, his face not being like that of a convicted
pickpocket, nor his gait resembling that of a fox that has lost his
tail." It is as a "poor thin lad" that he commends himself to us,
through the mouth of the old apple woman, at his setting out from London,
but as he gets on he shows himself "an excellent pedestrian."

Already in London he has made one or two favourable impressions, as when
he convinces the superb waiter that he is "accustomed to claret." But it
is upon the roads that he wishes to shine. When the Man in Black asks
how he knows him, he answers that "Gypsies have various ways of obtaining
information." Later on, he makes the Man in Black address him as
"Zingaro." He impresses the commercial traveller as "a confounded
sensible young fellow, and not at all opinionated," and Lord Whitefeather
as a highwayman in disguise, and the Gypsies as one who never spoke a bad
word and never did a bad thing. This is his most impressive moment, when
the jockey discovers that he is the Romany Rye and tells him there is
scarcely a part of England where he has not heard the name of the Romany
Rye mentioned by the Gypsies. Here he makes another praise him. Now let
him mount the fine horse he has bought with 50 pounds borrowed from a
Gypsy, and i