not
live in peace for them; if a man prosecutes them with severity, his
hen-roost is sure to pay for it: they generally straggle into these parts
about this time of the year; and set the heads of our servant-maids so
agog for husbands, that we do not expect to have any business done as it
should be whilst they are in the country. I have an honest dairy-maid
who crosses their hands with a piece of silver every summer, and never
fails being promised the handsomest young fellow in the parish for her
pains. Your friend the butler has been fool enough to be seduced by them;
and though he is sure to lose a knife, a fork, or a spoon every time his
fortune is told him, generally shuts himself up in the pantry with an old
gipsy for above half an hour once in a twelvemonth. Sweethearts are the
things they live upon, which they bestow very plentifully upon all those
that apply themselves to them. You see now and then some handsome young
jades among them: the sluts have very often white teeth and black eyes."

[Illustration: Told him, That he had a Widow in his Line of Life]

Sir Roger observing that I listened with great attention to his account
of a people who were so entirely new to me, told me, that if I would they
should tell us our fortunes. As I was very well pleased with the Knight's
proposal, we rid up and communicated our hands to them. A Cassandra[140]
of the crew, after having examined my lines very diligently, told me,
that I loved a pretty maid in a corner[141], that I was a good woman's
man, with some other particulars which I do not think proper to relate.
My friend Sir Roger alighted from his horse, and exposing his palm to two
or three that stood by him, they crumpled it into all shapes, and
diligently scanned every wrinkle that could be made in it; when one of
them, who was older and more sunburnt than the rest, told him, that he
had a widow in his line of life: upon which the Knight cried, "Go, go,
you are an idle baggage"; and at the same time smiled upon me. The gipsy
finding he was not displeased in his heart, told him, after a further
inquiry into his hand, that his true-love was constant, and that she
should dream of him to-night: my old friend cried "pish," and bid her go
on. The gipsy told him that he was a bachelor, but would not be so long;
and that he was dearer to somebody than he thought: the Knight still
repeated she was an idle baggage, and bid her go on. "Ah, master," says
the gipsy, "that roguish