No costermonger, or
common cad, or true Englishman, ever yet had that indefinable touch of
the opera-supernumerary in the streets. It _was_ a sombrero.

"That's the man for me," I said. So I called him, and gave him the
chisel, and after a while went down. He was grinding away, and touched
his hat respectfully as I approached.

Now the reader is possibly aware that of all difficult tasks one of the
most difficult is to induce a disguised Gipsy, or even a professed one,
to utter a word of Rommany to a man not of the blood. Of this all
writers on the subject have much to say. For it is so black-swanish, I
may say so centenarian in unfrequency, for a gentleman to speak Gipsy,
that the Zingaro thus addressed is at once subjected to morbid
astonishment and nervous fears, which under his calm countenance and
infinite "cheek" are indeed concealed, but which speedily reduce
themselves to two categories.

1. That Rommany is the language of men at war with the law; therefore
you are either a detective who has acquired it for no healthy purpose, or
else you yourself are a scamp so high up in the profession that it
behooves all the little fish of outlawdom to beware of you.

2. Or else--what is quite as much to be dreaded--you are indeed a
gentleman, but one seeking to make fun of him, and possibly able to do
so. At any rate, your knowledge of Rommany is a most alarming coin of
vantage. Certainly, reader, you know that a regular London streeter, say
a cabman, would rather go to jail than be beaten in a chaffing match. I
nearly drove a hansom into sheer convulsions one night, about the time
this chapter happened, by a very light puzzler indeed. I had hesitated
between him and another.

"You don't know _your own mind_," said the disappointed candidate to me.

"_Mind your own_ business," I replied. It was a poor palindrome, {38}
reader--hardly worth telling--yet it settled him. But he swore--oh, of
course he did--he swore beautifully.

Therefore, being moved to caution, I approached calmly and gazed
earnestly on the revolving wheel.

"Do you know," I said, "I think a great deal of your business, and take a
great interest in it."

"Yes, sir."

"I can tell you all the names of your tools in French. You'd like to
hear them, wouldn't you?"

"Wery much indeed, sir."

So I took up the chisel. "This," I said, "is a _churi_, sometimes called
a _chinomescro_."

"That's the French for it, is it, sir?" replied t