really just as comfortable as they would be if they stayed at
home. Comfortable the same way, I mean."

"Yes, that's better, Dolly. Because I think we're comfortable, though
it's very different from the way we would live in the city, or even from
the way we lived at the farm. But we're really roughing it, I guess."

"Yes, and it's fine, too! Tell me, Bessie, did you ever see any gypsies
like these when you lived in the country!"

"There were gypsies around Hedgeville two or three times, but the
farmers all hated them, and used to try to drive them away, and Maw
Hoover told me not to go near them when they were around. She usually
gave me so many things to do that I couldn't, anyhow. You know, the
farmers say that they'll steal anything, but I think one reason for that
is that the farmers drove them into doing it, in the beginning, I mean.
They wouldn't let them act like other people, and they didn't like to
sell them things. So I think the poor gypsies wanted to get even, and
that's how they began to steal."

"What do you suppose they're doing up here, Bessie?"

"They always go around to the summer places, and in the winter they go
south, to where the people from the north go to get warm when it's
winter at home. They tell fortunes, and they make all sorts of queer
things that people like to buy; lace, and bead things. And I suppose up
here they sell all sorts of souvenirs, too; baskets, and things like
that."

"Don't they have any real homes, Bessie?"

"No; except in their wagons. They live in them all the time, and they
always manage to be where it's warm in the winter. They don't care where
they go, you see. One place is just like another to them. They never
have settled in towns. They've been wanderers for ages and ages, and
they have their own language. They know all sorts of things about the
weather, and they can find their way anywhere."

"How do you know so much about them, Bessie, if you never saw anything
of them when you were in Hedgeville?"

"I read a book about them once. It's called 'Lavengro,' and it's by a
man who's been dead a long time now; his name was Borrow."

"What a funny name! I never heard of that book, but I'll get it and read
it when I get home. It tells about the gypsies, you say?"

"Yes. But I guess not about the gypsies as they are now, but more as
they used to be. We're getting close, now. See all the babies! Aren't
they cute and brown?"

Two or three parties, evidently from