se widow who had seen better days.
Apparently she was very old, for her figure had shrivelled up into a
diminutive monkey form, and she looked as though a moderately high wind
could blow her about like a feather. Her face was brown and puckered and
lined in a most wonderful fashion. Where a wrinkle could be, there a
wrinkle was, and her nose and chin were of the true nutcracker order, as
a witch's should be. Only her eyes betrayed the powerful vitality that
still animated the tiny frame, for these were large and dark, and had in
them a piercing look which seemed to gaze not at any one, but through
and beyond. Her figure, dried like that of a mummy, was surprisingly
straight for one of her ancient years, and her profuse hair was scarcely
touched with the gray of age. Arrayed in a decent black dress, with a
decent black bonnet and a black woollen shawl, the old lady looked
intensely respectable. There was nothing of the picturesque vagrant
about her. Therefore Miss Greeby, and with every reason, was
disappointed, and when the queen of the woodland spoke she was still
more so, for Mother Cockleshell did not even interlard her English
speech with Romany words, as did Chaldea.

"Good day to you, my lady, and to you, sir," said Mother Cockleshell in
a stronger and harsher voice than would have been expected from one of
her age and diminished stature. "I hope I sees you well," and she
dropped a curtsey, just like any village dame who knew her manners.

"Oh!" cried Miss Greeby again. "You don't look a bit like a gypsy queen."

"Ah, my lady, looks ain't everything. But I'm a true-bred Romany--a
Stanley of Devonshire. Gentilla is my name and the tent my home, and I
can tell fortunes as no one else on the road can."

"Avali, and that is true," put in Chaldea eagerly. "Gentilla's a bori
chovihani."

"The child means that I am a great witch, my lady," said the old dame
with another curtsey. "Though she's foolish to use Romany words to
Gentiles as don't understand the tongue which the dear Lord spoke in
Eden's garden, as the good Book tells us."

"In what part of the Bible do you find that?" asked Lambert laughing.

"Oh, my sweet gentleman, it ain't for the likes of me to say things to
the likes of you," said Mother Cockleshell, getting out of her
difficulty very cleverly, "but the dear lady wants her fortune told,
don't she?"

"Why don't you say dukkerin?"

"I don't like them wicked words, sir," answered Mother Cockleshell