"My life is not humdrum. It is full of excitement, anxieties,
pleasures, and I am too fond of the pleasures. Perhaps it is because I
have more of the luxuries of life than you that I am so content with
my lot."
"Why, what can you know of luxuries?"
"I have eighty pounds a year."
Babbie laughed. "Are ministers so poor?" she asked, calling back her
gravity.
"It is a considerable sum," said Gavin, a little hurt, for it was the
first time he had ever heard any one speak disrespectfully of eighty
pounds.
The Egyptian looked down at her ring, and smiled.
"I shall always remember your saying that," she told him, "after we
have quarrelled."
"We shall not quarrel," said Gavin, decidedly.
"Oh, yes, we shall."
"We might have done so once, but we know each other too well now."
"That is why we are to quarrel."
"About what?" said the minister. "I have not blamed you for deriding
my stipend, though how it can seem small in the eyes of a gypsy----"
"Who can afford," broke in Babbie, "to give Nanny seven shillings a
week?"
"True," Gavin said, uncomfortably, while the Egyptian again toyed with
her ring. She was too impulsive to be reticent except now and then,
and suddenly she said, "You have looked at this ring before now. Do
you know that if you had it on your finger you would be more worth
robbing than with eighty pounds in each of your pockets?"
"Where did you get it?" demanded Gavin, fiercely.
"I am sorry I told you that," the gypsy said, regretfully.
"Tell me how you got it," Gavin insisted, his face now hard.
"Now, you see, we are quarrelling."
"I must know."
"Must know! You forget yourself," she said haughtily.
"No, but I have forgotten myself too long. Where did you get that
ring?"
"Good afternoon to you," said the Egyptian, lifting her pans.
"It is not good afternoon," he cried, detaining her. "It is good-bye
for ever, unless you answer me."
"As you please," she said. "I will not tell you where I got my ring.
It is no affair of yours."
"Yes, Babbie, it is."
She was not, perhaps, greatly grieved to hear him say so, for she made
no answer.
"You are no gypsy," he continued, suspiciously.
"Perhaps not," she answered, again taking the pans.
"This dress is but a disguise."
"It may be. Why don't you go away and leave me?"
"I am going," he replied, wildly. "I will have no more to do with you.
Formerly I pitied you, but----"
He could not have used a word more calculated to rouse the Egyptian's
ire, and she walked away with her head erect. Only once did she look
back, and it was to say--
"This is prudence--now."
Chapter Nineteen.