“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we
must take it with us or we find it not.”—EMERSON.
Hitherto, the injunction, “Seek, and ye shall find,” would appear to
have been construed with sinistral intention of seeking to discredit
the gypsy, by most of those who have professed to give an insight to
Romany life, presuming, of course, that the word-pictures presented by
them have described their impressions and have not been filched ideas
served up anew.
This seemingly ungenerous observation is warranted by the fact that
the justifiably suspicious attitude of the gypsy has in all but a few
noteworthy instances kept the gorgio at a distance, and it may be
safely inferred that no true description or estimate of Romany life and
character is possible excepting as the result of an admitted friendship
with the people.
Unlovable features exist in every community—gypsy or otherwise—and
unfortunately, perhaps, for the reputation of the gypsies, their
inaccessibility has in most cases necessitated the employment by the
gorgio writer of “narrow-angle” vision (to use a photographic simile),
the inevitable result of which has been that their unattractive
qualities loom large in the foreground, and upon these attention is
focussed, while the real picture in the rear is obliterated or rendered
indistinguishable.
Many of the Romany folk are unable to read, which fact, in conjunction
with their manner of living, places them at a great disadvantage with
respect to the expression of their ideas on many topics, but that
they appreciate the beautiful in nature, have a crude philosophy, and
decided opinions on equity may be gathered from the following incidents
and conversational anecdotes, which I give with colloquialisms verbatim.
One evening, as the setting sun was transforming the western horizon
into a panorama of wonderful colour-blending, I came upon a young gypsy
woman standing upon a slight eminence evidently watching the glorious
sky. Just as I came up to her, a motor vehicle whizzed past on the
road near to us. The gypsy turned to view the begoggled occupants and,
perceiving me, blurted out—
“What do you think they look like?” while her lip curved and a look
of intense contempt came into her face for the modern man and woman in
the car, who were whisking through space, raising clouds of dust and
leaving behind, both literally and figuratively, a nasty taste in one’s
mouth. Turning again to the magnificent sky picture she remarked as
though she were a different woman:
“I say, ain’t it lovely!”
I expressed my agreement with her in appreciating the lovely scene,
but soon descended to more mundane matters by asking if she had seen
anything of a particular branch of the Vardomescro family, for if they
were, as I supposed, in the vicinity, I intended to visit the camp.
She replied that she thought they must have moved before she came to
the spot last evening. However, I searched around with the hope of
finding some sign that would enable me to ascertain their whereabouts.
I soon found what may be termed their notice of change of address,
but as the arrangement of sticks and leaves had been to some extent
disturbed,—presumably by some wandering animal,—it was a little
difficult to decipher, nevertheless there was sufficient to indicate
that they had gone about two miles away to the north.
As it was now too late in the evening to set out I decided to postpone
my visit until the morrow, which, judging from the stratus clouds about
the setting sun, would be fine.
In the morning, after putting up a few sandwiches, in case I was unable
to discover my friends, I set out for the locality in which I expected
to find them. Failing to observe any indication of their presence I sat
down and listened intently, having many a time located a camp by the
noise of children playing, the sound of wood being chopped or broken
for the fire and so on, but now nothing broke the silence to guide me;
I concluded, therefore, that they had again gone on, but as I had not
found the site of their last camp I had little hope of tracing them and
was thinking of returning when, at less than a hundred yards distant, I
saw a member of the family I had been seeking,—a young woman upon whom
had been bestowed the name of Sinfai Vardomescro—known to the gorgio
as Miss Cooper. She informed me that the remainder of the family were
away but might return at any minute, that she was just going to fetch
a bucket of water and would be back at the camp in a few minutes. She
then went on for the water while I set off for the tents, the position
of which she had pointed out. Upon reaching the camp I found a seat on
an old box and, awaiting events, had nothing to do but think.
The gypsies being uppermost in my mind, I experienced a sensation
of something akin to envy as I ruminated,—“it was true Science
was a meaningless word to them, literature equally a term without
signification, the existence of arts, manufactures and commerce was but
dimly realized by them, and yet,—did they not enjoy a fuller freedom
than I,—did they not escape the cares, worries and anxieties that were
inseparable from a state of respectability,—so called,—they had never
even heard of Mrs. Grundy,—they”—but here my musing was cut short by
the arrival of Sinfai with the water.
“Do you know anything about cookin’?” she asked.
“How should I?” said I; “it’s hardly been my line up to the present.”
“Then,” she retorted, “you’d better jolly well begin to learn at once.”
“All right,” said I, laughing. “What’s on the menu?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” was the reply; “but we’ve got
to get some poovengroes ready first of all,—here’s a churi for you.”
Taking the proffered knife, I set to work scraping potatoes. Sinfai,
overlooking my performance, remarked approvingly—“Ain’t so bad for a
start,—we shall make a Romany out o’ you ’fore long.”
While occupied thus as lady’s help I inquired of my instructress,
“Where’s your mother today, Sinfai, is she dukkerin?”
“Sh—h!” she replied, “don’t talk so loud, some mush may shoon what
you pens. We has to be careful nowadays, the police is down on
us,—dukkerin ain’t what it used to be; one time we made a good bit by
it—but there! it’s no good worrying about it. I say, Rye, ain’t you
never had your fortune told?”
“Yes, Miss —— told it,” I admitted.
“Oh, she ain’t no good at it,” said Sinfai with a sniff; “it allus
must be told by a dark person. It’s a gift, you know, and the gorgios
as can’t do it of course says it’s dreadful wicked and oughter be
put a stop to. Do you believe in it?” she inquired, with a quizzical
expression.
“I hardly know,” I replied, somewhat evasively.
“You’ll agree that we knows more about some people than they think, I
suppose?” she asked.
“Yes, certainly,” said I.
“Well, then,” rejoined Sinfai in a confidential manner, “dukkerin is
only tellin’ ’em what we know. Do you know, the first time I ever saw
you and before you’d said half a dozen words, I knew what county you
came from,—I’ve travelled that way, you see, and when you came to our
camp the first time and sat down, I said to myself, ‘’Taint the first
time he’s sat at a Roman camp fire.’ And I was right too, wasn’t I?” I
admitted that it was so.
“Well,” she continued, “if I’d told your fortune I should ha’ told you
that and of course made you pay for it.”
“Money appears to be quite necessary,” I remarked.
“Well,” said she, “you know we must live somehow,” adding with a merry
twinkle, “but I’ll tell yours for nothing if you like.”
“By the way, who did you think could, in a place like this, overhear my
question about fortune telling?” I inquired.
[Illustration: “SHOSHOI.”]
“You never know,” she replied, “but I’ve known folks as ought to bin
doin’ something better, sneak about and lie hidin’ in the bushes to
hear what us Romanies was talking about, but our ears are better than
theirs, so we know they’re listenin’, and we talk for their benefit.”
“Why don’t you rokkra Romany so they couldn’t understand?” I queried.
“’Cos we _wants_ the dinneloes to understand,” she answered.
“So that you may play the fool with them,” I added.
“That’s it,” she assented, unblushingly; “if they expects to catch us
nappin’ they’re mistaken. So we settles it we’re going to catch shoshoi
at a certain place. The man in the bushes hears it and off he goes and
lies in wait for us. Where do we go? Why another way, of course, and
then we have rabbit—but talkin’s all very well, my Rye, but we haven’t
lit the fire yet and the kettle ought to be bilin’; have you got a
light?”
She gathered together some pieces of paper and a number of sticks and
tried to get a fire going, but it was of no use, the material was damp.
“Bust the thing!” ejaculated my companion; “rum stuff to light a fire
with—I got wet through the other day getting some of it too. Didn’t I
catch cold? bless you no; shouldn’t know what to do with one if I had
it.”
I congratulated her on her immunity.
“Lucky!” she repeated rather ruefully, “am I; look at that fire, fair
smokes you out,” then rather insinuatingly added:
“Now you got on all right with the poovengroes, suppose you try your
hand at gettin’ her a-goin’,” at the same time nodding towards the
fire, which certainly smoked terribly, but appeared very unwilling to
burn as desired.
“Well,” said I, perhaps rather ungallantly, “I suppose I may as well do
that as sit and look at you.”
“Oh, I don’t mind being looked at,” returned Sinfai, “but you might
help with the fire at the same time,—jest see what I do, and if you
make some like them, we’ll have her going in no time.”
Hereupon she took a piece of dry deal from an old box and split from
it a slip; this she deftly cut from one end almost to the other in a
series of leafy shavings around it, and in such a manner that each
shaving remained attached to the stick. Together we prepared a number
of these and arranged them in a conical pile, each one having the
detached end of the chips downward, and a match was applied.
“Got him!” exclaimed Sinfai in her impulsive way as we fed the flames,
at first with small twigs, then with larger pieces, and although there
was a superabundance of pungent smoke, we had also a cheery, crackling
fire.
The kettle was now filled and hung upon the crane, the potatoes were
cut into thick slices and set cooking with some meat in the frying-pan.
A saucepan was next half-filled with water in readiness for a smoked
haddock Vardomescro _père_ was expected to bring.
“Listen!” said Sinfai, “there’s dad coming,” and, although at the
moment I could hear nothing to indicate the approach of any living
thing, the lapse of a few minutes proved the superior keenness of her
hearing, for I began to catch—very indistinctly at first—snatches of
the old fellow’s favourite song, “Poor old Joe.”
“Ah! here he comes,” added Sinfai as he approached; “he’s allus ’appy.”
In this instance, however, the ’appiness had some connection with
refreshment recently imbibed.
Extracting a small parcel from his coat pocket he handed it to her,
saying—
“There y’are, nice bit o’ fish that. I couldn’t get no haddicks ’cept
fillets, and that little lot cost me fourteen pence with a kipper for
meself.”
Turning to me he continued—
“I can’t stand haddick, yer know, but a kipper nicely smoked, with a
lot o’ bread and butter, that’s what I like.”
At this juncture the “missis” appeared carrying a large basket which
contained,—beside a few oddments of lace and thread, mending wool,
shoe laces and reels of cotton,—some loaves of bread and other
eatables.
Mention should be made, by the way, of the hawker’s licence, which,
carefully stowed away in an envelope, was always left in the basket in
case it should be necessary or advisable to demonstrate that her sole
means of subsistence was the peddling of lace and other small wares.
There can be no doubt that dukkerin paid best.
The man was about to seat himself preparatory to partaking of the meal,
when his wife—noticing the dirty state of his hands—told him in a
forcible manner that he should not “sit down to tea with hands like
that.”
Looking in my direction, and, assuming a manner evidently intended to
appear as an apology for his wife’s outburst, the man observed—
“Ain’t she obsurd now her ole man’s come home.”
I noticed that nevertheless he dutifully washed his hands but made
a lame attempt to assert his position as head of the establishment
at the expense of the puppy that had just nestled down upon his bed,
exclaiming as he turned it out—
“Git hout you, d’ye ’ear, I don’t want no fleas in my bed,—never had a
dog in my tent and ain’t agoin’ to; get hout.”
In this camp, however, as in many another, the woman ruled.
Even a short acquaintance with almost any of these wanderers will
reveal the fact that they possess quite a fund of humour, and will not
infrequently make quaint, trite, or humorous allusions, sometimes even
intensely funny remarks, and be, apparently, quite unconscious of doing
so, the family with whom I was now fraternizing being no exception.
After the meal, when the younger children had been packed away, the
conversation touched upon a number of subjects, varying from theft to
aeroplanes, and from personal cleanliness to disasters at sea,—for the
gypsy seems to be unable to concentrate his attention for any length of
time, but wanders from subject to subject.
In conversing with them one should not be surprised if the
conversation takes all sorts of twists and turns. That the gypsy is
incapable of viewing matters from a standpoint other than his own, must
be considered as the inevitable result of his aloofness.
Some reference having been made to the distinctions of _meum_ and
_tuum_, the mother said—
“Do you know what I’d do if a child o’ mine was to beg, or collar
anything? Why I’d prison him for three weeks an’ feed him on bread and
water, that’s the truth,—I ain’t a lyin’ woman though I’m sittin’
here,—an’ I can’t abide dirty children,” she continued. “Cleanliness
is next to godliness, they say, an’ you gets a big lump o’ soap for
a penny nowadays, and I can tell you, Rye, my kiddies ain’t chiklo
neither.”
The fact that the tents were in decent condition and the children had
appeared fairly well clothed and shod had not escaped my notice, while
the meal which had just been partaken of had been on a more lavish
scale than I had anticipated and I made some remark to that effect.
“Yes, thank God!” was the unmistakably sincere reply of the man.
“I’ve bin in work most o’ the time the last four months, ain’t I,
mother?—but we knows what it is to have nothin’ inside, and because
we have to get used to the feel of a hungry belly it ain’t to say we
likes it. D’you know, Rye, many’s the time I’ve gone to sleep for an
hour or two in the daytime when I couldn’t get no work, so I could
forget I was hungry.”
At this point the wife addressed me, proffering the advice—
“Don’t you never go near ——; she’s a bad lot, you’ll know her anywhere
if you meet her ’cos she’s got a mouth like a ’oss collar. She be a
lippety tippoty sort, ain’t no good to nobody; besides, she’s got a
awful temper on her; as for me, d’ye know, I could keep my temper for
seven year; d—n you, you are clumsy,” this being said in the same
breath to her child, who had, presumably, got up from bed for a drink
of water and had upset the can; she then straightway continued talking
as though no interruption had occurred, and chattered on from one
subject to another with scarcely a break—
“My husband can read, you know, and he had a paper lent him that had
got in it all about a big boat sinking,—nearly everybody was drowned,
it said, pani-mushes and all.
“It’s my belief the world’s got too full o’ people and that’s the way
the Almighty’s got o’ thinnin’ ’em out. Lord save us all, ain’t it
awful to think of ’em all alive same as you and me and then——!
“Yes, my Rye, this country’s good enough for me. Starvation’s ahead
next winter for some of us I dare say—but then, folks can starve in
Canada too.
“Do you know, as we was sittin’ here last week, one of them aeroplanes
come nearly over right up there,—I don’t believe in them things,—if
we was meant to fly I’m certain the Almighty would ha’ given us a pair
o’ wings apiece.”
In this way her tongue ran on. At length she asked—
“Are you an invalid in your left hand? Why do you hold it like that?”
This curiously expressed inquiry was suggested by the position in which
I was holding my hand to relieve pain caused by carrying a heavy camera
during several days of wandering.
Heavy clouds had been gathering for some little time and rain had
seemed imminent, now it pattered down in a fashion that promised a
downpour.
“Come into the tent,” said my hostess, “there ain’t no
creepers,—tramps gets ’em, we don’t.”
She had scarcely finished speaking when she scratched her head
vigorously.
“Yus!” she ejaculated as she noticed my attempt to suppress a smile.
“Them’s gnats!”
“Dordi!” she exclaimed as we got under cover. “Did you hear that? It
sounded like thunder; hope we ain’t goin’ to get any, it foretells
a death, you know; we had a dreadful storm the night before Mrs.
Beshaley’s little ’un died.”
Hearing a footfall, Mrs. Vardomescro applied one eye to a small hole in
the tent blanket, then said—
“Make room there, Bill, she’s coming here.”
By shifting around a little we made room for one more and I must
confess I was very glad to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Beshaley,
for she was one of the nicest, in addition to being one of the most
beautiful of Romany women I had met. She appeared to be between
twenty-five and thirty years of age; she wore no hat but had her
hair—which was intensely black—plaited somewhat elaborately, the
plaits hanging over her ears passed around the back of her head in a
style facetiously termed “the door-knocker pattern.” Nevertheless, it
suited her. In her ears were gold ear-rings of a curious crescentic
design, and around the neck she had four rows of large red beads. She
was dressed in black, being in mourning for her little boy.
After I had been introduced to her by Mrs. Vardomescro as “a friend who
jinned what was pen’d in Romany,” all took part in the conversation.
Most of what passed would have little general interest, but there is
pathos in the following reference made by the new-comer to her recent
loss which must not be passed by, and which is an unconscious, albeit
welcome, refutation of charges of impassiveness, and the indifference
of gypsies to the welfare of their children. An illuminating glimpse
may also be obtained of an aspect of Romany life that is rarely, if
ever, paraded—before the gorgio.
“My little boy who died,” said Mrs. Beshaley, “was a stiff little chap,
he’d talk like a man and would stop older children teasing birds or any
animals, saying, ‘mustn’t do it, mustn’t do it.’ Dear little fellow, he
was too good, so—he had to leave us.”
Silently, our sympathies went out to the bereaved mother, who, as
though oblivious of our presence, continued—soliloquizing—
“Mande’s chavo’s lelled oprey,
He’s jalled to the praio tem,
Yeck divvus I shall dick leste,
Though the poov he’ll dick kek komi.”
My child is taken above,
He’s gone to the children’s home,
One day I will see my love,
Though the earth no more he’ll roam.
One could see that this trouble still lay heavily upon her, and that
she derived a melancholy satisfaction from speaking of the little one
who had been so much to her.
“Do you know,” said she, awaking from her temporary stupor, “I felt
that I couldn’t stay alone in my van while the storm was going over,
but I think I must be getting back now.”
Bidding me good night she held out her hand, saying—
“My husband will be at home to-morrow, he would like to have a talk
with you; will you come and have tea with us? it isn’t much we’ve got
to offer, but to what there is you’re quite welcome. Good night to you
all.”
When the retreating footsteps could no longer be heard, Mrs.
Vardomescro remarked—
“There’s still a few good folk left in the world and she’s one of ’em,
and yet this has come to her. But the Almighty knows best.”
The storm being practically over, I stepped from the tent into the
open, finding the air deliciously cool and refreshing, and as it was
getting late I bade adieu to my friends—“and so home,” as the old
diarist so quaintly expresses it.
Next evening I sought out the van occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Beshaley
from among several drawn up in the same field. They had one of the most
comfortable—not to say luxurious—vans I had ever entered; however, as
the weather was gloriously fine, tea was, as usual, partaken of outside.
The man’s conversation interested me greatly, and although at times he
expressed himself somewhat curiously, he was by no means an ignoramus.
“Look here,” said he, “some folks don’t like us gypsies, in fact many
people are afraid of us, and perhaps it’s all the better for us and for
them as well that it is so. I reckon the gorgios are conceited, they’ll
tell you their way of living in houses is the best, but we know very
well our way is the best, and to prove it let me ask you why do the
doctors send people for what they call the open-air treatment? Why do
they send hundreds and thousands o’ kiddies into the country every year
from London? Bless me! you can very nearly see ’em grow and go brown.
Why do they do this if their way is the best?
“And just think too what lots of the well-to-do people have got vans
lately and fitted ’em out like hotels so they can play at bein’
gypsies. I’ll bet you yeck posh korauna to your shohaury that they
don’t know how to chin a ran nor how to scrape a poovengro, and then
they go home to their friends and say, ‘We’ve been gypsying, and it’s
delightful.’ Oh, yes, Rye, I know how they talk,—and they say, ‘Really
it’s quite inexpensive, you can hire a wagon for five or six pounds a
week and if you economize it works out at next to nothing.’ A man cook
sees to all the food for ’em, then they have a groom to ’tend to the
horse, another man to open the newspaper and so on. Some of ’em pay for
it of course, but I dare say some don’t, like the old song says—
“A Rye and a Rawnie
Jall’d yeck divvus
To jib the Romany jibben,
They chor’d a rinkeny vardo
For which they both were stardo
This bis bershor ta dui.”
Being most anxious to secure a portrait of Mrs. Beshaley I asked her
husband if he would object to my photographing her.
“Not at all,” was his hearty reply. “I should like one of her myself,
but I’m afraid you won’t get her to agree to it.”
Therefore, when she next appeared I proffered my request.
“No!” she replied, politely but very firmly. “I wouldn’t have my
photograph taken for any money,—my brother once wanted me to have it
done, but I wouldn’t, and then he offered me a golden sovereign if I
would have it taken, but I didn’t, and I never will. Can’t you draw?”
she inquired, and upon receiving my reply in the affirmative, added—
“You are welcome to draw my portrait at any time, but I won’t be
photographed if I know it.”
Considering this a great concession, and fearful lest the permission
should be withdrawn, I made my working sketch on the spot.
I could not then, and I cannot now, understand the difference in effect
on the sitter between having a portrait photographed or drawn. That
there was to her some subtle distinction which she probably could
not, and most certainly would not, explain there can be no manner of
doubt, and I can only suggest that photo-chemical action was a mystery
to her, and that, in a subconscious or indefinable way, it was regarded
as likely to rob her of some part of her psychic entity.
[Illustration: MRS. BESHALEY.]
The ordeal over, Mr. Beshaley picked up the thread of our earlier
conversation and continued—
“Well, there’s good and bad folk among us the same as other people,
but gypsies have always had a bad name among the gorgios,—you might
almost think gypsies were all bad, and all the gorgios good,” he added,
laughing. “I know one gorgio,” he went on, “who said, ‘Drive all the
gypsies away somewhere, I don’t care where they go, so long as they
don’t come near me,’ yet mind you this very man reads the lessons in
church.
“Such as him would be the first to grumble if strawberries went up a
few pence the basket.
“What would the fruit-growers, the hop-growers and goodness knows who
else, do without us?
“Can a farmer keep on all the year the hands who help at the busy
season? No! you know as well as I do it wouldn’t pay him.
“We have what we call our ‘runs,’ you know,—at one time we do a bit of
potato planting and cleaning, afterwards we travel to the strawberry
country, then we go on haymaking and field pea-picking.
“I’ve told you what we do for a living,” he continued; “might I ask you
what you do?”
“Well,” I answered, “I am what your folk call a por-engro, and I
suppose that is correct.”
“And you are writing a lil about us?” he queried.
“Yes,” said I; “at least I hope to do so.”
“And they tell me you go about alone among us; why, some wouldn’t feel
safe.”
“It really seems as if I ought to think you are a bad lot,” I observed,
laughing.
“And so we are, at least that’s what folks who jaw to us for our good
tell us,” he replied, at the same time giving a knowing wink.
“Do you make much _sugar_ at your game?” he inquired with apparent
interest.
“Not nearly so much,” I replied, “as I think I should at
strawberry-picking.”
To this he made no rejoinder but shook his head deprecatingly, seeing
that I was quizzing him.
“Well,” said he, resuming, “you know that gorgios say the gypsy is a
lazy, good-for-nothing fellow, and if he works at all it’s only a kind
of accident, but you’ve been among us and know different, how in the
season we start sometimes at four o’clock in the morning and work all
day till seven or eight at night. Some folks think strawberry-picking
is a easy job, but let them as thinks so try it; let ’em work in the
glare of the sun day after day till their eyes smart as ours often do.
I’ve known many a man who’s had to knock off ’cause his eyes was so
bad,—and they’d find too there can’t be a more back-aching job than
pickin’ strawberries hour after hour.
“You might put that in your lil, and perhaps some of the folks as reads
it’ll think all the better of us.
“Of course some seasons are better than others,” he resumed; “this
year some of our folk will come off badly, the frost ‘played up’ the
bloom anyhow. A while back the flowers looked fine, but a frost come
one night and afterwards a lot of ’em had black eyes”—here he took a
contemplative pull at his pipe and added, “Strawberries don’t like ’em
any more than we do. Many of the fields were scarcely touched by the
frost, but I know of one family who have come a good many miles and
spent nearly all they had to get here, and up to now they’ve scarcely
done three days’ work, but we in our field have been at work for a
fortnight. I reckon they’ll have a rough time next winter unless they
do well at the hop country, which ain’t very likely, for hop-pickin’,
as you know, ain’t so good pay as fruitin’.
“Shall we see you up there?” he asked, referring to the hop district.
“I hope to get there,” I replied.
“There’s a lot o’ things we ain’t talked over yet,” he rejoined, “and
as my old mother used to say, when folks start talkin’ over the affairs
of Egypt or about Romany jib they should start early in the morning.
“Well, a pleasant journey to you and the best o’ luck,—hope you’ll
get home safe,” was Mr. Beshaley’s parting salutation, accompanied by
a reminder about the second Sunday in September for the hops, “for we
don’t reckon you a mumply gorgio, you ought by rights to ha’ been a
traveller.”
To the echo of this compliment—one of the highest that can be paid to
a gorgio in a Romany camp—I set out on my return home and at no great
distance ran against the Vardomescroes on the way to their tent.
Again was I enjoined by the man to “let us see you again up in the hop
country,” while the old woman chimed in with—
“You will enjoy yourself, I’m sure; just walk about and take photos;
lor’, it’s an easy job if ever there was one, but there, I suppose I
couldn’t do your work and you couldn’t do mine. Some gets bread one
way and some gets it another, don’t ’um? When you come would you mind
bringing another photo of Vena; the other day the rain come down so
hard that the water run in one end of the tent and out o’ the other and
I’m sorry to say it quite spoiled the one you gave us.”
“I shall be glad to let you have another,” I replied, “and will
certainly bring it with me.”
After profusely thanking me the old man added, “And I’ll give you some
mushrooms, you knows well I ain’t one o’ the ungrateful sort, and if
the folks as say we are, had nobody to stand at back of ’em and say a
good word, why they might be different from what they are.
“To say the good word for us sometimes would be little enough to do,
the Almighty knows, but no, they side with money always, it don’t
matter what a man does if he’s got money, he’ll always get helped. But
Rye, look here, do you think such folks can be real happy with all
their money? I don’t. I’ve just read about a man who shot his wife
because she wasn’t true to him, and they had lots o’ money it said, but
to my way o’ thinking, if two folks really love one another, nothing
else matters; you can buy a house, you can buy land, but love ain’t
bought with money. A man may not have a shirt to his back, but when
love ‘brews’ inside him, he’s bound to be happy. My missis and me have
been married now over forty years, and the older we gets the more we
loves one another; God’s in heaven and He knows that’s how it should
be, and my missis has always been true to me; if she hadn’t been, I
love her so as I could kill her,—yes, I could, and then die like a man
and meet her t’other side.
“My daughter Videy, you know, is engaged to ——, and he says he loves
the very shoes she wears. More than once he’s had to fight for her, and
he hasn’t allus come off best, still I admires him for it, for he can’t
abear for anybody to say anything agin her.
“She teases him anyhow, and she’s silly to do so,—I tell her she’ll
get a tatto yeck one o’ these days, but she only laughs and says, ‘O
lumme, there’s plenty o’ young chaps about yet.’ But you can’t put old
heads on young shoulders, can you?”
Awaking, apparently, to the fact that his tongue had been running away
with him, the old fellow added apologetically—
“I’m afraid we’ve kept you a bit, but once we get fairly started
there’s no telling when we are going to stop.
“Good night. Don’t forget the ‘oppin’.”