Beside him was a swarthy woman in a wild flaunting dress.
Behind the box out of the fore part of the caravan peered two or
three black children's heads. A pretty little foal about four
months old came frisking and gambolling now before now beside the
horses, whilst a colt of some sixteen months followed more
leisurely behind. When the caravan was about ten yards distant I
stopped, and raising my left hand with the little finger pointed
aloft, I exclaimed:
"Shoon, Kaulomengro, shoon! In Dibbel's nav, where may tu be
jawing to?"
Stopping his caravan with considerable difficulty the small black
man glared at me for a moment like a wild cat, and then said in a
voice partly snappish, partly kind:
"Savo shan tu? Are you one of the Ingrines?"
"I am the chap what certain folks calls the Romany Rye."
"Well, I'll be jiggered if I wasn't thinking so and if I wasn't
penning so to my juwa as we were welling down the chong."
"It is a long time since we last met, Captain Bosvile, for I
suppose I may call you Captain now?"
"Yes! the old man has been dead and buried this many a year, and
his sticks and titles are now mine. Poor soul, I hope he is happy;
indeed I know he is, for he lies in Cockleshell churchyard, the
place he was always so fond of, and has his Sunday waistcoat on him
with the fine gold buttons, which he was always so proud of. Ah,
you may well call it a long time since we met - why, it can't be
less than thirty year."
"Something about that - you were a boy then of about fifteen."
"So I was, and you a tall young slip of about twenty; well, how did
you come to jin mande?"
"Why, I knew you by your fighting mug - there ain't such another
mug in England."
"No more there an't - my old father always used to say it was of no
use hitting it for it always broke his knuckles. Well, it was kind
of you to jin mande after so many years. The last time I think I
saw you was near Brummagem, when you were travelling about with
Jasper Petulengro and - I say, what's become of the young woman you
used to keep company with?"
"I don't know."
"You don't? Well, she was a fine young woman and a vartuous. I
remember her knocking down and giving a black eye to my old mother,
who was wonderfully deep in Romany, for making a bit of a gillie
about you and she. What was the song? Lord, how my memory fails
me!
