The Disowned | Page 5

appetite? Old Dame Bingo will be
mortally offended if you do not do ample justice to her good cheer."
"If so," answered our traveller, who, young as he was, had learnt
already the grand secret of making in every situation a female friend,
"if so, I shall be likely to offend her still more."
"And how, my pretty master?" said the old crone with an iron smile.
"Why, I shall be bold enough to reconcile matters with a kiss, Mrs.
Bingo," answered the youth.
"Ha! Ha!" shouted the tall gypsy; "it is many a long day since my old
Mort slapped a gallant's face for such an affront. But here come our
messmates. Good evening, my mumpers; make your bows to this
gentleman who has come to bowse with us to-night. 'Gad, we'll show
him that old ale's none the worse for keeping company with the moon's
darlings. Come, sit down, sit down. Where's the cloth, ye ill-mannered
loons, and the knives and platters? Have we no holiday customs for
strangers, think ye? Mim, my cove, off to my caravan; bring out the
knives, and all other rattletraps; and harkye, my cuffin, this small key
opens the inner hole, where you will find two barrels; bring one of
them. I'll warrant it of the best, for the brewer himself drank some of
the same sort but two hours before I nimm'd them. Come, stump, my
cull, make yourself wings. Ho, Dame Bingo, is not that pot of thine
seething yet? Ah, my young gentleman, you commence betimes; so
much the better; if love's a summer's day, we all know how early a
summer morning begins," added the jovial Egyptian in a lower voice
(feeling perhaps that he was only understood by himself), as he gazed
complacently on the youth, who, with that happy facility of making
himself everywhere at home so uncommon to his countrymen, was
already paying compliments suited to their understanding to two fair
daughters of the tribe who had entered with the new-comers. Yet had
he too much craft or delicacy, call it which you will, to continue his
addresses to that limit where ridicule or jealousy from the male part of
the assemblage might commence; on the contrary, he soon turned to the
men, and addressed them with a familiarity so frank and so suited to

their taste that he grew no less rapidly in their favour than he had
already done in that of the women, and when the contents of the two
caldrons were at length set upon the coarse but clean cloth which in
honour of his arrival covered the sod, it was in the midst of a loud and
universal peal of laughter which some broad witticism of the young
stranger had produced that the party sat down to their repast.
Bright were the eyes and sleek the tresses of the damsel who placed
herself by the side of the stranger, and many were the alluring glances
and insinuated compliments which replied to his open admiration and
profuse flattery; but still there was nothing exclusive in his attentions;
perhaps an ignorance of the customs of his entertainers, and a
consequent discreet fear of offending them, restrained him; or perhaps
he found ample food for occupation in the plentiful dainties which his
host heaped before him.
"Now tell me," said the gypsy chief (for chief he appeared to be), "if we
lead not a merrier life than you dreamt of? or would you have us
change our coarse fare and our simple tents, our vigorous limbs and
free hearts, for the meagre board, the monotonous chamber, the
diseased frame, and the toiling, careful, and withered spirit of some
miserable mechanic?"
"Change!" cried the youth, with an earnestness which, if affected, was
an exquisite counterfeit, "by Heaven, I would change with you myself."
"Bravo, my fine cove!" cried the host, and all the gang echoed their
sympathy with his applause.
The youth continued: "Meat, and that plentiful; ale, and that strong;
women, and those pretty ones: what can man desire more?"
"Ay," cried the host, "and all for nothing,--no, not even a tax; who else
in this kingdom can say that? Come, Mim, push round the ale."
And the ale was pushed round, and if coarse the merriment, loud at
least was the laugh that rang ever and anon from the old tent; and
though, at moments, something in the guest's eye and lip might have

seemed, to a very shrewd observer, a little wandering and absent, yet,
upon the whole, he was almost as much at ease as the rest, and if he
was not quite as talkative he was to the full as noisy.
By degrees, as the hour grew later and the barrel less heavy, the
conversation changed into one universal clatter. Some