"Last Saturday I happened to be sitting on a fallen tree somewhat weary, my little damsel working as usual at the other end, and Fanchon balancing himself on the trunk between us; the curls of her brown coat--she is entirely brown--turning into gold as the sunshine played upon them through the leaves. "In this manner were we disposed, when a gipsy, with a pair of light baskets in her hand, came and offered them for sale. She was a middle-aged woman, who, in spite of her wandering life--perhaps because of that hardy out-of-door life--had retained much of her early beauty: the flashing eyes, the pearly teeth, the ruddy cheeks, the fine erect figure. It happened that, not wanting them, my companion had rejected these identical baskets when brought to our door in the morning. She told me so, and I quietly declined them. My friend the gipsy apparently gave the matter up, and, claiming me as an old acquaintance, began to inquire after my health, and fell into the pleasantest strain of conversation possible; spoke of my father, who, she said, had been kind to her and to her tribe, (no doubt she said truly; he was kind to everybody, and had a liking for the wandering race,) spoke of her children at the gipsy school in Dorsetshire; of the excellent Mr Crabbe, the friend of her people, at Southampton; then she began stroking Fanchon, (who actually, to my astonishment, permitted the liberty; in general she suffers no one to touch her that is not gentleman or lady;) Fanchon she stroked, and of Flush, the dear old dog, now lying buried under the rose-tree, she talked; then, to leave no one unpropitiated, she threw out a word of pleasant augury, a sort of gratuitous fortune-telling, to the hemmer of flounces; then she attacked me again with old recollections, trusting, with singular knowledge of human nature, to the power of the future upon the young, and of the past upon the old--to me she spoke of happy memories, to my companion of happiness to come; and so--how could I help it?--I bought the baskets."