I spent the afternoon of the day of their departure with the coppersmiths. It was a naturally dispiriting afternoon of steady, drizzling rain, and the conduct of the Gypsies made it almost insufferably unpleasant. Throughout a long wet promenade Milanko begged dismally for a silk scarf. A smaller boy, inspired by a well-founded conviction that I would give him a cap, accompanied me and a friend when we went home for afternoon tea. He begged in the streets and at table as continuously and mechanically as a Chinese praying wheel, refused food and drink in order that his mouth might be free to exercise its main function, and afterwards, drenched but undaunted, droned petitions during half our walk to the station. Yono enticed me into an apartment on the first floor where he and his family lived, in order that we might debate at tiresome length a proposed supplementary payment for tinning the cauldron. Even Fardi’s wife and daughter forgot their manners. He himself was out, but his women locked the door and removed the key in order that I might not escape from their room at the top of the house until Lotka had made a last desperate effort to become possessor of my carpet. They were interrupted by a loud knock, and hope rose within me that Fardi had returned and would exercise parental authority to stop the persecution. But it was only patient Yono wishing to resume the discussion about the cauldron. As he came in I went out—against resistance, precipitately. Downstairs Grantsha and burly Yishwan sat in a larger room surrounded by children, while a group of women stitched industriously at the opposite end. Every one of them begged. The lads demanded watches, cigarette-holders and silver match-boxes; even the dotard Grantsha asked for money; Yishwan’s smallest request was for the coat from off my back; and the girls pleaded singly and in chorus: “Brother, why have you given me nothing?” The attack was irresistible: I was outnumbered, and the only alternative to surrender was flight. So I rose to take my leave, assisted to my feet by two impish boys who, with apparent politeness, seized my hands and unnoticed by me cleverly stole my silver Zodiac ring. [Picture: Children. Photo, by Newspaper Illustrations, Ltd.]