Of her specific exploits as a bruiser we hear of at least two near Dover. Once, the cart she and her old mistress travelled with was stopped by two sailors, who would have robbed and stripped the owners. "Let me get down," she exclaimed simply, and so saying she got down, and fought with them both until they turned round and ran away. On another occasion, while combing out her long hair beneath a hedge, she was insulted by a jockey. Starting up, though her hair was unbound, she promptly gave him what he characterised as "a most confounded whopping," and "the only drubbing I ever had in my life; and lor, how with her right hand she fibbed me while she held me round the neck with her left arm! I was soon glad to beg her pardon on my knees, which she gave me in a moment when she saw me in that condition, being the most placable creature in the world, and not only her pardon but one of the hairs which I longed for, which I put through a shilling for purposes of pleasant deception at country fairs." The hair with the shilling attached to it eventually became a treasured possession of the Romany Rye. Rude as some of these characteristics may appear, we are left in no manner of doubt as to the essential nobility, befitting her name, of Miss Berners--her character and bearing. Her carriage, especially of the neck and shoulders, reminded the postilion of the Marchioness of ---; and he took her unhesitatingly for a young lady of high rank and distinction, who had temporarily left her friends, and was travelling in the direction of Gretna Green with the fortunate Rye. The word-master, in disabusing the postilion of this idea, gave utterance to the conviction that he might search the world in vain for a nature more heroic and devoted. Like a lady of the highest quality, the beauteous queen of the dingle was subject to the vapours and to occasional fits of inexplicable weeping; but as a general rule she shared with Borrow himself a proud contempt for that mad puppy gentility, and her predominant characteristic, like his, was the simplicity that puzzled by reason of its directness and its purity. {52} That these qualities were not unaccompanied by a considerable amount of hauteur, is shown by her uncompromising rejection of the ceremonial advances made to her by that accomplished courtier, the man in black. "Lovely virgin," said he, with a graceful bow and stretching out his hand, "allow me to salute your fingers." "I am not in the habit of shaking hands with strangers," said Belle. "I did not presume to request to shake hands with you," said the man in black. "I merely wished to be permitted to salute with my lips the extremities of your two forefingers." "I never permit anything of the kind," said Belle. "I do not approve of such unmanly ways." His importunity is rebuked more forcibly upon another occasion, when the nymph bids the priest with asperity to "hold his mumping gibberish."