Groome asked whether the gipsy mentioned in the cutting was not a certain Romany chi whom he named, and said that he had always wondered who the writer of that article was, and that now he wondered no longer, for he knew him to be the writer of the obituary notice of George Borrow. Interested as I was in his letter, it came at a moment when the illness of a very dear friend of mine threw most other things out of my mind, and it was a good while before I answered it, and told him what I had to tell about my Welsh gipsy experiences and the adventure on Snowdon. I got another letter from him, and this was the beginning of a charming correspondence. After a while I discovered that there were, besides Romany matters, other points of attraction between us. Groome was the son of Edward FitzGerald’s intimate friend Robert Hindes Groome, Archdeacon of Suffolk. Now long before the great vogue of Omar Khayyam, and, of course, long before the institution of the Omar Khayyam Club, there was a little group of Omarians of which I was a member. I need not say here who were the others of that group, but it was to them I alluded in the ‘Toast to Omar Khayyam,’ which years afterwards I printed in _The Athenæum_, and have since reprinted in a volume of mine. After a while it was arranged that he was to come and visit us for a few days at The Pines. When it got wind in the little household here that another Romany Rye, a successor to George Borrow, was to visit us, and when it further became known that he had travelled with Hungarian gipsies, Roumanian gipsies, Roumelian gipsies, &c., I don’t know what kind of wild and dishevelled visitor was not expected. Instead of such a guest there appeared one of the neatest and most quiet young gentlemen who had ever presented themselves at the door. No one could possibly have dared to associate Bohemia with him. As a friend remarked who was afterwards invited to meet him at luncheon, “Clergyman’s son—suckling for the Church, was stamped upon him from head to foot.” I will not deny that so respectable a looking Romany Rye rather disappointed The Pines at first. At that time he was a little over thirty, but owing to his slender, graceful figure, and especially owing to his lithe movements and elastic walk, he seemed to be several years younger.