"The child means that I am a great witch, my lady," said the old dame with another curtsey. "Though she's foolish to use Romany words to Gentiles as don't understand the tongue which the dear Lord spoke in Eden's garden, as the good Book tells us." "In what part of the Bible do you find that?" asked Lambert laughing. "Oh, my sweet gentleman, it ain't for the likes of me to say things to the likes of you," said Mother Cockleshell, getting out of her difficulty very cleverly, "but the dear lady wants her fortune told, don't she?" "Why don't you say dukkerin?" "I don't like them wicked words, sir," answered Mother Cockleshell piously. "Wicked words," muttered Chaldea tossing her black locks. "And them true Romany as was your milk tongue. No wonder the Gentiles don't fancy you a true one of the road. If I were queen of--" A vicious little devil flashed out of the old woman's eyes, and her respectable looks changed on the instant. "Tol yer chib, or I'll heat the bones of you with the fires of Bongo Tem," she screamed furiously, and in a mixture of her mother-tongue and English. "Ja pukenus, slut of the gutter," she shook her fist, and Chaldea, with an insulting laugh, moved away. "Bengis your see! Bengis your see! And that, my generous lady," she added, turning round with a sudden resumption of her fawning respectability, "means 'the devil in your heart,' which I spoke witchly-like to the child. Ah, but she's a bad one." Miss Greeby laughed outright. "This is more like the real thing." "Poor Chaldea," said Lambert. "You're too hard on her, mother." "And you, my sweet gentleman, ain't hard enough. She'll sell you, and get Kara to put the knife between your ribs." "Why should he? I'm not in love with the girl." "The tree don't care for the ivy, but the ivy loves the tree," said Mother Cockleshell darkly. "You're a good and kind gentleman, and I don't want to see that slut pick your bones." "So I think," whispered Miss Greeby in his ear. "You play with fire." "Aye, my good lady," said Mother Cockleshell, catching the whisper--she had the hearing of a cat. "With the fire of Bongo Tern, the which you may call The Crooked Land," and she pointed significantly downward. "Hell, do you mean?" asked Miss Greeby in her bluff way. "The Crooked Land we Romany calls it," insisted the old woman. "And the child will go there, for her witchly doings." "She's too good-looking to lose as a model, at all events," said Lambert, hitching his shoulders. "I shall leave you to have your fortune told, Clara, and follow Chaldea to pacify her."