“Do you rokkra Romany?” Upon receiving my reply in the affirmative she said somewhat sharply: “Who taught you? You’re a kairengro, aren’t you?” “Why do you think that?” I queried. To this she vouchsafed no reply, appearing not to have heard the question, but after gazing steadily at me for quite an appreciable time she asked: “Why don’t you get a van and come along o’ us? You must get tired o’ stopping in one place.” I confessed that such was the case. “Then why do you stay under a roof?” Here the older woman joined in with: “I was born outside myself, I’m the mother o’ seventeen children, and, please the Almighty, I’m going to die outside, why, I suffocates in a house, there ain’t no air in a house,—you never gets air in a house!” “Look at the pale faces of them as lives in ’em,” said one of the younger women,—“but you”—she continued, turning to me—“are one o’ the dark ones.” “That is perhaps lucky for me,” I remarked. “Yes, ’tis so,” was the reply, “all Romany chies hates a pale face, at least all but the silly ones.” “But,” said I, “if I procured a van and travelled about with you, I am not sure that I should feel altogether safe, for we might disagree sometimes and perhaps fight, in which case I should come out badly, for the little fighting I do is with pen and ink and I am no master with either gloves or fists.” “Safe!” exclaimed the man, “you’d be safe, ab-so-lutely, nobody would fight, wouldn’t want to fight with you anyhow; as for me, I could fall out with you, but if you refused to shake hands with me the next minute I should say you’re no pal o’ mine.” [Illustration: AN OCTOGENARIAN.] We may note in passing, that this portion of our free and easy conversation, which is set down verbatim as it took place, aptly illustrates the following among the features which stand out in the Romany character: The possession of a kind of clairvoyance which enables them to promptly and accurately “size up” the sympathies of a chance acquaintance. Their instinctive dislike and distrust of fair or pale people. Their good-fellowship and ready reciprocation of kindness. Their alacrity in recovering from misunderstandings and ebullitions of temper, albeit they never forget an intentional slight or injustice. Presently the conversation was switched on to the subject of weddings. “Some of our folk are getting ‘spliced’ in a week or two in that church yonder,” said one of the women, “but yer know we don’t all get married by the clergyman, whatever clever people may say about it. Many a chal and chi are married in the good old Roman way.” “And how is that?” I asked, adding, “Just among yourselves, I suppose?” “Auvli,” she replied, “you takes mande by the vast,—so,”—suiting action to word she placed her hand in my grasp—“and,” she continued, “you pukker to mande tute will always be a tacho Romado and mande pens she’ll be a tacho Romadi to you.”