“Well,” said he, resuming, “you know that gorgios say the gypsy is a lazy, good-for-nothing fellow, and if he works at all it’s only a kind of accident, but you’ve been among us and know different, how in the season we start sometimes at four o’clock in the morning and work all day till seven or eight at night. Some folks think strawberry-picking is a easy job, but let them as thinks so try it; let ’em work in the glare of the sun day after day till their eyes smart as ours often do. I’ve known many a man who’s had to knock off ’cause his eyes was so bad,—and they’d find too there can’t be a more back-aching job than pickin’ strawberries hour after hour. “You might put that in your lil, and perhaps some of the folks as reads it’ll think all the better of us. “Of course some seasons are better than others,” he resumed; “this year some of our folk will come off badly, the frost ‘played up’ the bloom anyhow. A while back the flowers looked fine, but a frost come one night and afterwards a lot of ’em had black eyes”—here he took a contemplative pull at his pipe and added, “Strawberries don’t like ’em any more than we do. Many of the fields were scarcely touched by the frost, but I know of one family who have come a good many miles and spent nearly all they had to get here, and up to now they’ve scarcely done three days’ work, but we in our field have been at work for a fortnight. I reckon they’ll have a rough time next winter unless they do well at the hop country, which ain’t very likely, for hop-pickin’, as you know, ain’t so good pay as fruitin’. “Shall we see you up there?” he asked, referring to the hop district. “I hope to get there,” I replied. “There’s a lot o’ things we ain’t talked over yet,” he rejoined, “and as my old mother used to say, when folks start talkin’ over the affairs of Egypt or about Romany jib they should start early in the morning. “Well, a pleasant journey to you and the best o’ luck,—hope you’ll get home safe,” was Mr. Beshaley’s parting salutation, accompanied by a reminder about the second Sunday in September for the hops, “for we don’t reckon you a mumply gorgio, you ought by rights to ha’ been a traveller.” To the echo of this compliment—one of the highest that can be paid to a gorgio in a Romany camp—I set out on my return home and at no great distance ran against the Vardomescroes on the way to their tent. Again was I enjoined by the man to “let us see you again up in the hop country,” while the old woman chimed in with— “You will enjoy yourself, I’m sure; just walk about and take photos; lor’, it’s an easy job if ever there was one, but there, I suppose I couldn’t do your work and you couldn’t do mine. Some gets bread one way and some gets it another, don’t ’um? When you come would you mind bringing another photo of Vena; the other day the rain come down so hard that the water run in one end of the tent and out o’ the other and I’m sorry to say it quite spoiled the one you gave us.”