"May the heavens rain blessings on your head my pretty gentleman give the poor gipsy a piece of silver to buy her a bit for the bairns and I can read by the lines in your face my pretty gentleman that you're born to ride in a golden coach and wear buckles of diemints and that your heart's opening like a flower to help the poor gipsy to get her a trifle for her poor famishing bairns that I see the tears of pity astanding like pearls in your eyes my pretty gentleman and may you never know the want of the shilling that I see you're going to give the poor gipsy who will send you all the rich blessings of heaven if you will but cross her hand with the bright pieces of silver that are not half so bright as the sweet eyes of the lady that's awaiting and athinking of you my pretty gentleman." This unpunctuated exhortation of the dark-eyed prophetess was here diverted into a new channel by the arrival of Miss Patty Honeywood, who had left her cousin Frank, and had brought her sketch-book to the spot where "the pretty gentleman" and the fortune-teller were standing, "I do so want to draw a real gipsy," she said. "I have never yet sketched one; and this is a good opportunity. These little brownies of children, with their Italian faces and hair, are very picturesque in their rags." "Oh! do draw them!" said Verdant enthusiastically, as he perceived that the rest of the party had passed out of sight. "It is a capital opportunity, and I dare say they will have no objection to be sketched." "May the heavens be the hardest bed you'll ever have to lie on my pretty rosebud," said the unpunctuating descendant of [AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 267] John Faa, as she addressed herself to Miss Patty; "and you're welcome to take the poor gipsy's picture and to cross her hand <VG267.JPG> with the shining silver while she reads the stars and picks you out a prince of a husband and twelve pretty bairns like the" - "No, no!" said Miss Patty, checking the gipsy in her bounteous promises. "I'll give you something for letting me sketch you, but I won't have my fortune told. I know it already; at least as much as I care to know." A speech which Mr. Verdant Green interpreted thus: Frederick Delaval has proposed, and has been accepted. "Pray don't let me keep you from the rest of the party," said Miss Patty to our hero, while the gipsy shot out fragments of persuasive oratory. "I can get on very well by myself." "She wants to get rid of me," thought Verdant. "I dare say her cousin is coming back to her." But he said, "At any rate let me stay until Mr. Delaval rejoins you." "Oh! he is gone on with the rest, like a polite man. The Miss Maxwells and their cousins were all by themselves." "But ~you~ are all by ~yourself~" and, by your own showing, I ought to prove my politeness by staying with you."