“An old woman and a young one--eh?--then you are doubtless mother and daughter? Ah! I wish that I had a daughter so comely to look upon as yourself, my pretty dear;--but I should not like her to be quite so bold in her demeanour as yourself. You are very lovely: and yet methinks you are scarcely as virtuous as you are beautiful. Oh! now the red blood mantles in your cheeks: but do not take offence. ’Twere a sorry deed on my part to offer insult to those who share my hospitality. Yes--I wish that I had a daughter, who would love me in my old age. My own people neglect me: they leave me alone--alone--for many long hours together;--and then I have no other companions but my own thoughts. And strange companions are they at times, I can assure you. Let me see--what was I thinking of when you came up? Oh! I remember now:--yes--I remember now. Fifty years ago--no--it was about forty-nine, I nursed a male child,--the child of Octavia Manners and the Earl of Ellingham. I do not mean this present Earl:--no--no--’twas the late Earl. The child had a peculiar mark on the right arm: ’twas near the shoulder. Then I was turned away by the dead Octavia’s half-brother, Benjamin Bones--a horrible man, who knew no pity. But the child again fell in my way--Egyptia had it in keeping. Ah! I loved that child--I would have adopted it as my own. For seven years did I retain the boy with me--the dear boy, whom methinks I see now. But, the wretches--they sent him away: they lost him in Winchester--cast him off purposely on the wide world. Oh! how I regretted that dear, flaxen-headed boy! They told me he was dead--and I mourned for him. Years and years passed away: heaven only knows how many--I cannot stop to count them now. But it must have been twenty or twenty-one years ago that I met the flaxen-haired boy. Boy! no--no--he was a man--a fine, dashing, jovial, rollicking man;--yes--and, woe is me--a highway robber!” By this time the two wanderers, who had not lost a single word of all that the gipsy crone was thus uttering aloud in her musings, became interested in the wild, yet still connected history which she was relating,--a history that was revealed by the development of her own thoughts and reminiscences, and which she seemed to experience a “pleasing pain” in reciting. But it was the elder of the two listeners--Perdita’s mother--who paid the deepest and most particular attention to the crone’s audible meditations, and who seemed to experience a presentiment that they were furnishing a subject which might be turned to her own and her daughter’s advantage.