Nothing delights a gypsy girl so much as to listen to a story either told or read to her, and when Borrow's friend pulled his book from his pocket the gypsy girl began to clap her hands. Her anticipation of enjoyment sent over her face a warm glow, and I can assure Dr. Jessopp that Borrow (notwithstanding that his admiration of women was confined as a rule to blondes of the Isopel Berners type) seemed as much struck by her beauty as ever the Doctor could be himself. To say the truth, he frequently talked of it afterwards. Her complexion, though darker than an English girl's, was rather lighter than any ordinary gypsy's. Her eyes were of an indescribable hue, but an artist who has since then painted her portrait for Borrow's friend described it as a mingling of pansy-purple and dark tawny. The pupils were so large that, being set in the somewhat almond-shaped and long-eyelashed lids of her race, they were partly curtained both above and below, and this had the peculiar effect of making the eyes seem always a little contracted and just about to smile. The great size and deep richness of the eyes made the straight little nose seem smaller than it really was, they also lessened the apparent size of the mouth, which, red as a rosebud, looked quite small until she laughed when the white teeth made quite a wide glitter. "The beauty of that girl," murmured Borrow, "is really quite--quite--" I don't know what the sentence would have been had it been finished. Before three lines of the poem had been read she jumped up and cried, "Look at the Devil's needles. They're come to sew my eyes up for killing their brothers." And surely enough a gigantic dragon-fly, whose body-armour of sky-blue and jet black, and great lace-woven wings, shining like a rainbow gauze, caught the sun as he swept dazzling by, did really seem to be attracted either by the wings of his dead brothers or by the lights shed from the girl's eyes. "I dussn't set here," said she. "Us Romanies call this 'Dragon-fly brook.' And that's the king o' the dragon-flies: he lives here." As she rose she seemed to be surrounded by dragon-flies of about a dozen different species of all sizes, some crimson, some bronze, some green and gold, whirling and dancing round her as if they meant to justify their Romany name and sew up the girl's eyes. "The Romanies call them the Devil's needles," said Borrow; "their business is to sew up pretty girl's eyes." In a second, however, they all vanished, and the girl after a while sat down again to listen to the "lil," as she called the story.