“‘If a man prosecutes them with severity, his hen-roost is sure to pay for it. They generally straggle into this part of the country about this time of the year, and set the heads of our servant maids so agog for husbands, that we do not expect to have any business done as it should be while they are in the country. I have an honest dairymaid who crosses their hands with a piece of silver every summer, and never fails being promised the handsomest young fellow in the parish for her pains. Your friend the butler has been fool enough to be seduced by them; and though he is sure to lose a knife, a fork, or a spoon, every time his fortune is told him, generally shuts himself up in the pantry with an old gipsy for above half an hour once a twelvemonth. Sweethearts are the things which they live upon, which they bestow very plentifully upon all those that apply themselves to them. You see now and then some handsome young jades amongst them,--the sluts have very often white teeth and black eyes.’ “Sir Roger observing that I listened with great attention to his account of a people who were so entirely new to me, told me that if I would, they should tell us our fortunes. As I was very well pleased with the knight’s proposal, we rid up and communicated our hands to them. A Cassandra of the race, after having examined my lines very diligently, told me that I loved a pretty maid in a corner; that I was a good woman’s man; with some other particulars which I do not think proper to relate. My friend Sir Roger alighted from his horse, and exposing his palm to two or three that stood by him, they crumpled it into all shapes, and diligently scanned every wrinkle that could be made in it; when one of them, who was older and more sunburnt than the rest, told him that he had a widow in his line of life. Upon which the knight cried, ‘go, go, you are an idle baggage,’ and at the same time smiled upon me. The gipsy, finding that he was not displeased in his heart, told him, after a further inquiry into his hand, that his true-love was constant, and that he should dream of her to-night. My old friend cried, ‘Pish,’ and bid her go on. The gipsy told him that he was a bachelor, but would not be so long; and that he was dearer to somebody than he thought. The knight still repeated that she was an idle baggage, and bid her go on. ‘Ah, master,’ says the gipsy, ‘that roguish leer of yours makes a woman’s heart ache. You have not that simper about the mouth for nothing.’ The uncouth gibberish with which all this was uttered, like the darkness of an oracle, made us the more attentive to it. To be short, the knight left the money with her that he had crossed the hand with, and got up again on his horse.