16 An Old Gipsy: a Village Sketch. [Jan. 



useful utensil, on which the dingy dust stuck like birdlime — and of her 

 own clean apron, which exhibited a curious interchange of black and 

 green on a white ground. During the process of filling the watering- 

 pot, Harriet made divers signs to the gipsy to decamp. The old sybil, 

 however, budged not a foot, influenced probably by two reasons : one, 

 the hope of securing a customer in the new comer, whose appearance is 

 generally, I am afraid, the very reverse of dignified, rather merry than 

 wise ; the other, a genuine fear of passing through the yard-gate, on 

 the outside of which a much more imposing person, my grey-hound 

 Maj-flower, who has a sort of beadle instinct anent drunkards and 

 pilferers, and disorderly persons of all sorts, stood barking most 

 furiously. 



This instinct is one of May's remarkable qualities. Dogs are all, 

 more or less, physiognomists, and commonly pretty determined aristo- 

 crats, fond of the fine and averse to the shabby, distinguishing, with a 

 nice accuracy, the master castes from the pariahs of the world. But 

 May's power of perception is another matter, more, as it were, moral. 

 She has no objection to honest rags ; can away with dirt, or age, or 

 ugliness, or any such accident, and, except just at home, makes no dis- 

 tinction between kitchen and parlour. Her intuition points entirely to 

 the race of people commonly called suspicious, on whom she pounces at 

 a glance. What a constable she would have made ! What a jewel of 

 a thief-taker ! Pity that those four feet should stand in the way of 

 her preferment ! she might have risen to be a Bow-street officer. As 

 it is we make the gift useful in a small way. In the matter of hiring 

 and marketing the whole \illage likes to consult May. Many a chap 

 has stared when she has been whistled up to give her opinion as to his 

 honesty ; and many a pig bargain has gone off on her veto. Our neigh- 

 bour, mine host of the Rose, used constantly to follow her judgment in 

 the selection of his lodgers. His house was never so orderly as when 

 under her government. At last he found out that she abhorred tip- 

 plers as well as thieves — indeed, she actually barked away three of his 

 best customers : and he left off appealing to her sagacity, since which 

 he has, at different times, lost three silver spoons and a leg of mutton. 

 With every one else jNIay is an oracle. Not only in the case of way- 

 farers and vagrants, but amongst our own people, her fancies are quite a 

 touchstone. A certain lame cobbler, for instance — May cannot abide 

 him, and I don't think he has had so much as a job of heel-piecing to do 

 since her dislike became public. She really took away his character. 



Longer than I have taken to relate Mayflower's accomplishments 

 stood we, like the folks in the Critic, at a dead lock : May, who pro- 

 bably regarded the gipsy as a sort of rival, an interloper on her oracular 

 domain, barking with the voice of a lioness — the gipsy trying to per- 

 suade me into having my fortune told — and I endeavouring to prevail 

 bn May to let the gipsy pass. Both attempts were unsuccessful ; and 

 the fair consulter of destiny, who had by this time recovered from the 

 shame of her detection, extricated us from our dilemma by smuggling 

 the old woman away through the house. 



Of course Harriet was exposed to some raillery, and a good deal of 

 questionmg about her future fate, as to which she presei-ved an obsti- 

 nate, but evidently satisfied silence. At the end of three days, how- 

 ever — my readers are, I hope, learned enough in gipsy lore to know 

 that, unless kept secret for three entire days, no prediction can come 



