UNCLE IN ENGLAND. 57 



The story of the poor woman can be told in a 

 few words. When very young, only sixteen^ she 

 was tempted to leave her father's cottage, and to 

 go off secretly with an idle wandering man, be- 

 longing to a party of gipsies, to whom she was 

 afterwards married. Her husband had lately 

 grown very unkind, and last week he forsook her 

 entirely. She heard that he had come to the 

 forest of Deane, and without waiting to make 

 further inquiry, she took her little son, and set 

 off in search of her wicked husband. Her pa- 

 rents are dead, and she has no friends but the 

 gipsies, among whom she has lived for several 

 years ;she says they are bad people indeed, and 

 to leave her boy with them would be his ruin. 

 Her only anxiety is about him ; were she sure 

 of his being in safe hands, she says she has no 

 longer any wish to live. 



The housekeeper inquired the name of the 

 child ; but his mother acknowledged that he had 

 never been christened, as the people she was 

 with did not attend to those kind of things. He 

 has generally been called Quick-finger amongst 

 them, because he was so clever at little thefts ; 

 but she had intended, she says, to have had him 

 baptized, and to call him Charley, after her own 

 father. She then fell into an agony of grief at 

 the remembrance of her father and the time when 

 she was happy and innocent, as well as at the 

 wickedness her poor little boy has already been 

 taught, 



