ON A PARTRIDGE BEAT 21 



more, I think, because they acted as a lever in 

 dealing with the regular farm-hands. He would 

 allow about two men, three women, and the usual 

 cluster of children to camp on the farm, and gave 

 them work or not, as he chose. Other things, I 

 knew only too well, they took. He gave out that 

 no unauthorized gipsy was to set foot on his land, 

 by which he meant well ; but I never could convince 

 him that if the old proverb about birds of a feather 

 applied to anything that could not fly, it applied to 

 gipsies. So I was continually harassed by an assort- 

 ment of gipsies, and, though the farmer talked a 

 good deal, the brunt of dealing with them fell to my 

 lot, much to my disgust. I would rather paunch 

 a hundred mangled rabbits than touch a gipsy with 

 the tip of a finger. The distant whiff of a gipsy 

 is enough, and lodges in one's gullet with more 

 persistency than fresh paint. 



Gipsies, however, are not so renowned for their 

 pluck, though, judging by the produce of their 

 mouths, one might imagine that they possessed the 

 blood of lions. Had I received half the good 

 things promised me by gipsies, I should have died 

 a thousand terrible deaths. I remember a burly- 

 looking gipsy who was so impudent as to come into 

 a harvest-field just before the finish of cutting, and 

 with him he actually had the cheek to bring a 

 lurcher. I went up to him, and, in the polite but 

 firm manner which I have ever made it a rule to 



