ON A PARTRIDGE BEAT 2 
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 
