II

‘Can you reckon him up, brother?’ said Sinfi, taking my meerschaum from my lips to refill it for me, as she was fond of doing.

‘No.’

‘Nor I nuther,’ said Sinfi.  ‘Nor I can’t pen his dukkerin’ nuther, though often’s the time I’ve tried it.’

During this time the two friends seemed to have finished their colloquy upon ‘composition’; for they both came up to us.  Sinfi rose; I sat still on the grass, smoking my pipe, listening to the chatter of the water as it rushed over the rocks.  By this time my curiosity in the younger man had died away.  My mind was occupied with the dream-picture of a little blue-eyed girl struggling with a wounded heron.  I had noticed, however, that he of the piercing eyes did not look at me again, having entirely exhausted at a glance such interest as I had momentarily afforded him; while his companion seemed quite unconscious of my presence as he stood there, his large, full, deep, brown eyes gazing apparently at something over my head, a long way off.  Also I had noticed that ‘Visionary’ was stamped upon this man’s every feature—­that he seemed an inspired baby of forty, talking there to his companion and to Sinfi, the sun falling upon his long, brown, curly hair, mixed with grey, which fell from beneath his hat, and floated around his collar like a mane.

When my reverie had passed, I found the artists trying to arrange with Sinfi to give an open-air sitting to one of them, the man addressed as Wilderspin.  Sinfi seemed willing enough to come to terms; but I saw her look round at me as if saying to herself, ’What am I to do with you?’

‘I should like for my brother to sit too,’ I heard her say.

‘Surely!’ said Wilderspin.  ’Your brother would be a great gain to my picture.’

Sinfi then came to me, and said that the painter wanted me to sit to him.

‘But,’ said I in an undertone, ’the Gorgios will certainly find out that I am no Romany.’

‘Not they,’ said Sinfi, ’the Gorgios is sich fools.  Why, bless you, a Gorgio ain’t got eves and ears like a Romany.  You don’t suppose as a Gorgio can hear or see or smell like a Romany can?’

’But you forget, Sinfi, that I am a Gorgio, and there are not many Romanies can boast of better senses than your brother Hal.’

‘Dordi!’ said Sinfi, ’that’s jist like your mock-modesty.  Your great-grandmother wur a Romany, and it’s my belief that if you only went back fur enough, you’d find you had jist as good Romany blood in your veins as I have, and my daddy is a duke, you know, a real, reg’lar, out-an’-out Romany duke.’

‘I’m afraid you flatter me, sister,’ I replied.  ’However, let’s try the Gorgios;’ and I got up and walked with her close to the two sketchers.

Wilderspin was on the point of engaging me, when the other man, without troubling to look at me again, said: 

‘He’s no more a Romany than I am.’