“Oh!” said Miss Greeby, stepping back, “I am disappointed.”

She had every reason to be after the picturesqueness of the camp in general, and Chaldea in particular, for Mother Cockleshell looked like a threadbare pew-opener, or an almshouse widow who had seen better days.  Apparently she was very old, for her figure had shrivelled up into a diminutive monkey form, and she looked as though a moderately high wind could blow her about like a feather.  Her face was brown and puckered and lined in a most wonderful fashion.  Where a wrinkle could be, there a wrinkle was, and her nose and chin were of the true nutcracker order, as a witch’s should be.  Only her eyes betrayed the powerful vitality that still animated the tiny frame, for these were large and dark, and had in them a piercing look which seemed to gaze not at any one, but through and beyond.  Her figure, dried like that of a mummy, was surprisingly straight for one of her ancient years, and her profuse hair was scarcely touched with the gray of age.  Arrayed in a decent black dress, with a decent black bonnet and a black woollen shawl, the old lady looked intensely respectable.  There was nothing of the picturesque vagrant about her.  Therefore Miss Greeby, and with every reason, was disappointed, and when the queen of the woodland spoke she was still more so, for Mother Cockleshell did not even interlard her English speech with Romany words, as did Chaldea.

“Good day to you, my lady, and to you, sir,” said Mother Cockleshell in a stronger and harsher voice than would have been expected from one of her age and diminished stature.  “I hope I sees you well,” and she dropped a curtsey, just like any village dame who knew her manners.

“Oh!” cried Miss Greeby again.  “You don’t look a bit like a gypsy queen.”

“Ah, my lady, looks ain’t everything.  But I’m a true-bred Romany—­a Stanley of Devonshire.  Gentilla is my name and the tent my home, and I can tell fortunes as no one else on the road can.”

“Avali, and that is true,” put in Chaldea eagerly.  “Gentilla’s a bori chovihani.”

“The child means that I am a great witch, my lady,” said the old dame with another curtsey.  “Though she’s foolish to use Romany words to Gentiles as don’t understand the tongue which the dear Lord spoke in Eden’s garden, as the good Book tells us.”

“In what part of the Bible do you find that?” asked Lambert laughing.

“Oh, my sweet gentleman, it ain’t for the likes of me to say things to the likes of you,” said Mother Cockleshell, getting out of her difficulty very cleverly, “but the dear lady wants her fortune told, don’t she?”

“Why don’t you say dukkerin?”

“I don’t like them wicked words, sir,” answered Mother Cockleshell piously.

“Wicked words,” muttered Chaldea tossing her black locks.  “And them true Romany as was your milk tongue.  No wonder the Gentiles don’t fancy you a true one of the road.  If I were queen of—­”