A vicious little devil flashed out of the old woman’s eyes, and her respectable looks changed on the instant.  “Tol yer chib, or I’ll heat the bones of you with the fires of Bongo Tem,” she screamed furiously, and in a mixture of her mother-tongue and English.  “Ja pukenus, slut of the gutter,” she shook her fist, and Chaldea, with an insulting laugh, moved away.  “Bengis your see!  Bengis your see!  And that, my generous lady,” she added, turning round with a sudden resumption of her fawning respectability, “means ‘the devil in your heart,’ which I spoke witchly-like to the child.  Ah, but she’s a bad one.”

Miss Greeby laughed outright.  “This is more like the real thing.”

“Poor Chaldea,” said Lambert.  “You’re too hard on her, mother.”

“And you, my sweet gentleman, ain’t hard enough.  She’ll sell you, and get Kara to put the knife between your ribs.”

“Why should he?  I’m not in love with the girl.”

“The tree don’t care for the ivy, but the ivy loves the tree,” said Mother Cockleshell darkly.  “You’re a good and kind gentleman, and I don’t want to see that slut pick your bones.”

“So I think,” whispered Miss Greeby in his ear.  “You play with fire.”

“Aye, my good lady,” said Mother Cockleshell, catching the whisper—­she had the hearing of a cat.  “With the fire of Bongo Tern, the which you may call The Crooked Land,” and she pointed significantly downward.

“Hell, do you mean?” asked Miss Greeby in her bluff way.

“The Crooked Land we Romany calls it,” insisted the old woman.  “And the child will go there, for her witchly doings.”

“She’s too good-looking to lose as a model, at all events,” said Lambert, hitching his shoulders.  “I shall leave you to have your fortune told, Clara, and follow Chaldea to pacify her.”

As he went toward the centre of the camp, Miss Greeby took a hesitating step as though to follow him.  In her opinion Chaldea was much too good-looking, let alone clever, for Lambert to deal with alone.  Gentilla Stanley saw the look on the hard face and the softening of the hard eyes as the cheeks grew rosy red.  From this emotion she drew her conclusions, and she chuckled to think of how true a fortune she could tell the visitor on these premises.  Mother Cockleshell’s fortune-telling was not entirely fraudulent, but when her clairvoyance was not in working order she made use of character-reading with good results.

“Won’t the Gorgios lady have her fortune told?” she asked in wheedling tones.  “Cross Mother Cockleshell’s hand with silver and she’ll tell the coming years truly.”

“Why do they call you Mother Cockleshell?” demanded Miss Greeby, waiving the question of fortune-telling for the time being.

“Bless your wisdom, it was them fishermen at Grimsby who did so.  I walked the beaches for years and told charms and gave witchly spells for fine weather.  Gentilla Stanley am I called, but Mother Cockleshell was their name for me.  But the fortune, my tender Gentile—­”