The magic of the past always had a charm for me. I had
learned to know the lines, from that which winds along at the base of
the thumb-ball and if clear means health and long life, to that which
crosses close to the fingers and indicates the course of love, and had
traced them on many a delicate palm. So that the 'gips' could tell me
nothing new.
The women are the hardiest in the country; they simply ignore the
weather. Even the hedgers and ditchers and the sturdiest labourers
choose the lee side of the hedge when they pause to eat their luncheons;
but the 'gips' do not trouble to seek such shelter. Passing over the
hills one winter's day, when the Downs looked all alike, being covered
with snow, I came across a 'gip' family sitting on the ground in a lane,
old and young exposed to the blast. In that there was nothing
remarkable, but I recollect it because the young mother, handsome in the
style of her race, had her neck and brown bust quite bare, and the white
snowflakes drove thickly aslant upon her. Their complexion looks more
dusky in winter, so that the contrast of the colours made me wish for an
artist to paint it. And he might have put the grey embers of a fire gone
out, and the twisted stem of a hawthorn bush with red haws above.
A mile beyond the gipsy tents we entered among the copses: scattered ash
plantations, and hazel thickets with narrow green tracks between.
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