You
shuts the door in the poor tinker-woman's face; you gives the words of
warning to the police.
"Five more years--it was five more, wasn't it, my daughter?--Sometimes I
fancies I makes a mistake and overcounts. But, _he'll_ know. Christian,
my dear! Christian, I say!"
"Sit down, Mother, sit down," said the gipsy girl; and the old woman sat
down, but she went on muttering,--
"I will speak! What has they to do, I say, to ask me where he has gone
to? A fine place for the fine gentleman they made of him. What has such
as them to say to it, if I couldn't keep him when I got him--that they
comes to taunt me and my grey hairs?"
She wrung her grey locks with a passionate gesture as she spoke, and
then dropped her elbows on her knees and her head upon her hands.
The clergywoman had been standing very still, with her two white hands
folded before her, and her eyes, that had dark circles round them which
made them look large, fixed upon the tinker-mother, as she muttered;
but when she ceased muttering the clergywoman unlocked her hands, and
with one movement took off her hat. Her hair was smoothly drawn over the
roundness of her head, and gathered in a knot at the back of her neck,
and the brown of it was all streaked with grey.
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