James Matthew Barrie - The Complete Works of J. M. Barrie (With Illustrations)

“I mean, where do you belong?” he said.

“Wanderers,” Babbie answered, still misunderstanding him, “belong to nowhere in particular.”

“I am only asking you if you ever go to church?”

“Oh, that is what you mean. Yes, I go often.”

“What church?”

“You promised not to ask questions.”

“I only mean what denomination do you belong to?”

“Oh, the—the——Is there an English church denomination?”

Gavin groaned.

“Well, that is my denomination,” said Babbie, cheerfully. “Some day, though, I am coming to hear you preach. I should like to see how you look in your gown.”

“We don’t wear gowns.”

“What a shame! But I am coming, nevertheless. I used to like going to church in Edinburgh.”

“You have lived in Edinburgh?”

“We gypsies have lived everywhere,” Babbie said, lightly, though she was annoyed at having mentioned Edinburgh.

“But all gypsies don’t speak as you do,” said Gavin, puzzled again. “I don’t understand you.”

“Of course you dinna,” replied Babbie, in broad Scotch. “Maybe, if you did, you would think that it’s mair imprudent in me to stand here cracking clavers wi’ the minister than for the minister to waste his time cracking wi’ me.”

“Then why do it?”

“Because——Oh, because prudence and I always take different roads.”

“Tell me who you are, Babbie,” the minister entreated; “at least, tell me where your encampment is.”

“You have warned me against imprudence,” she said.

“I want,” Gavin continued, earnestly, “to know your people, your father and mother.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he answered, stoutly, “I like their daughter.”

At that Babbie’s fingers played on one of the pans, and, for the moment, there was no more badinage in her.

“You are a good man,” she said, abruptly; “but you will never know my parents.”

“Are they dead?”

“They may be; I cannot tell.”

“This is all incomprehensible to me.”

“I suppose it is. I never asked any one to understand me.”

“Perhaps not,” said Gavin, excitedly; “but the time has come when I must know everything of you that is to be known.”

Babbie receded from him in quick fear.

“You must never speak to me in that way again,” she said, in a warning voice.

“In what way?”

Gavin knew what way very well, but he thirsted to hear in her words what his own had implied. She did not choose to oblige him, however.

“You never will understand me,” she said. “I daresay I might be more like other people now, if—if I had been brought up differently. Not,” she added, passionately, “that I want to be like others. Do you never feel, when you have been living a humdrum life for months, that you must break out of it, or go crazy?”

Her vehemence alarmed Gavin, who hastened to reply—

“My life is not humdrum. It is full of excitement, anxieties, pleasures, and I am too fond of the pleasures. Perhaps it is because I have more of the luxuries of life than you that I am so content with my lot.”

“Why, what can you know of luxuries?”

“I have eighty pounds a year.”

Babbie laughed. “Are ministers so poor?” she asked, calling back her gravity.

“It is a considerable sum,” said Gavin, a little hurt, for it was the first time he had ever heard any one speak disrespectfully of eighty pounds.

The Egyptian looked down at her ring, and smiled.

“I shall always remember your saying that,” she told him, “after we have quarrelled.”

“We shall not quarrel,” said Gavin, decidedly.

“Oh, yes, we shall.”

“We might have done so once, but we know each other too well now.”

“That is why we are to quarrel.”

“About what?” said the minister. “I have not blamed you for deriding my stipend, though how it can seem small in the eyes of a gypsy——”

“Who can afford,” broke in Babbie, “to give Nanny seven shillings a week?”

“True,” Gavin said, uncomfortably, while the Egyptian again toyed with her ring. She was too impulsive to be reticent except now and then, and suddenly she said, “You have looked at this ring before now. Do you know that if you had it on your finger you would be more worth robbing than with eighty pounds in each of your pockets?”

“Where did you get it?” demanded Gavin, fiercely.

“I am sorry I told you that,” the gypsy said, regretfully.

“Tell me how you got it,” Gavin insisted, his face now hard.

“Now, you see, we are quarrelling.”

“I must know.”

“Must know! You forget yourself,” she said haughtily.

“No, but I have forgotten myself too long. Where did you get that ring?”

“Good afternoon to you,” said the Egyptian, lifting her pans.

“It is not good afternoon,” he cried, detaining her. “It is good-bye for ever, unless you answer me.”

“As you please,” she said. “I will not tell you where I got my ring. It is no affair of yours.”

“Yes, Babbie, it is.”

She was not, perhaps, greatly grieved to hear him say so, for she made no answer.

“You are no gypsy,” he continued, suspiciously.

“Perhaps not,” she answered, again taking the pans.

“This dress is but a disguise.”

“It may be. Why don’t you go away and leave me?”

“I am going,” he replied, wildly. “I will have no more to do with you. Formerly I pitied you, but——”

He could not have used a word more calculated to rouse the Egyptian’s ire, and she walked away with her head erect. Only once did she look back, and it was to say—

“This is prudence—now.”

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