"Speak low, daddy," said she, "and tell me all about my boy, my
beautiful boy."
The old gypsy told Mrs. Meyrick the wrongs of Reginald that had driven
him to this; and she fell to crying and lamenting, and inveighing
against all concerned--schoolmaster, Sir Charles, Lady Bassett, and the
gypsies. Them the old man defended, and assured her the young gentleman
was in good hands, and would be made a little king of, all the more
that Keturah had told them there was gypsy blood in him.
Mrs. Meyrick resented this loudly, and then returned to her grief.
When she had indulged that grief for a long time, she felt a natural
desire to quarrel with somebody, and she actually put on her bonnet,
and was going to the Hall to give Lady Bassett a bit of her mind, for
she said that lady had never shown the feelings of a woman for the
lamb.
But she thought better of it, and postponed the visit. "I shall be sure
to say something I shall be sorry for after," said she; so she sat down
again, and returned to her grief.
Nor could she ever shake it off as thoroughly as she had done any other
trouble in her life.
Months after this, she said to Sally, with a burst of tears, "I never
nursed but one, and I shall never nurse another; and now he is across
the seas."
She kept the old gypsy at the farm; or, to speak more correctly, she
made the farm his headquarters.
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