"Oh!" cried Miss Greeby again. "You don't look a bit like a gypsy queen."

"Ah, my lady, looks ain't everything. But I'm a true-bred Romany--a
Stanley of Devonshire. Gentilla is my name and the tent my home, and I
can tell fortunes as no one else on the road can."

"Avali, and that is true," put in Chaldea eagerly. "Gentilla's a bori
chovihani."

"The child means that I am a great witch, my lady," said the old dame
with another curtsey. "Though she's foolish to use Romany words to
Gentiles as don't understand the tongue which the dear Lord spoke in
Eden's garden, as the good Book tells us."

"In what part of the Bible do you find that?" asked Lambert laughing.

"Oh, my sweet gentleman, it ain't for the likes of me to say things to
the likes of you," said Mother Cockleshell, getting out of her
difficulty very cleverly, "but the dear lady wants her fortune told,
don't she?"

"Why don't you say dukkerin?"

"I don't like them wicked words, sir," answered Mother Cockleshell
piously.

"Wicked words," muttered Chaldea tossing her black locks. "And them true
Romany as was your milk tongue. No wonder the Gentiles don't fancy you a
true one of the road. If I were queen of--"