Читать книгу I've been a Gipsying. Rambles among our Gipsies and their children in their tents and vans онлайн

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I had now begun to mount the hills of Epping Forest with a different phase of human life before and on either side of me. On the grass were four gipsies and “Rodneys,” with dogs lying beside them. In all appearance they had neither worked nor washed in their lives, and, as they said, they were “too old to learn how now.” I had not got much further before I was accosted by a gipsy girl, apparently about fourteen, with a baby nearly nude, and covered with dirt and filth, draining the nourishment of life from its dirty mother, who exposed her breasts without the least shame. She saw that I noticed her, and without a moment’s hesitation asked me if I wanted my “fortune told.” She said that she would tell it to me for a trifle. Her father—to all appearance—and brothers stood by, and acting either upon her own instincts or a wink from them, she said, “I see you know it better than I can tell you;” and away she sidled off to attend to her cocoa-nuts, saying, after a round of swearing at four gipsy children, “I hope you will give my baby a penny; that’s a good gentleman, do, and God will bless you for it.”