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

35 страница из 70

I had now arrived again at the High Beech and the “Robin Hood,” and found myself jostled, crushed, and crammed by a tremendous crowd of people. Publicans, fops, sharps, and flats, mounted upon all manner of steeds, varying in style and breed from “Bend Or” to the poor broken-kneed pony owned by a gipsy, were coming cantering, galloping, and trotting to the scene. “What is all this about?” I said to “Jack Poshcard,” my old friend the gipsy, who stood at my elbow. “Don’t you know, governor?” said he. “We are going to have a deer turned out directly, and these are the huntsmen, and pretty huntsmen they are, for I could run faster myself.” While the preparations were going on my friend Jack said to me, “Governor, if you will come up again some Sunday I will see that you have a fine hare to take back with you.” While we were talking a hare showed its white tail among the bushes on the side of the hill, and I fancied I heard Jack smacking his lips at this treat in store for him.

There was a tremendous move forward taking place. The deer was turned out, and these London quasi-huntsmen were after it as fast as their steeds could carry them, dressed in fashions, colours, and shapes, varying from that of a gipsy to a dandy cockney, holloaing and bellowing like a lot of madcaps from Bedlam and Broadmoor, after a creature they could neither catch, kill, cook, nor eat.