of asking him questions about her, though he, as I soon found, knew
scarcely anything concerning her and what she was doing, and cared
less; for love of drink had got thoroughly hold of him.

Letters were scarce visitants to him, and I believe he never used to
hear from Wales at all.


V

At the end of the year she came again, and I had about a year of
happiness. I was with her every day, and every day she grew more
necessary to my existence.

It was at this time that I made the acquaintance of Winnie's friend
Rhona Boswell, a charming little Gypsy girl. Graylingham Wood and
Rington Wood, like the entire neighbourhood, were favourite haunts of
a superior kind of Gypsies called Griengroes, that is to say,
horse-dealers. Their business was to buy ponies in Wales and sell
them in the Eastern Counties and the East Midlands. Thus it was that
Winnie had known many of the East Midland Gypsies in Wales. Compared
with Rhona Boswell, who was more like a fairy than a child, Winnie
seemed quite a grave little person. Rhona's limbs were always on the
move, and the movement sprang always from her emotions. Her laugh
seemed to ring through the woods like silver bells, a sound that it
was impossible to mistake for any other. The laughter of most Gypsy
girls is full of music and of charm, and yet Rhona's laughter was a
sound by itself, and it was no doubt this which afterwards when she
grew up attracted my kinsman, Percy Aylwin, towards her. It seemed to
emanate not from her throat merely, but from her entire frame. If one