sailors, who would have robbed and stripped the owners. "Let me get
down," she exclaimed simply, and so saying she got down, and fought with
them both until they turned round and ran away. On another occasion,
while combing out her long hair beneath a hedge, she was insulted by a
jockey. Starting up, though her hair was unbound, she promptly gave him
what he characterised as "a most confounded whopping," and "the only
drubbing I ever had in my life; and lor, how with her right hand she
fibbed me while she held me round the neck with her left arm! I was soon
glad to beg her pardon on my knees, which she gave me in a moment when
she saw me in that condition, being the most placable creature in the
world, and not only her pardon but one of the hairs which I longed for,
which I put through a shilling for purposes of pleasant deception at
country fairs." The hair with the shilling attached to it eventually
became a treasured possession of the Romany Rye.

Rude as some of these characteristics may appear, we are left in no
manner of doubt as to the essential nobility, befitting her name, of Miss
Berners--her character and bearing. Her carriage, especially of the neck
and shoulders, reminded the postilion of the Marchioness of ---; and he
took her unhesitatingly for a young lady of high rank and distinction,
who had temporarily left her friends, and was travelling in the direction
of Gretna Green with the fortunate Rye. The word-master, in disabusing
the postilion of this idea, gave utterance to the conviction that he
might search the world in vain for a nature more heroic and devoted.

Like a lady of the highest quality, the beauteous queen of the dingle was
subject to the vapours and to occasional fits of inexplicable weeping;
but as a general rule she shared with Borrow himself a proud contempt for
that mad puppy gentility, and her predominant characteristic, like his,
was the simplicity that puzzled by reason of its directness and its