[The Romany Rye by George Borrow]@TWC D-Link book
The Romany Rye

CHAPTER XI
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Now there are two that knows it--the other is yourself." "Dear me, Ursula, how very strange! I am much obliged to you.

I think I never saw you look so pretty as you do now; but who told you ?" "My mother, Mrs.Herne, told it me one day, brother, when she was in a good humour, which she very seldom was, as no one has a better right to know than yourself, as she hated you mortally: it was one day when you had been asking our company what was the word for a leaf, and nobody could tell you, that she took me aside and told me, for she was in a good humour, and triumphed in seeing you balked.

She told me the word for leaf was patteran, which our people use now for trail, having forgotten the true meaning.

She said that the trail was called patteran, because the gypsies of old were in the habit of making the marks with the leaves and branches of trees, placed in a certain manner.

She said that nobody knew it but herself, who was one of the old sort, and begged me never to tell the word to any one but him I should marry; and to be particularly cautious never to let you know it, whom she hated.


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