He was grinding away, and touched his hat respectfully as I approached.
Now the reader is possibly aware that of all difficult tasks one of the most difficult is to induce a disguised Gipsy, or even a professed one, to utter a word of Rommany to a man not of the blood.

Of this all writers on the subject have much to say.

For it is so black-swanish, I may say so centenarian in unfrequency, for a gentleman to speak Gipsy, that the Zingaro thus addressed is at once subjected to morbid astonishment and nervous fears, which under his calm countenance and infinite "cheek" are indeed concealed, but which speedily reduce themselves to two categories.
1.

That Rommany is the language of men at war with the law; therefore you are either a detective who has acquired it for no healthy purpose, or else you yourself are a scamp so high up in the profession that it behooves all the little fish of outlawdom to beware of you.
2.

Or else--what is quite as much to be dreaded--you are indeed a gentleman, but one seeking to make fun of him, and possibly able to do so.