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And before her fancy passed the countless generations of the stupid lowly, the Billys and Saxons, the Berts and Marys, the Toms and Sarahs. And to what end? The salt vats and the grave. Mercedes was a hard and wicked woman, but Mercedes was right. The stupid must always be under the heels of the clever ones.
The quick CLOP-CLOP of a four horse team and a clatter of tin billys and pannikins as Lady Bridget presently discovered slung upon the back rail of an American buggy sounded up the street. 'There's the Boss, said Moongarr Bill. 'Look alive, with that packhorse, Wombo.
"An' then," says he, "I don't want my two billy-goats harnessed up with nobody else's two billys to make fo' billys." "But," says the teacher, "suppose I was to harness up yo' two goats with Tom Deems's two, there'd be fo' goats, I reckon, whether you wanted 'em there or not." "No they wouldn't," says Sonny. "They wouldn't be but two.
"Where did you get that hat, you old thief?" asked the magistrate, without any politeness to him who ruled the land before white men broke into the country. Some in authority are polite to those they dispossess; the Prussians, for instance, to the miserable King Billys who strut about the empire. But the Anglo-Saxon only respects himself, and even that to a limited extent, in new conquests.
A matter of business called him away from the house early in the morning; but he told his wife that he surely would be on hand for Miss Winthrop's call at half-past three o'clock that afternoon. "Yes, do," Billy had urged. "I think she's lovely, but you know her so much better than I do that I want you here. Besides, you needn't think I'm going to show her all those Billys of yours.
In fact, I have painted her so often that she once declared it was only the tilt of her chin and the turn of her head that I loved to paint," he said merrily, enjoying Billy's pretty confusion, and not realizing that his words really distressed her. "I have a whole studio full of 'Billys' at home." "Oh, have you, really?" questioned Miss Winthrop, eagerly. "Then mayn't I see them?
"All for ever," said Billy under her breath, and she looked at her father with a glance of such helpless fear that he dropped his eyes, for a keen compassion caused him almost physical pain. "Well, well," he rejoined, "when there are as many Billys as you have before you, there cannot fail to be many pleasant things to take along."
Says I, 'Thats just the way Scotch Billy talked five years ago. 'Wall, wall, says he, 'I ain't one of yer Scotch Billys; I know when fur tu stop. But ye won't du it; ye'll cave under by and by. Them air kind that brag that they know jest when fur tu stop is generally the very ones that go under afore they know it, I thinked tu myself as he staggered off.
As will be readily supposed, Gypsy's name was not her original one; though it might have been, for there have been actual Billys and Sallys, who began and ended Billys and Sallys only. Gypsy's real name was an uncouth one Jemima. It was partly for this reason, partly for its singular appropriateness, that her nickname had entirely transplanted the lawful and ugly one.
There were haversack straps to be replaced, laces mended, axes sharpened, "Billys" polished and made to shine like new tin, and a hundred and one things to be done.
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