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The same may, perhaps, be said of Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘Bird of Passage,’ but the pictures of gipsy life in these and in all other novels are the merest daubs compared with the Kiomi of George Meredith’s story ‘Harry Richmond.’ Not even Borrow and Groome, with all their intimate knowledge of gipsy life, ever painted a more vigorous picture of the Romany chi than this.
'Flick your whip at her, she 's a charitable soul, Judy Bulsted! She knits stockings for the poor. She'd down and kiss the stump of a sailor on a stick o' timber. All the same, she oughtn't to be alone. Pity she hasn't a baby. You and I'll talk it over by-and-by, Harry. Kiomi was spoken of, and Lady Maria Higginson, and then Heriot. 'M-m-m-m rascal! hummed the squire.
My father bent over me. Kiomi had prepared him for what he saw. I quieted his alarm by talking currently and easily. Julia Bulsted had despatched a messenger to inform him of my mysterious disappearance; but he, as his way was, revelling in large conjectures, had half imagined me seized by a gust of passion, and bound for Germany. 'Without my luggage? I laughed.
I was a prisoner, captured by fraud, and with five shillings and a penny still remaining to me for an assurance of my power to enjoy freedom. Osric and Kiomi did not show themselves on the road, they answered none of my shouts. 'She is afraid to look me in the face, I said, keeping my anger on Kiomi.
I was startled to see little Kiomi in Mabel's company. They had met accidentally at the head of the street, and had been friends in childhood, Captain Welsh said, adding: 'She hates men. 'Good reason, when they're beasts, said Kiomi. Amid much weeping of Mabel and old Mrs. Welsh, Kiomi showed as little trouble as the heath when the woods are swept.
I did not listen; I was full of a tempest, owing to two causes: a studious admiration of the smart young prizefighter's person, and wrathful disgust at him for calling Kiomi his wife, and telling her he was prepared to marry her as soon as she played her harp like King David.
I was lying in the air, and she who served for nurse, pillow, parasol, and bank of herbage, had her arms round beneath mine cherishingly, all the fingers outspread and flat on me, just as they had been when I went to sleep. 'Kiomi! 'Now, you be quiet. 'Can I stand up a minute or two? 'No, and you won't talk. I submitted.
Sinfi Lovell was extremely beautiful, whereas Kiomi, I believe, was never very beautiful. But that they are represented as being contemporaries and friends is shown by D'Arcy's mention of Kiomi in Scott's oyster-rooms. But being myself an East Anglian by birth one of my Christian names is St. Edmund, because I was born at Bury St.
'Why, I mean to stay with you, said I. They grinned delightedly, and said I must be back to see them break up camp in the evening. Every two or three minutes Kiomi nudged my elbow and pointed behind, where I saw the women waving their coloured neckerchiefs. Out of sight of our tents we came in view of the tramp. Kiomi said, 'Hide! I dived into a furze dell.
Sleep was no more than the passage through the arch of a canal. Kiomi and I were on the heath before sunrise, jumping gravel-pits, chasing sandpipers, mimicking pewits; it seemed to me I had only just heard the last of Osric's fiddle when yellow colour filled in along the sky over Riversley.
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