Unless the Gipsies kept their laws sacred they
couldn't hold together at all. They're iron and steel, the Gipsy laws.
They can't be stretched, and they can't be twisted. They can only be
broken, and then there's no argument about it. When they are broken,
there's the penalty, and it has to be met."
Ingolby stopped knitting for a moment. "You don't mean that a penalty
could touch you?" he asked incredulously.
"Not for breaking a law," she answered. "I'm not a Gipsy any more. I gave
my word about that, and so did my father; and I'll keep it."
"Please tell me about it," he urged. "Tell me, so that I can understand
everything."
There was a long pause in which Ingolby inspected carefully with his
fingers the work which he was doing, but at last Fleda's voice came to
him, as it seemed out of a great distance, while she began to tell of her
first memories: of her life by the Danube and the Black Sea, and drew for
him a picture, so far as she could recall it, of her marriage with
Jethro, and of the years that followed. Now and again as she told of some
sordid things, of the challenge of the law in different countries, of the
coarse vagabondage of the Gipsy people in this place or in that, and some
indignity put upon her father, or some humiliating incident, her voice
became low and pained.
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