The story of Babette Author:Ruth McEnery Stuart Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV THE pedigree of Nick's family was somewhat unusual. About twenty-five years before this story begins a certain camp of wandering gypsies had spent ... more »a summer on this coast. Noted for her beauty then as for her ugliness now (for it is the present grandmother of the Nicholas household whom we are describing) was a bonny gypsy maiden of this encampment, and many visitors came from Pass Christian, Bay St. Louis, Biloxi, Mississippi City, and even from New Orleans, ostensibly to have their fortunes told, but really to see the beautiful gypsy girl. Of course she had many lovers among the humble shore-folk, and it was not strange that she should have chosen for her husband a handsome trifling son of a Sicilian fisherman. The groom attached himself for a time to the wandering gypsies, but finally he and his Arabian wife drifted back to his father's roof,bringing with them a little dark-eyed daughter—the present Mrs. Nicholas. We now begin to see why the little woman was silenced by her husband's reference to her " raising," as a childhood spent in a gypsy camp supplied no memories of such luxuries as glass windows. She had risen in the social scale to the point of familiarity with hinged doors and plastered walls only through the light of " dago " civilization. To go back once more: The old gypsy's husband had died while his daughter was yet an infant; and while his people wanted his child, they declared that her mother, a "gypsy tramp," was none of theirs. She must provide for herself. And so continuing, for her child's sake, to live with her husband's people, she contrived, by various little industries, to contribute to the family support. Sometimes, in those old days, carrying a basket dago fashion, she had peddled fish or crabs, or such game as she could ...« less