The Disowned by Edward George Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Fiction, Classics (Hardcover)

The first sound which invaded the silence came from the light, quick footsteps of a person whose youth betrayed itself in its elastic and unmeasured tread, and in the gay, free carol which broke out by fits and starts upon the gentle stillness of the evening. "Under the greenwood tree Who loves to lie with me, And tune his merry note Unto the sweet bird's throat, Come hither, come hither, come hither, Here shall he see No enemy But winter and rough weather.'" Relieved from his former fear, but with increased curiosity at this quotation, which was half said, half sung, in a tone which seemed to evince a hearty relish for the sense of the words, the youth replied, -- "Truly, I did not expect to meet among the travelers of this wild country with so well-stored a memory. And, indeed, I should have imagined that the only persons to whom your verses could exactly have applied were those honorable vagrants from the Nile whom in vulgar language we term gypsies."