Part 10 (1/2)

Then she grew very silent. It made her terribly sad to think of the two tender little creatures in such hands; suddenly Toby, who had been quietly reposing at her feet, jumped up and gave a short sharp bark.

”What is it, Toby?” said Barbara, patting him.

Toby grunted a little, and then lay down again. The reason of his barking was that he had just discovered why old Barbara had brought him away on this journey. It was that _he_ was to find the children--he quite understood all about it now, and wished to say so.

CHAPTER VII.

DIANA'S PROMISE.

”Oh, who can say But that this dream may yet come true?”

THOMAS MOORE.

For some days the gipsy caravan had been making its way along a very lonely road; they had come across no towns at all and no large villages.

They got over more ground now, for there was less temptation to linger.

The truth was that Mick and the other heads of the party had in some way got news that the great fair to which they were bound was to begin sooner than they expected, and unless they hurried on they might not be there in time to take up a good position among the many strays and waifs of their kind always to be found at such places. There were ever so many ways in which they expected to turn a number of honest or dishonest ”pennies” at this same fair. It was one of their regular harvest times.

Mick and his friends always managed to do something in the way of horse-dealing on such occasions, and Diana, who was the best-looking of the younger gipsy-women, was thoroughly up to all the tricks of fortune-telling. Her cold haughty manners had often more success than the wheedling flatteries of the others. She _looked_ as if she were quite above trickery of any kind, and no doubt the things she told were not altogether nonsense or falsehood. For she had learned to be wonderfully quick in reading the characters of those who applied to her, even in divining the thoughts and anxieties in their minds. And besides these resources the gipsies had a good show of baskets and brooms of their own manufacture to dispose of; added to which this year a hard bargain was to be driven with Signor Fribusco, the owner of the travelling circus, for the ”two lovely orphans,” whose description had already been given to him by some of the gipsy's confidantes, to whom Mick had sent word, knowing them to be in the Signor's neighbourhood.

Some of this Tim had found out by dint of listening to bits of conversation when he was supposed to be asleep. He grew more and more afraid as the days pa.s.sed on and no chance of escape offered, for various things began to make him fear they were not very far from the town they were bound to. For one thing Mick's wife and Diana began to pay more attention to the two children's appearance. Their fair hair was brushed and combed every day, and their delicate skin was carefully washed with something that restored it almost to its natural colour; all of which had an ominous meaning for Tim.

”Diana is very kind now,” said Pamela, one day when she and Duke had been allowed for once to run about a little with the other children.

There certainly seemed small risk in their doing so, for the gipsies had encamped for the night on a desolate moor, where no human habitations of any kind were in sight, no pa.s.sers-by to be feared.

”Yes,” said Duke, who had hold of Tim's other hand; ”she makes us nice and clean and tidy.”

”And she's making a gown for me,” said Pamela. ”It's made of my own white gown, but she's sewing rows of red and blue and gold round it. And she says if Duke is good she's going to make him a red jacket. Isn't it kind of her? Do you know, Tim,” she went on in a lower tone, ”us has been thinking that perhaps they're meaning to take us home soon, and that they want us to look very nice. Do you think it's that, Tim? I'm sure Grandpapa and Grandmamma would be so pleased they'd give them lots of money if they took us back.”

”I'm afeared it's not taking you home they're thinking of, missie,” said Tim grimly.

”Then why don't you help us to run away, Tim?” said Duke impatiently.

”I've asked you and asked you. I'm sure us might run away _now_--there's n.o.body looking after us.”

”And where would we run to?” said Tim. ”There's not a mortal house nor a tree even to be seen. Run away, indeed! We'd be cotched--cotched afore we'd run half a mile. And yet it's the very first time you've bin let run about a little. I'm ready enough to run away, but no good running away to be cotched again--it 'ud be worser nor ever.”

”Then is us never to run away? Is us never to see Grandpapa, and Grandmamma, and Dymock, and Biddy, and Nurse, and Toby--oh, dear Toby!--and the garden, and the nursery, and our little beds, again?”

said both children, speaking together and helping each other with the list of their lost blessings, and in the end bursting into tears.

Tim looked at them ruefully.

”Don't 'ee now, don't 'ee, master and missy,” he said anxiously.

”They'll see you've been crying, and they'll not let you out any more.”

Duke and Pamela tried to choke down their sobs.

”Will you try to help us to run away, then, if us is very good--Tim, dear Tim, oh do,” they said piteously. And Tim tried to soothe them with kind words and promises to do his best.

Poor fellow, he was only too ready to run away for his own sake as well as theirs. The feelings which had been stirred and reawakened by the children's companions.h.i.+p had not slumbered again; on the contrary, they seemed to gain strength every day. Every day he felt more and more loathing for his present life; every night when he tumbled into the ragged heap which was called his bed he said to himself more strongly that he _must_ get away--he could not bear to think that his mother, looking down on him from the heaven in which she had taught him to believe, could see him the dirty careless gipsy boy he had become. It was wonderful how her words came back to him now--how every time he could manage to get a little talk with his new friends their gentle voices and pretty ways seemed to revive old memories that he had not known were there. And the thought of rescuing them,--of succeeding in taking them safe back to their own home,--opened a new door for him.