Part 31 (1/2)
The children ran away from them. Perhaps they had been ordered to by the older Gypsies. By and by Tess, at least, grew somewhat worried when they did not find either of the women who had sold them the yellow and green basket. Dot, secretly, hoped the two in question had gone away.
Suddenly, however, the two Kenway girls came face to face with somebody they did know. But so astonished were they by this discovery that for a long minute neither could believe her eyes!
”Sammy Pinkney!” gasped Tess at last.
”It--ain't--_never_!” murmured the smaller girl.
The figure which had tried to dodge around the end of a motor van to escape observation looked nothing at all like the Sammy Pinkney the Kenway girls had formerly known. Never in their experience of Sammy--not even when he had slipped down the chimney at the old Corner House and landed on the hearth, a very sooty Santa Claus--had the boy looked so disgracefully ragged and dirty.
”Well, what's the matter with me?” he demanded defiantly.
”Why--why there looks to be most _every_thing the matter with you, Sammy Pinkney,” declared Tess, with disgust. ”What _do_ you s'pose your mother would say to you?”
”I ain't going home to find out,” said Sammy.
”And--and your pants are all tored,” gasped Dot.
”Oh, that happened long ago,” said Sammy, quite as airy as the trousers. ”And I'm having the time of my life here. n.o.body sends me errands, or makes me--er--weed beet beds! So there! I can do just as I please.”
”You look as though you had, Sammy,” was Tess's critical speech. ”I guess your mother wouldn't want you home looking the way you do.”
”I look well enough,” he declared defiantly. ”And don't you tell where I am. Will you?”
”But, Sammy!” exclaimed Dot, ”you ran away to be a pirate.”
”What if I did?”
”But you can't be a pirate here.”
”I can be a Gypsy. And that's lots more fun. If I joined a pirate crew I couldn't get to be captain right away of course, so I would have to mind somebody. Here I don't have to mind anybody at all.”
”Well, I never!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Tess Kenway.
”Well, I never!” repeated Dot, with similar emphasis.
”Say, what are you kids here for?” demanded Sammy, with an attempt to turn the conversation from his own evident failings.
”Oh, we were brought here on a visit,” Tess returned rather haughtily.
”Huh! You _was_? Who you visiting? Is Aggie with you? Or Neale?” and he looked around suddenly as though choosing a way of escape.
”We are here all alone,” said Dot rea.s.suringly. ”You needn't be afraid, Sammy.”
”Who's afraid?” he said gruffly.
”You would be if Neale was with us, for Neale would make you go home,”
said the smallest Kenway girl.
”But who brought you? What you here for? Oh! That old bracelet I bet!”
”Yes,” sighed Dot. ”They want it back.”