The Corner House Girls Among the Gypsies Part 31

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."

"Who want it back?"

"Those two ladies that sold us the basket," explained Tess.

"Are they with this bunch of Gypsies?" asked Sammy in surprise. "I haven't seen them. And I've been here two whole days."

"How did you come to be a Gypsy, Sammy?" asked Dot with much curiosity.

"Why, I--er--Well, I lost my clothes and my money and didn't have much to eat and that big Gypsy saw me on the road and asked me if I wanted to ride. So I came here with him and he let me stay. And n.o.body does a thing to me. I licked one boy," added Sammy with satisfaction, "so the others let me alone."

"But haven't you seen either of those two ladies that sold us the basket?" demanded Tess, beginning to be worried a little.

"Nope. I don't believe they are here."

"But that man says they are here," cried Tess.

"Let's go ask him. I--I won't give that bracelet to anybody else but one of those ladies."

"Crickey!" exclaimed Sammy. "Don't feel so bad about it. Course there is a mistake somehow. These folks are real nice folks. They wouldn't fool you."

The three, Sammy looking very important, went to find Big Jim. He was just as smiling as ever.

"Oh, yes! The little ladies are not to be worried. The women they want will soon come."

"You see?" said Sammy, boldly. "It will be all right. Why, these people treat you _right_. I tell you! You can do just as you please in a Gypsy camp and n.o.body says anything to you."

"See!" exclaimed Tess suddenly. "Are they packing up to leave? Or do they stay here all the time?"

It was now late afternoon. Instead of the supper fires being revived, they were smothered. Men and women had begun loading the heavier vans.

The tents were coming down. Clotheslines stretched between the trees were now being coiled by the children. All manner of rubbish was being thrown into the bushes.

"I don't know if they are moving. I'll ask," said Sammy, somewhat in doubt.

He went to a boy bigger than himself, but who seemed to be friendly.

The little girls waited, staring all about for the two women with whom they had business.

"I don't care," whispered Dot. "If they don't come pretty soon, and these Gypsies are going away from here, we'll just go back home, Tess.

We _can't_ give them the bracelet if we don't see them."

"But we do not want to walk home," her sister said slowly in return.

"And we ought to make Sammy go with us."

"You try to _make_ Sammy do anything!" exclaimed Dot, with scorn.

Their boy friend returned, swaggering as usual. "Well, they are going to move," he said. "But I'm going with them. That boy--he was the one I licked, but he's a good kid--says they are going to a pond where the fishing is great. Wish I had my fishpole."

"But you must come back home with us, Sammy," began Tess gravely.