"Us" Part 10

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 companionship 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.

"Maybe," said Tim to himself, "the old gentleman and lady'd take me on as a stable-boy or such like if the little master and missie'd speak a word for me, as I'm sure they would. And I'm right down sure I'd try to do my best--anything to get away from this life."

Of course he could have got away by himself at any time much more easily than with the children. But till now, as he had told them, he had not cared to try it, for where had he to run to? And, besides, it was only since Duke and Pamela had been with the gipsies that the wish to return to a better kind of life had grown so very strong.

He sighed heavily as he stood on the desolate moor with his two little companions, for he felt what he would not say to them, how terribly difficult their escape would be.

Suddenly Pamela tugged at his arm.

"What is that shining down there, Tim?" she said, pointing over the moor, which sloped downwards at one side. "Is it a river?"

Tim looked where she directed, and his face brightened a little.

"'Tis the ca.n.a.l, missie," he said. "It comes past Monkhaven, and goes--I don't rightly know where to. Maybe to that place we're going to, where the fair's to be. I once went a bit of a way on a ca.n.a.l--that was afore I was with Mick and his lot. There was a boy and his mother as was very good to me. I wish I could see them again, I do."

"But what _is_ a ca.n.a.l, Tim," said Pamela. "Us has never seen one, and that down there looks like a silver thread--it shines like water."

"So it is water, missie--a ca.n.a.l's a sort of a river, only it goes along always quite straight. It doesn't go bending in and out like a real river, sometimes bigger and sometimes littler like."

"And how did you go on it," asked Duke. "And the boy and his mother? You couldn't walk on it if it was water--n.o.body can except Jesus in the big Bible at home. _He_ walked on the top of the water."

"Did he really?" said Tim, opening his eyes. "I've heerd tell on him. He was very good to poor folk and such like, wasn't he? Mother telled me about him, tho' I thought I'd forgotten all she'd told me. But I remember the name now as you says it. And what did he walk on the top o'

the water for, master?"

Duke looked a little puzzled.

"I don't quite remember, but I think it was to help some poor men when the sea was rough."

"No, no," said Pamela; "_that_ was the time he felled asleep, and they woked him up to make the storm go away."

"I'm sure there was a storm the time he was walking on the water, too,"

said Duke; "there's the picture of it. When us goes in, sister, us'll get Grandmamma's picture-Bible and look"--but suddenly his voice fell, his eager expression faded. In the interest of the little discussion he had forgotten where they were, how far away from Grandmamma and her picture-Bible, how uncertain if ever they should see her or it again!

Pamela understood.

"I wish Jesus would come and help us now," she said softly. "I'm sure us needs him quite as much as those men he was so kind to. Tell us about the ca.n.a.l, Tim."

"It's boats," replied Tim. "Long boats made just the right shape. And they've got rooms in them--quite tidy-like. The one that boy lived in along o' his mother was as nice as--as nice as nice. And then they go a-sailin' along--right from one end of the ca.n.a.l to the other."

"What for--just because they like it?"

"Oh no. They've all sorts of things they take about from one place to another--wood often and coal. But that wasn't a coal boat--it was nice and clean that one. And there's hosses as walks along the side of the ca.n.a.ls, pullin' of the boats with ropes. It's a pleasant life enough, to my thinking--that's to say when they're tidy, civil-like folk. Some of them's awful rough--as rough as Mick and the Missus and all o' _them_."

Duke and Pamela listened with the greatest interest. They quite forgot to cry any more about their home in listening to what Tim told them.

"Oh, Tim," said Pamela, "I'll tell you what _would_ be nice. If us and you could get one of those boats, and a horse to pull it, and go sailing away till we got home to Grandpapa and Grandmamma. That would be nice, wouldn't it, Tim?"

"Yes, missie," said Tim. "But is there ca.n.a.ls near your place?"

Pamela's face fell.