"Us" Part 13

"_Home_, do you mean, Diana?" they said. "Home to our own dear Grandpapa and Grandmamma?"

"And Toby," added Duke.

"And Toby," echoed Pam.

Diana clasped them tight; her eyes, that for many a day had not shed a tear, were running over.

"Yes, home, my blessed darlings," she said.

"But you'll come with us" was the next idea. "You've been so good to us.

Grandpapa'd never put _you_ in prison, Diana."

They sat up now and looked at her anxiously.

"Perhaps not," she said, shaking her head nevertheless. "But I dursn't go with you. I must stay here to stop them going the right way after you for one thing. And then--you didn't know it, but, bad as he is, Mick's my brother. I dursn't get him into trouble."

"Mick's your bruvver!" repeated Pam; "the same as bruvver is to me. And he speaks so naughty to you, Diana. I don't fink he _can_ be your bruvver. I fink you've made a mistake. Oh do come wif us, dear Diana.

You and Tim."

"Yes for Tim, it'd be the best thing he could do, and the best chance for you to get safe home. But for me," and again Diana shook her head.

"Let alone Mick, I'm only a poor wild gipsy girl," she said. "I couldn't take to your pretty quiet ways; no, it'd kill me. It's in the gipsy blood--we must for ever be on the go. It wasn't so bad long ago when father and mother was alive. Father was honest--he was a gentleman gipsy, he was. But Mick's another sort. If I could get away from him I would--but not so as to get him into trouble. I'll try some day to get among a better lot. There's bad and good among us, though you mightn't believe it. But here am I wasting time talking of myself, and I want to tell you all I'm thinking of. First, do you know the name of the village or town nearest where you live?"

"Sandle'ham," said the children.

"But is that near your home?" pursued Diana. The twins shook their heads. They didn't know.

"Us was there once," said Duke. "But it was a long time ago. It seemed a very far way."

"And is there no village nearer?"

"Yes, of course," said Pamela. "There's where Barbara Twiss and the butcher Live, and where the church is."

"And what's it called?"

"What's it called?" repeated the children. "Why, it's just called the village. It isn't called anything else."

"That's what I was afraid of," said Diana. "And it was all new country thereabouts to me. Well, there's nothing for it but to make for Sandle'ham, and once there Tim must go to the police."

At this dreadful word the children set up a shriek, but Diana quickly stopped them.

"Hush, hush!" she said, "you'll have them all coming to see what's the matter. The police won't hurt _you_, you silly children. They'd be your best friends if only they could find you. I'd rather have had nothing to say to them, for fear they should get too much out of Tim, but I see no other way to get you safe home. But now we mustn't talk any more, only remember all I've said if that man comes. And to-morrow, when I give you the word, you must be ready," she went on impressively; "you won't be afraid with Tim. I'll do the best I can, but we'll have to trust a deal to Tim; and you must do just what he tells you, and never mind if it seems strange and hard. It's the only chance for them," she added to herself, with a strange longing in her beautiful dark eyes, as she again left them, "but if I could but have taken them safe back myself I'd have felt easier in my mind."

She put in her head again to warn the children not to try to speak to Tim, and if they must speak to each other to do so in a whisper.

But at first their hearts seemed too full to speak. They just sat with their arms round each other, too bewildered and almost stunned with the good news to take it in.

"Bruvver," said Pamela at last, "don't you fink it's because us has said our prayers such many many times?"

"P'raps," replied Duke.

"And you _don't_ fink now what--you know what you said about Grandpapa and Grandmamma," said Pamela, her voice faltering.

Duke hesitated. He was not quite generous enough to own that his gloomy prophecies had been a good deal the result of his being tired and cross and contradictory. In his heart he had no misgiving such as he had expressed to Pamela--he had no idea that what he had said might really have been true.

"You _don't_ fink so, bruvver?" persisted Pam.

"I daresay if us goes back very soon it'll make them better even if they are very ill. I think us had better put that in our prayers too--for us to get back to them so quick that there won't be time for them to get very ill. I wouldn't mind them being just a _little_ ill, would you, sister? It'd be so nice to see them getting better."

"I'd _rather_ they wasn't ill at all," said Pamela, "but I daresay G.o.d'll understand. Oh I _wish_ it was to-morrow! don't you, bruvver?"

"Hush," said Duke. "Diana said us mustn't talk loud--and see, sister, they're going to put the horse in and go on again. Oh how tired I am of going along shaking like this all day! And don't you remember, sister, when us was little us used to think it would be _so_ nice to live in a cart like a house, like this?"

"Us never thought how _nugly_ it would be inside," said Pamela, glancing round the little square s.p.a.ce in which they were with great dissatisfaction. And no wonder--the waggon was stuffed with bundles and packages of all shapes and sizes; on the sides hung dirty coats and cloaks belonging to some of the tribe, and the only pleasant object to be seen was a heap of nice clean-looking baskets and brooms, which had been brought in here, as the basket-cart was already filled to overflowing. For the gipsies expected to do a good trade in these things at the Crookford fair.

"I wish Diana would give us one of these nice baskets to take home--a present to Grandmamma," continued Pamela, as her glance fell upon them.

"You're very silly, sister," said Duke. "Don't you understand that us is going to _run away_, like Tim has always been wanting. And Diana's going to help us to run away. Mick mustn't know and n.o.body, not till us is too far for them to catch us. I think it's a great pity Diana told you; you're too little to understand."

"I'm as big as you, bruvver, and my birfday's the same. You're very unkind to say I'm littler than you, and I _do_ understand."

She spoke indignantly, but the last words ended in tears. Poor little people!--life in a gipsy caravan was not the sort of thing to improve their tempers. But the dispute was soon followed by a reconciliation, and then they decided it was better not to talk any more about what Diana had told them, but to "make plans" inside their heads about how nice it would be to go home again; how they would knock at the door so softly, and creep into the parlour where Grandmamma would be sitting by the fire with Toby at her feet, and Grandpapa at the table with the newspaper; and _how_ they would hug them both! At which point you will see the plan making was no longer confined to the "inside of their heads."

"And Duke," added Pamela half timidly. "Us must tell all about the broken bowl. And us must always tell everything like that to Grandmamma."

"Yes," said Duke.

"I fink my voice that Grandmamma told us about _did_ tell me to tell,"

pursued the little girl thoughtfully. "Didn't yours, bruvver?"

"I sometimes think it did," said Duke with unusual humility. "I think it must have been that I wouldn't listen. You would have listened, sister.

It was much more my fault than yours. I shall tell _that_."

"No, no, it was bof our faults," said Pamela. "But I fink Grandpapa and Grandmamma will be so very pleased to have us that they won't care whose fault it was."

And then the two little creatures leant their heads each on the other's, and tried to keep themselves steady against the rough jolting, till by degrees--and it was the best thing they could have done--they both fell asleep, and were sleeping as peacefully as in their own white cots at home when, later in the afternoon, Diana got into the waggon again, and, rolling up an old shawl, carefully laid it as a pillow under the two fair heads. It was getting dusk by now, and the gipsies all disappeared into the vans, for they began to drive too quickly for it to be possible for them to keep up by walking alongside.

The gipsy girl sat there gazing at the two little faces she had learnt to love. She gazed at them with a deep tenderness in her dark eyes. She knew it was almost the last time she should see them, but it was not of that she was thinking.

"If I could but have taken them back myself and seen them safe!" she kept thinking. "But I daren't. With Tim no one will notice them much, but with me it'd be different. And it'd get Mick and the others into trouble, even if I didn't care for myself. It's safer for them too for me to stay behind. But how to get them safe out of Crookford! I must speak to Tim. And I don't care what Mick says or does after this. I'll never, _never_ again have a hand in this kind of business; he may steal horses and poultry and what he likes, but I'll have no more to do with stealing children. If ill had come, or did come, to these innocent creatures I'd never know another easy moment."

CHAPTER IX.

CROOKFORD FAIR.

"And the booths of mountebanks, With the smell of tan and planks."