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“No, Ted, no. It makes me so happy to hear you, and to know that you know how good he really was, and how much he must have been aggravated before–“

“For goodness’ sake, don’t cry. Christian was a very good fellow, a capital fellow. I never thought I could have got on so well with any one who was–I mean who wasn’t–well, of course I mean who was really a gipsy. I don’t blame him a bit for resenting being bullied about his parents. I only blame myself for not looking better after him. But you know that well enough–you know it’s because I never can forgive myself for having managed so badly when you put him in my care, that I am backing you through this mad expedition, though I don’t approve of it one bit, and though I know John will blame me awfully.”

(“It’s the clergywoman,” whispered Mrs. Hedgehog excitedly, “and I must and will see her.”

When it comes to this with Mrs. Hedgehog’s sex, there is nothing for it but to let the dear creatures have their own way, and take the consequences. She pushed her nose straight through the lower branches of an arbutus in which we were concealed, and I myself managed to get a nearer sight of our new neighbours.

As we crept forward, the clergywoman got up from where she was kneeling amongst the flowers, and laid her hand on the young gentleman’s arm. I noticed it because I had never seen such a white hand before; Sybil’s paws were nearly as dark as my own.)

“John will blame no one if we find Christian,” she said. “You are very, very good, Cousin Ted, to come with me and help me when you do not believe in my dream. But you must say it is odd about the flowers. And you haven’t told me yet what they are.”

“It is the bulbous-rooted fumitory,” said the young man, pulling a piece at random in the reckless way in which men do disfigure forest flower-beds. “It isn’t strictly indigenous, but it is naturalized in many places, and you must have seen it before, though you fancy you haven’t.”

“I have seen it once before,” she said earnestly–“all in delicate glaucous-green masses, studded with purple and white, like these; but it was in my dream. I never saw it otherwise, though I know you don’t believe me.”

“Dear Gertrude, I’ll believe anything you like to tell me, if you’ll come home. I’m sure I have done very wrong. You know I’m always hard up, but I declare I’d give a hundred pounds if you’d come home with me at once. I don’t believe there’s a gipsy within–“

“Good-day, my pretty young gentleman. Let the poor gipsy girl tell you your fortune.”

He turned round and saw Sybil standing at his elbow, her eyes flashing and her white teeth gleaming in a broad smile. He stood speechless in sudden surprise; but the clergywoman, who was not surprised, came forward with her white hands stretched so expressively towards Sybil’s brown ones, that the gipsy girl all but took them in her own.

“Please kindly tell me–do you know anything of a young gipsy, named Christian?”

The clergywoman spoke with such vehemence that Sybil answered directly, “I know his grandmother”–and then suddenly stopped herself.

But as she spoke, she had turned her head with an expressive gesture in the direction of the encampment, and without waiting for more, the clergywoman ran down the path, calling on her cousin to follow her.

CHAPTER VII.

My ancestor’s artifice was very successful when the race was run on two sides of a hedge, backwards and forwards; but if a louis d’or and a bottle of brandy had depended on my reaching the tinker-mother before the clergywoman, I should have lost the wager. We hurried after her, however, as fast as we were able, keeping well under the brushwood.

When we could see our neighbours again, the tinker-mother was standing up, and speaking hurriedly, with a wild look in her eyes.