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“Come a little nearer, my dear, that I may touch you. I sees your face so often, when I knows you can’t be there, that it pleases me to be able to feel you. I was afraid you bore me ill-will for selling Christian; but I bought him back, my dear, I bought him back. Take him away with you, my dear, for I am failing, and I shouldn’t like to leave him with George. Your eyes looks very hollow and your hair is grey. Not, that I begrudges your making so much of my son, but he treats you ill, he treats you very ill. Don’t cry, my dear, it comes to an end at last, though I thinks sometimes that all the men in the world put together is not worth the love we wastes upon one. You hear what I say, Sybil? And that rascal, Black Basil, is the worst of a bad lot.”

“Hold your jaw, Mother,” said Sybil sharply; and she added, “Be pleased to excuse her, my lady: she is old and gets confused at times, and she thinks you are Christian’s mother, who is dead.”

The old woman was bursting out again, when Sybil raised her hand, and we all pricked our ears at a sound of noisy quarrelling that came nearer.

“It’s George and his wife,” said Sybil. “Mother, the gentlefolks had better go. I’ll go to the inn afterwards, and tell them about Christian. Take the lady away, sir. Come, Mother, come!”

I’ve a horror of gipsy men, and even before our neighbours had dispersed I hustled away with Mrs. Hedgehog into the bushes.

CHAPTER VIII.

Good Mrs. Hedgehog hurt one of her feet slightly in our hurried retreat, and next day was obliged to rest it; but as our curiosity was more on the alert than ever, I went down in the afternoon to the tinker camp.

The old woman was sitting in her usual position, and she seemed to have recovered herself. Sybil was leaning back against a tree opposite; she wore a hat and shawl, and looked almost as wild as the tinker-mother had looked the day before. She seemed to have been at the inn with the clergywoman, and was telling the tinker-mother the result.

“You told her he had got two years, my daughter? Does she say she will get him out?”

“She says she has no more power to do it than yourself, Mother–and the young gentleman says the same–unless–unless it was made known that Christian was innocent.”

“Two years,” moaned the old woman. “Is she sure we couldn’t buy him out, my dear? Two years–oh! Christian, my child, I shall never live to see you again!”

She sobbed for a minute, and then raising her hand suddenly above her head, she cried, “A curse on Black–” but Sybil seized her by the wrist so suddenly, that it checked her words.

“Don’t curse him, Mother,” said the gipsy girl, “and I’ll–I’ll see what I can do. I meant to, and I’ve come to say good-bye. I’ve brought a packet of tea for you; see that you keep it to yourself. Good-bye, Mother.”

“Good-evening, my daughter.”

“I said good-bye. You don’t hold with religion, do you?”

“I does not, so far, my daughter; though I think the young clergywoman speaks very convincingly about it.”

“Don’t you think that there may be a better world, Mother, for them that tries to do right, though things goes against them here?”

“I think there might very easily be a better world, my dear, but I never was instructed about it.”

“You don’t believe in prayers, do you, Mother?”

“That I does not, my daughter. Christian said lots of ’em, and you sees what it comes to.”

“It’s not unlucky to say ‘GOD bless you,’ is it, Mother? I wanted you to say it before I go.”

“No, my daughter, I doesn’t object to that, for I regards it as an old-fashioned compliment, more in the nature of good manners than of holy words.”