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“Sybil!” cried the man; but she did not look round.

“Sybil, I say!”

She was breaking sticks for the fire slowly across her knee, but she made no answer. He took his stick out of my back, and went after her.

“I’ve let it go,” he said, throwing himself down again, “and a good dinner has gone with it. But you can do what you like with me–and small thanks I get for it.”

“I can do anything with you but keep you out of mischief,” she answered, fixing her eyes steadily on him. He sat up and began to throw stones, aiming them at my three cousins.

“Take me for good and all, instead of tormenting me, and you will,” he said.

“Will you give up Jemmy and his gang?” she asked; but as he hesitated for an instant, she tossed the curls back from her face and moved away, saying, “Not you; for all your talk! And yet for your sake, I would give up–“

He bounded to his feet, but she had put the bonfire between them, and before he could get round it, she was on the other side of a tilted cart, where another woman, in a crimson cloak, sat doing something to a dirty pack of cards.

I did not like to see the gipsy man on his feet again, and having somewhat recovered breath, I scrambled down the bank and got home as quickly as the stiffness and soreness of my skin would allow.

I never saw my cousins again, and it was long before I saw any more gipsies; for that day’s adventure gave me a shock to which my children owe the exceeding care and prudence that I display in the choice of our summer homes and winter retreats, and in repressing every tendency to a wandering disposition among the members of my family.

CHAPTER II.

That summer–I mean the summer when I had seven–we had the most charming home imaginable. It was in a wood, and on that side of the wood which is farthest from houses and highroads. Here it was bounded by a brook, and beyond this lay a fine pasture field.

There are fields and fields. I never wish to know a better field than this one. I seldom go out much till the evening, but if business should take one along the hedge in the heat of the sun, there are as juicy and refreshing crabs to be picked up under a tree about half-way down the south side, as the thirstiest creature could desire.

And when the glare and drought of midday have given place to the mild twilight of evening, and the grass is refreshingly damped with dew, and scents are strong, and the earth yields kindly to the nose, what beetles and lob-worms reward one’s routing!

I am convinced that the fattest and stupidest slugs that live, live near the brook. I never knew one who found out I was eating him, till he was half-way down my throat. And just opposite to the place where I furnished your dear mother’s nest, is a small plantation of burdocks, on the underside of which stick the best flavoured snails I am acquainted with, in such inexhaustible quantities, that a hedgehog might have fourteen children in a season, and not fear their coming short of provisions.

And in the early summer, in the long grass on the edge of the wood–but no! I will not speak of it.

My dear children, my seven dear children, may you never know what it is to taste a pheasant’s egg–to taste several pheasant’s eggs, and to eat them, shells and all.

There are certain pleasures of which a parent may himself have partaken, but which, if he cannot reconcile them with his ideas of safety and propriety, he will do well not to allow his children even to hear of. I do not say that I wish I had never tasted a pheasant’s egg myself, but, when I think of traps baited with valerian, of my great-uncle’s great-coat nailed to the keeper’s door, of the keeper’s heavy-heeled boots, and of the impropriety of poaching, I feel, as a father, that it is desirable that you should never know that there are such things as eggs, and then you will be quite happy without them.