A Pair of Clogs | Page 4

but it was not mammy's face,

or anything like it. They were sharp black eyes which were looking
down at her, and instead of the familiar checked shawl, there was a
bright yellow handkerchief over the woman's head, and dangling
ornaments in her ears. Baby turned up her lip in disgust, and looked
round for someone she knew, but everything was strange to her. The
woman, in whose lap she was lying, sat in a small donkey-cart, with
two brown children and some bundles tightly packed in round her; a
dark man walked by the side of it, and a dirty-white poodle ran at his
heels. Discovering this state of things baby lost no time, but burst at
once into loud wailing sobs and cries of "Mammy, mammy; me want
mammy."
She cried so long and so bitterly that the woman, who had tried at first
to soothe her by coaxing and petting, lost patience, and shook her
roughly.
"Be still, little torment," she said, "or I'll throw you into the pond."
They were the first angry words baby had ever heard, and the
experience was so new and surprising that she checked her sobs, staring
up at the woman with frightened tear-filled eyes. She soon began to cry
again, but it was with much less violence, only a little distressed
whimper which no one noticed. This went on all day, and by the
evening, having refused to touch food, she fell into an exhausted
slumber, broken by plaintive moans. It was now dark, and being some
miles from Keighley, the tramps thought it safe to stop for the night;
they turned off the main road, therefore, tethered the donkey in a grassy
lane, and crept into an old disused barn for shelter. The two children,
boys of eight or nine years old, curled themselves up in a corner, with
Mossoo, the poodle, tucked in between them, and all three covered with
an old horse-cloth. The gypsy and his wife sat talking in the entrance
over a small fire of dry wood they had lighted.
"You've bin a fool, Seraminta," said the man, looking down at the baby
as she lay flushed with sleep on the woman's lap, her cheeks still wet
with tears. "The child'll git us into trouble. That's no common child.
Anyone 'ud know it agen, and then where are we? In quod, sure as my
name's Perrin."

"You're the fool," replied the woman, looking at the man scornfully.
"Think I'm goin' to take her about with a lily-white skin like that? A
little walnut-juice'll make her as brown as Bennie yonder, so as her
own mother wouldn't know her."
"Well, what good is she to us anyhow?" continued the man sulkily.
"Only another mouth ter feed. 'Tain't wuth the risk."
"You hav'n't the sperrit of a chicken," replied the woman. "One 'ud
think you was born yesterday, not to know that anyone'll give a copper
to a pretty little kid like her. Once we git away down south, an' she
gives over fretting, I mean her to go round with the tambourine after
the dog dances in the towns. She'll more than earn her keep soon."
The man muttered and growled to himself for a short time, and said
some very ugly words, but presently, stretched on the ground near the
fire, he settled himself to sleep. The short summer night passed quickly
away, and nothing disturbed the sleepers; the owls and bats flitted in
and out of the barn, as was their custom, and, surprised to find it no
longer empty, flapped suddenly up among the rafters, and looked down
at the strangers by the dim light of the moon; at the two children
huddled in the corner, with Mossoo's tangled head between them; at the
dark form of Perrin, near the ashes of the fire; and at the fair child in
Seraminta's arms, sleeping quietly at last. Before the cock in the
farmyard near had answered a shrill friend in the distance more than
twice, the whole party, except the baby, was awake, the donkey
harnessed, and the journey continued.
Day after day passed in the same manner, and baby still cried for
"Mammy," but every day less and less, for the tramps were kind to her
in their rough way, and fortunately her memory was short, and soon
ceased to recall Maggie's loving care and caresses. So before she had
led her new life a week, she had found things to smile at again;
sometimes flowers which the freckled Bennie picked for her in the
hedges, sometimes the gay rattle of the tambourine, sometimes a ride
on the donkey's back; the poodle also, from having been an object of
fear, had now become a friend.

Mossoo was a dog who had known trouble. He well remembered