A Pair of Clogs | Page 4

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 the days when he had had to learn to dance, and what it was to shrink from blows, and to howl with pain and fear under punishment. Times were not so bad for him now, because his education was over, but still he had to work hard for his living. In every town they passed he