Page:The Gypsy Lad of Roumania (1914).djvu/6

4 boy. It was dinner time, and the smell from those kettles, bubbling out in the open air, was so tempting that he could not summon courage enough to go. He had no mother in the camp to save something for him, or to seek him out with some food. There was just one person who might be kindly disposed in the face of the chief’s wrath. Peter waited until everyone else was busy with dinner, and then creeping near the tent of the old woman who befriended him, he called softly from his shelter, “Taka! Taka!”

The old woman looked toward the bushes and then as he called a second time, she came nearer, and said, “Hush Peter! Come not in sight.”

“I’m not going to, Taka,” replied the boy. “But I am hungry; can you not give me food?”

“Yes, yes,” she said. “Let me look first if any observe me. Then go into the wood, Peter, and come not back to-day nor to-morrow. Perhaps by the next day, his anger will have cooled.”

Finding that everyone else was too busy to notice her, she carried a big wooden bowl of the stew into the bushes where Peter was crouching. Then while he was eating, she came again with a large piece of black bread, such as the gypsies baked before their open fires, a piece of dried meat, and some cheese.

“Put these in your wallet,” she said. “They will keep you from starvation until you can come back. What did you do to anger him this time, foolish Peter?”

“He left me to watch a hare while it roasted before the fire. But I heard my pet dove calling in fright. I