Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/60

 Across the open space ran a big, old avenue from nowhere to where a court, castle, keep, or stately home of England formerly stood.

The gipsy tents are very low, and rounded—exactly like the round tilts on spring carts and drays, that went out with my childhood, only brown. Exactly as staged in "Romany Rye."

I well remember one day passing two lone caravans camped in one of the lanes, and two sullen, resentful-looking men grazing their horses, with ropes attached, along the roadside. And as we passed I saw the old crone hurrying up and down the steps of one of the caravans. When we returned, an hour or so later, she was poking round the fire like a witch in daylight—and the daylight didn't make any difference—she said—

"Come on, my pretty young gents, and see what you shall see," beckoning me in particular, and she climbed the steps, shutting the lower half of the door.

"Come on, my pretty young gent," she said, " and see the Gipsy child!"

I stood on the lower step and looked in. It was very neat and clean, with a bunk like a ship's bunk in front end of it, and in it lay a young woman with the clearest, freshest olive complexion I ever saw, with the red through it like a blush it may have been a blush—and great brown eyes, half wild, half laughing, if I might put it so—turned to us, and from her side the crone lifted a fine brown baby, naked, as far as I could see in the flash, and she held it up over the door for a moment for my friend to see too. She