"'There they are!' he said suddenly."
"The gipsies?" said Una. "Oh, Tom, do they live in that funny little house?"
"Yes," said Tom, "and when they want to go somewhere else they just pack up their hut—it all comes to piece somehow—and then go off in that cart. It must be awfully jolly to live like that."
"Yes, in the summer," Una agreed, "but not in the winter, Tom. Oh, no!—not in the cold, cold winter, when the snow is on the ground," and Una gave a little shiver at the thought.
"No," said Tom, "not in the winter, perhaps, and not when they haven't enough to eat, like these now. The woman said she'd only had half a loaf of bread to give her children all yesterday, and that is why mother sent them a great can of soup by Barnes this morning, and I'm taking them these things now, because they're going on to-morrow towards the hospital where the children's father is. Now, what are you going to do, Una? Are you coming too, or going to stay here?"
"I'll stay here," said Una, "if you can carry all the parcels."
"Yes, I can," said Tom. "I carried them all the way from the shop to where I met you in the wood."
Una piled the parcels carefully one on the top of the other in Tom's arms, then sat down on the mossy root of a tree, and watched him as he crossed the common towards the little brown hut among the gorse bushes.
A thin wreath of smoke curled upwards from a small fire in front of the hut; and as Tom drew nearer two children began to throw twigs and branches on the fire, making it crackle and blaze while they danced wildly round the flames, giving little squeals of delight and hitting at each other with the sticks they held in their hands.
It was all fun, however. Una could tell that by the peals of laughter which reached her ears, and she laughed, too, when a little thin black dog sprang out of the hut, joining madly in the dance, and barking furiously when he caught sight of Tom coming towards them.
The children stopped dancing and looked at Tom gravely; then they disappeared inside the hut, calling to someone within, and the next moment a woman came out with a baby in her arms, and another little one clinging to her skirts.
She bobbed a curtsey to Tom, and presently began to take the parcels one by one out of his arms, bobbing lots of little curtseys as she did so; but Una was too far off to hear what Tom and the woman were saying to each other, and she was disappointed when they all went behind the hut and she could not see them any more.
She could still see the parcels where the woman had laid them in a little white heap beside the fire; and by-and-by one of the children came round from the back of the hut and began to open each of the packages in turn, giving little hops and skips of joy as he saw the nice things inside.
Then the other children appeared again, followed by Tom and the gipsy-woman; and they all bobbed curtseys to Tom once more before he left them and came across the heather towards Una, carrying something very carefully in a red pocket-handkerchief.
Una went to meet him through the trees.
"What have you got there, Tom?" she asked.
"Another secret!" he cried, waving the handkerchief to and fro before her eyes.
CHAPTER IX.
UNA'S PET.
"Another secret? Oh, Tom!" said Una.
"It's a nice one, too," said Tom. "Guess what I've got here, Una."
Una looked hard at the handkerchief for some moments; then she slowly shook her head.
"I can't, Tom," she said, wondering if Norah would have been able to guess, and fearing that Tom must think her a very stupid little girl indeed.
But Tom only laughed gleefully.
"I knew you couldn't," he said; "and I don't expect you'll know what to call it, even when you've seen it."
He knelt down on the moss and opened the handkerchief, exhibiting a funny-looking, spiky ball.
"Oh, Tom, what is it?" asked Una. "A ball made of pine-needles?"'
"Pine-needles!" laughed Tom. "You touch the point of one, and see!"
Una pressed one of the spikes gently with her finger, and gave a little cry as the ball moved slightly and became half unrolled; then curled itself up as before.
"Oh, Tom, it's alive!" she cried.
