Alie had not sat long when a tall, large-boned woman, in a red cloak, with sun-burnt features and wild dark eyes, approached her, followed by a miserable-looking little girl, about six or seven years of age, who had neither shoes on her blistered feet nor bonnet over her tangled hair. The gipsy stopped before Alie, and, in a tone which she intended to be winning, said, “Good mornin’ to ye, my dear. Will ye cross my hand with silver, and I’ll tell ye your fortin’?”
Alie promptly declined the offer, not only because she had been taught by her mother never to encourage those who pretend to be able to look into the future and to see what God has hidden from our eyes, but because the appearance of the woman frightened her. And had the gipsy said anything more to her, Alie would have retreated at once from the door. The woman, however, passed on, and a few yards further on found a willing listener in a flighty girl of the village, whose long gilt ear-rings, red ribands and curl-papers, were the outward tokens of such vanity and folly as might easily make her the dupe of a gipsy fortune-teller.
But the thin little girl lingered behind, shily eyeing Alie’s tempting-looking cake. Alie broke off a piece and held it out to her. The child sidled up, took it, and devoured it as though she were famished. Alie smiled and gave her another bit.
“What is your name, little girl?” said Alie, first glancing to see that the gipsy was too much occupied to listen to her.
“Madge,” answered the child.
“And is that woman your mother?”
Madge nodded her head in reply.
“And you go wandering about the country with her?”
Madge gave some low confused answer, which Alie could not at first understand; she made out from the child at last that the gipsy had pitched her tent somewhere near, and that she could not tell how long she would stay.
“Do you ever go to school, little Madge?”