The squint-eyed man pushed Ruth toward the old woman. Zelaya's claw-like hand seized the girl's shoulder.
She was jerked forward and up the steps into the van. Almost at once the caravan started, and Zelaya pulled the door to, and darkened the windows.
"Quick, now!" she commanded the girl. "Take off your hat. Gypsies have no use for hats."
She seized it and thrust it into one of her boxes. Then she commanded Ruth to remove her frock, and that followed the hat into the same receptacle. Afterward the girl was forced to take off her shoes and stockings.
"Sit down here!" commanded Zelaya, as the van rolled along. The queen had been mixing some kind of a lotion in a bowl. Now with a sponge she anointed Ruth's face and neck, far below the collar of any gown she would wear; likewise her arms and hands, and her limbs from the knees down. Then Zelaya threw some earth on Ruth's feet and streaked her limbs with the same. She gave her a torn and not over-clean frock to put on instead of her own clothing, and insisted that she don the ugly garment at once.
"Now, Gentile girl," hissed the old woman, "if they come to search for you, speak at your peril. We say you are ours—a wicked, orphan Gypsy, wicked through and through."
She tore down Ruth's hair and rubbed some lotion into it that darkened its color, too. She really looked as wild and uncouth as the bold girl who waited upon the queen of the Gypsies.
"Now let them find you!" cackled the old woman. "You are Belle, my great-granddaughter, and you are touched here—eh?" and she tapped her own wrinkled forehead with her finger.