They wrangled and quarrelled over the subject continually, for Seraminta, partly from obstinacy, and partly because the child was so handsome, wished to keep her, and teach her to perform with the poodle in the streets. But all the while she had an inward feeling that Perrin would outwit her, and get his own way. And this turned out to be the case.
Travelling slowly but steadily along, sometimes stopping a day or so in a large town, where Seraminta played the tambourine in the streets, and Mossoo danced, they had now left the north far behind them. They were bound for certain races near London, and long before they arrived there Perrin had determined to get rid of the child whom he daily disliked more; he would leave her in the workhouse, and the burden would be off his hands. Baby’s lucky star, however, was shining, and a better home was waiting for her.
One evening after a long dusty journey they came to a tiny village in a pleasant valley; Perrin had made up his mind to reach the town, two miles further on, before they stopped for the night, but by this time the whole party was so tired and jaded that he saw it would be impossible to push on. The donkey-cart came slowly down the hill past the vicarage, and the vicar’s wife cutting roses in her garden stopped her work to look at it. At Seraminta seated in the cart with her knees almost as high as her nose, and her yellow handkerchief twisted round her head; at the dark Perrin, striding along by the donkey’s side; at Mossoo, still adorned with his last dancing ribbon, but ragged and shabby, and so very very tired that he limped along on three legs; at the brown children among the bundles in the cart; and finally at baby. There her eyes rested in admiration: “What a lovely little child!” she said to herself. Baby was seated between the two boys, talking happily to herself; her head was bare, and her bush of golden hair was all the more striking from its contrast with her walnut-stained skin. It made a spot like sunlight in the midst of its dusky surroundings.
“Austin! Austin!” called out the vicar’s wife excitedly as the cart moved slowly past. There was no answer for a moment, and she called again, until Austin appeared in the porch. He was a middle-aged grey-haired clergyman, with bulging blue eyes and stooping shoulders; in his hand he held a large pink rose. “Look,” said his wife, “do look quickly at that beautiful child. Did you ever see such hair?” The Reverend Austin Vallance looked.
“An ill-looking set, to be sure,” he said. “I must tell Joe to leave Brutus unchained to-night.”
“But the child,” said his wife, taking hold of his arm eagerly, “isn’t she wonderful? She’s like an Italian child.”
“We shall hear of hen-roosts robbed to-morrow,” continued Austin, pursuing his own train of thought.
“I feel perfectly convinced,” said his wife leaning over the gate to look after the gypsies, “that that little girl is not theirs—she’s as different as possible from the other children. How I should like to see her again!”
“Well, my dear,” said Austin, “for my part I decidedly hope you won’t. The sooner that fellow is several miles away from here, the better I shall be pleased.”
“She was a lovely little thing,” repeated Mrs Vallance with a sigh.