“I shan’t need rocking, either,” agreed Morvyth.
Perched on her hay-bag, Raymonde was very soon in the land of Nod. She was dreaming a confused jumble about Miss Gibbs and gipsies and strawberries, when she suddenly awoke with a strong impression that someone was pulling her hair. She sat up, feeling rather scared. The tent was perfectly quiet. The other girls lay asleep, each on her own sack with her feet to the central pole.
“I must have dreamt it!” thought Raymonde, settling down again. 118
She had scarcely closed her eyes, however, before she heard a curious noise in the vicinity of her ear, and something unmistakably gave her plait a violent wrench. She started up with a yell, in time to see an enormous head withdraw itself from the tent door. A clatter of hoofs followed.
“What’s the matter?” cried the girls, waking at the disturbance; and “What is it?” exclaimed Miss Gibbs, aroused also, and hurrying in from the next-door tent. But Raymonde was laughing.
“I’ve had the fright of my life!” she announced. “I thought a bogy or a kelpie was devouring me, but it was only Dandy, the old pony. He stuck his head round the tent door, and mistook my hair for a mouthful of grass, the wretch!”
“I’ve seen him feeding near the tents before,” said Valentine. “There’s some particular sort of grass here that he specially likes. It’s rather the limit, though, to have him coming inside!”
“He oughtn’t to be allowed in this field at night,” declared Miss Gibbs. “I shall speak to Mr. Cox, and ask to have him put in another pasture. We can’t close our tent doors, or we should be suffocated. I hope we shan’t have any other nocturnal visitors! It’s a good thing we have no valuables with us. I don’t trust those gipsies.”
Miss Gibbs’s fears turned out to be only too well founded, for, on the morning but one following, there was a hue and cry in the camp. The larder had been raided during the night, and all the provisions stolen. The canteen matron and the cook were in despair, as nothing was left for breakfast, and the workers would have gone hungry, had not 119 a deputation of them visited the farm, and begged sufficient bread and jam to provide a meal.
“A lovely ham gone, and four pounds of butter, and a joint of cold beef, and all the bread!” mourned the distracted matron. “I shall have to go in to Ledcombe again this morning for fresh supplies, and I believe Mr. Cox wants the pony himself.”