"I don't know, ma'am."
"Don't know!" repeated the lady of the caravan; "why, you were there. I saw you with my own eyes."
Nell was not a little alarmed to hear this, supposing that the lady might be intimately acquainted with the firm of Short and Codlin; but what followed tended to put her at her ease.
"And very sorry I was," said the lady of the caravan, "to see you in company with a Punch—a low, common, vulgar wretch, that people should scorn to look at."
"I was not there by choice," returned the child; "we didn't know our way, and the two men were very kind to us, and let us travel with them. Do you—do you know them, ma'am?"
"Know 'em, child?" cried the lady of the caravan, in a sort of shriek. "Know them! But you're young and ignorant, and that's your excuse for asking sich a question. Do I look as if I know'd 'em? does the caravan look as if it know'd 'em?"
"No, ma'am, no," said the child, fearing she had committed some grievous fault. "I beg your pardon."
The lady of the caravan was in the act of gathering her tea things together preparing to clear the table, but noting the child's anxious manner, she hesitated and stopped. The child courtesied, and, giving her hand to the old man, had already got some fifty yards or so away, when the lady of the caravan called to her to return.
"Come nearer, nearer still," said she, beckoning to her to ascend the steps. "Are you hungry, child?"
"Not very, but we are tired, and it's—it is a long way———"