"Oh, do let him come to us!" said Jane. "See, we'll sit down here and take care of him for you till he gets used to you."
"What about dinner?" said Robert suddenly. The others looked at him with scorn. "Fancy bothering about your beastly dinner when your br—I mean when the Baby"—Jane whispered hotly. Robert carefully winked at her and went on—
"You won't mind my just running home to get our dinner?" he said to the gipsy; "I can bring it out here in a basket."
His brothers and sisters felt themselves very noble and despised him. They did not know his thoughtful secret intention. But the gipsies did in a minute.
"Oh yes!" they said; "and then fetch the police with a pack of lies about it being your baby instead of ours! D'jever catch a weasel asleep?" they asked.
"If you're hungry you can pick a bit along of us," said the light-haired gipsy-woman, not unkindly. "Here Levi, that blessed kid'll howl all his buttons off. Give him to the little lady, and let's see if they can't get him used to us a bit."
So the Lamb was handed back; but the gipsies crowded so closely that he could not possibly stop howling. Then the man with the red handkerchief said—
"Here, Pharaoh, make up the fire; and you girls see to the pot. Give the kid a chanst." So the gipsies, very much against their will, went off to their work, and the children and the Lamb were left sitting on the grass.
"He'll be all right at sunset," Jane whispered. "But, oh, it is awful! Suppose they are frightfully angry when they come to their senses! They might beat us, or leave us tied to trees, or something."
"No, they won't," Anthea said ("Oh, my Lamb, don't cry any more, it's all right, Panty's got oo, duckie"); "they aren't unkind people, or they wouldn't be going to give us any dinner."