“You just take off your coat and come out and I’ll help you dress up,” was Francis’s offer.
“Best get a skirt over my kicksies first,” said Reuben, “case anyone comes by and recognizes the gypsy child. Hand us in the silk attire and jewels have to spare.”
They pushed the blue serge skirt and jersey through the branches, which he held apart.
“Now the ’at,” he said, reaching a hand for it. But the hat was too large for the opening in the bush, and he had to come out of it. The moment he was out the girls crowned him with the big rush-hat, around whose crown a blue scarf was twisted, and Francis and Bernard each seizing a leg, adorned those legs with brown stockings and white sandshoes. Reuben, the spangled runaway from the gypsy camp, stood up among his new friends a rather awkward and quite presentable little girl.
“Now,” he said, looking down at his serge skirts with a queer smile, “now we shan’t be long.”
Nor were they. Thrusting the tin spoon and the pie plate and the discarded boots of Reuben into the kind shelter of the bush they made straight for the sea.
When they got to that pleasant part of the shore which is smooth sand and piled shingle, lying between low rocks and high cliffs, Bernard stopped short.
“Now, look here,” he said, “if Sabrina fair turns up trumps I don’t mind going on with the adventure, but I won’t do it if Kathleen’s to be in it.”
“It’s not fair,” said Kathleen; “you said I might.”
“Did I?” Bernard most handsomely referred the matter to the others.