"Why?" asked Felicia, looking taken aback. She was hot and flushed, and spoke rather breathlessly. "I don't think the little girl was dirty," she added dubiously, "or the baby either."
"How came you to be with them?" demanded Doris in a tone of rebuke. She considered her three years' seniority gave her the right to take the other to task.
"Well, it was like this. I had nearly reached home when I caught up to a little girl carrying a baby. I saw at once that they were gipsies, so I took no notice of them because of what grandfather had said; but suddenly I heard a scream, and then I stopped and glanced behind to see what had happened, and oh, Doris, the poor little girl had fallen with the baby and knocked herself! The baby wasn't hurt a bit, though it cried dreadfully, and I went back and picked it up and tried to quiet it—the dear little thing!—end presently it stopped crying; but the poor little girl had knocked her knees and hurt one of her arms so badly—I suppose she must have sprained it—that she couldn't possibly carry the baby, and so, of course, I had to. What else could I have done? I couldn't have left them there in the road. Grandfather wouldn't have wished me to do that, would he? Why, that would have been acting like the priest and the Levite in the parable! Oh, you surely don't think grandfather will be angry with me for carrying the baby back to its mother?" and Felicia regarded her cousin with anxious blue eyes.
"You took it to the encampment?" Doris inquired. She would not have touched the baby herself, much less have taken it in her arms.
"Yes. The poor mother was so grateful to me. Surely grandfather will not mind when I tell him?"
"I believe he will be furious with you," Doris declared emphatically; "you have most deliberately disobeyed him. Molly told me that he forbade you to go to the common whilst the gipsies remained there."
"He did, but—"
"He will accept no excuses for disobedience. Why, instead of taking possession of the baby like that, did you not go to the Priory and send one of the servants to the assistance of the little gipsy girl?"
"I never thought of that," Felicia replied truthfully; "I suppose that is what I ought to have done," she added with a sigh, for the way in which Doris had taken her story had rather alarmed her.
"Of course. Grandfather will say so. Oh, how angry he will be! Nothing upsets him more than to have any order he gives set at defiance. How very foolishly you have behaved, to be sure!"