Moll carried the children off to the caravan, where Mr. Harris was already sleeping the sound sleep which is generally supposed to be the outcome of an easy conscience. She was about to bundle them, clothes and all, into a bed hastily spread upon what to Darby looked like a narrow shelf. He was too sleepy to offer any objections to the arrangement; but Joan stoutly resisted, declaring that she never went to bed without being undressed and saying her prayers.
"Boo-oo!" she wailed, putting her knuckles into her eyes. "I wants a nightgown, and I wants to say my p'ayers," she persisted.
"Shut up, will you!" ordered Moll, giving the little girl a rude shake. She would have slapped her, only she dared not disturb her better half, for then the blows might have gone round. "I ha'n't got no nightgownd for ee," she went on, in an angry undertone; "but ee can take off yer frock an' wrap the shawl roun' ee." Which Joan proceeded to do, although she felt that nurse's old tartan shoulder-shawl was but a sorry substitute for a nightgown.
"Now I's goin' to say my p'ayers," she said, kneeling on the bare floor at this prayerless woman's knee, with closed eyes and piously-folded hands—a pathetic little figure in her comical attire. "You'll say the big words and join in the 'amen.' That's what nurse does. Is you ready? Now—
"Gentle Jesus, meek'n mild,
Look upon a ickle child,
Pity my—'I can't say it!'—
Suffer me to come to Thee.
"Fain I would to Thee be brought;
Dea'est Lord, forbid it not;
In the kin'dom of Thy gwace
Give a ickle Joan a place. Amen!"
After the "amen" Joan opened her big blue eyes and looked steadily at Moll without rising from her knees. The woman fidgeted on her seat, toyed with the amber beads on her neck, but she would not meet the pure gaze fixed upon her; for there was a tremulousness about her lips, a moisture in her eyes, a sense of ashamedness all over her which she did not wish the child to see.
But Joan did see, and vaguely understood that here there was somewhat amiss, and forthwith proceeded to offer her sympathy after her own fashion, which, when all is said, is about the oldest and sweetest form that sympathy can take. Silently she got to her feet, climbed on Moll's lap, and laid a kiss—light as a snowflake, holy as a benediction, pregnant as a prayer—upon the woman's broad, sunburnt brow. Then she tumbled on to the shelf beside Darby, and soon both were wrapped in the deep, dreamless sleep of wearied childhood.
A few hours afterwards quite an air of stir and bustle pervaded the encampment. The crossbars for the support of pots and pans were taken down; scattered utensils were gathered up and stowed away; Bruno was driven into his cage under the body of the van; the wandering horses were caught, harnessed, and put in their places; and soon the Satellite Circus Company was on the move once more. For Joe and Moll had not failed to observe the dwarf's openly-evinced interest in their captives; and fearing that he might take it into his head to decamp during the night, carrying the children along with him, they quickly made up their minds to push on and put as many miles as the horses could cover between them and the possibility of escape, pursuit, or capture before daylight the next morning.
The little ones slept soundly side by side on their narrow shelf; the bear snarled uneasily behind his iron bars, with only an inch of plank between his hairy embrace and their soft young bodies; the monkey curled closer into the warmth of Tonio's black breast; the dwarf sat on his perch above the plodding piebalds, watching the stars and speculating about the pretty children—who they were, whence they came, and what would be their fate if left to the tender mercies of Thieving Joe and his bold wife Moll.