“Ah sees ye knaw ye’r awn nyme, lidy,” said Jim Varey, shrewdly. “Yer the lady we’re lookin’ for, mayhap. ’Tis private business——”
“I can have no business with you, man,” exclaimed Miss Carrington. “Why, you’re a Gypsy!”
“Aye. I’m Gypsy. An’ so was ma fawther an’ mither, an’ their fawthers an’ mithers before ’em. We’m proud of the Romany blood. An’ more’n ’us, lady, has mixed with the Romany—an’ in other climes aside Yorkshire. But all Romany is one, wherever vound. Ye knaw that, lidy.”
“I don’t know what you mean! I don’t know what you are talking about! What do you want of me?” cried Miss Carrington, quite wildly.
The man drew closer. Bobby was really frightened, too. She opened her own mouth to shriek for help. But the Gypsy did not touch the teacher. Instead, he said in a low, but perfectly clear, voice, so that Bobby heard it plainly:
“I would speak to you, lidy, of the child of Belas Salgo.”
Miss Carrington uttered a stifled shriek. Bobby sprang forward, finding her own voice now, and using it to good purpose, too. A door banged, and a gentleman ran out of his house and down to the gate, where the Gypsy had stopped Miss Carrington.
It chanced to be Franklin Sharp, the principal of Central High. Jim Varey saw him coming, glanced swiftly around, evidently considered the time and place unfavorable for further troubling the teacher, and so broke into a run and disappeared.
Mr. Sharp caught Gee Gee before she fell. But she did not utterly lose consciousness. Bobby had caught her hand and clung to it. The girl heard Gee Gee murmur:
“There was no child! There was no child! Oh! Poor Anne! Poor Anne!”