The sun was shining brightly to-day, the sky everywhere clear and blue, with only a few white clouds on the western horizon. It was the sunshine of earliest summer, a sunshine of promise, a sunshine, too, that seemed to find an echo in this little gipsy's heart. Even the train's rapid motion accorded with the girl's feelings, making her feel that she was leaving something of sorrow and darkness behind her and bringing her every hour nearer and nearer to a happier future.
Yet Lotty could not help thinking, while she sat here in the bright forenoon sunshine, how sad it was that so much of real joy should have been in her camp-life mingled with the embittering gall of misery. For, as far as her relations with Biffins Lee had existed, her life had been one long woe. She bore him no ill-will, however; he had been a hard taskmaster, and she merely a little white slave, useful to him in his business, a mere property, that was all. What her life as a show-girl would have been without Crona, Chops, and Mary she could not have told you. 'Oh,' she would have said, 'it would have been no life, for I would simply have died.'
She tried even now to think back to some little kindness of deed or even speech of Lee's that was not born of self-interest. She could not find even one; as regards her education, he had been most particular, and had paid her teachers well, but this was merely in order that as a property she might have more value.
And then, all at once, a cold hand seemed to clutch at her heart, and some evil thing appeared to whisper to her the words: 'Biffins Lee will find you wherever you go, and take you back by force to his show.' Poor girl! She did not know then that he had no legal right to do anything of the sort. But the thought, once implanted in her mind, took firm root, and grew and increased till it made her miserable. But for the time being only. Who could be miserable any length of time on so glad and bright a day as this? With the fresh air on her face, she began to feel drowsy.
'But,' she said to herself, 'I might drop off to sleep, and fall right down out of the caravan and be killed.' So once more she sought the interior, comforted herself with a few more chocolates, carefully counted how many were left, then got in under the plaidie to read. But to read was to feel drowsy, and in a few minutes' time this little gipsy lass was safe in the kind arms of Morpheus.
. . . . . . .
Chops, going back homewards through the moor and the woods, felt so lonesome that the evening actually seemed cold, for grief has this chilling effect at times. He was very glad, indeed, when at long and last the light from Crona's romantic wee cot blinked out through the gloom of the gathering night-shadows. It might have been this light that accounted for what immediately followed, for Chops had a sudden inspiration. Although he was a poet—or thought himself so, and few even of the best of us get much farther—it was seldom indeed that Nature vouchsafed him a sudden inspiration. And when this one came he stopped short at once, and a beaming, fatty sort of a smile illumined his face to such an extent that for a moment it might have been mistaken for a will-o'-the-wisp.
'I'll do it,' he said. 'Yes, I'll do it to-morrow mornin' right away. Wonder I didn't think of telling Miss Lotty. But w'ich it'll be a pleasant serprise for her.'
He hurried on now, and was soon inside the cottage; and Crona, knowing Chops's weakness, set about laying the supper.
'Just 'ad a henspyration, Crona!'