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On the morning after Peggy’s benefit the camp was struck.
Striking camp seems an easy matter, does it not? But, having travelled in caravans with tents for many a long year, I can assure my gentle and my simple reader, that it is not half so easy to get clear away out of one’s pitch as it may seem.
All hands had to be called very early to-day. It is no hardship, however, for caravan people to rise betimes. They live constantly in the open air, and are wont to consider morning the sweetest time of all the day.
In the case of the Wandering Minstrels the trouble of striking camp was minimised, because everyone had his own duties to perform, and all obeyed the orders of Father Fitzroy, while he himself worked as hard as anyone.
At four o’clock that morning Willie the dwarf shook himself clear of his sack, and with his little bugle to his lips sounded the reveille. The notes of his horn were very beautiful, as they rose and fell on the still air of what was a blue-skied and heavenly morning. They went swelling over the woods and startled the wild-birds; forest rangers still abed heard them and wondered what they were, and fishermen out at sea yonder, who had been toiling all night at their silver harvest, turned their weary eyes shorewards and wondered.
Still with the bugle over his shoulder, Willie, without waiting to note the effects of the blast he had blown, hurried away now and neatly folded up his sack, and stuck it in its place beneath the two-horse caravan. Then he took his bundle of straw away to some distance on the lee-side of the camp, and coming back, proceeded to hang up all the buckets and the field-lamp, and the oil-cans, the vegetable-baskets, and other odds and ends daintily and neatly on their hooks below the vans. He had, moreover, to see that nothing was left lying about the field. In ten minutes’ time the camp-fire was lit and the kettle was filled and hung over it.
Molly was soon busy bustling about to prepare the six o’clock breakfast. Meanwhile, all the theatrical properties were loaded on the cart, which Willie himself was permitted to drive, for dwarfs are strong for their size. By the time this cart was loaded and the quiet horse harnessed, the breakfast was ready in the tent. Though a little sorry to leave so sweet a camping-ground, everyone was more or less excited with the thought of starting off once more and through the woods in search of further adventures.
It is needless to say that the breakfast was a hearty one. If there is one thing in this world that gipsy people can do better than another, it is making a good show at table. Even Willie the tiny did ample justice to the good things Providence had placed before him. As for the giant—
“Well, my children,” he said, “I must confess I like a square meal. Given a good breakfast, a jolly dinner, and a hearty supper, no one need go hungry if he can only work in a few pints of good fruit between whiles, and maybe a few cocoa-nuts.”