Then the harnessing of the horses began. Two horses to the great caravan, one to Peggy’s bonnie wee one, and one to Willie’s cart. While this was being done, the dwarf boy was as busy as a rag-picker. Every morsel of paper or string or stick or straw was collected and placed on the “burning-heap.”[A]
[A] A hole dug in the ground in which gipsies burn rubbish.
“Fire!” cried Fitzroy, as if he stood on a battle-deck.
Willie scratched a match, and lit his pile, after scattering oil over it, and in five minutes more it was quite consumed.
“All ready?”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“Off!”
Crack went the whips; round went the wheels, and away rolled the show, leaving the beautiful sea, with its grays and greens and stretches of sand, and its wild, weedy rocks behind it.
“Good-bye!” cried Peggy, waving her little white handkerchief in the breeze; “good-bye, dear old ocean; we will meet again another day.”
Then the silent woods swallowed them up, and the rooks and starlings alone were left on the old camp pitch.