Faces and footsteps and all things strange! From the very minute the caravans struck the suburbs of great Southampton all the glamour of gipsy life faded and fled.
There were snug villas and well-kept gardens, it is true, and tidily cropped hedges with here and there a leafy elm, though its stem looked dark and sooty. But the gardens were far too snug and trim, with their tiled walks and edgings of box, to suit Peggy’s tastes or Johnnie’s, and on the hedges of privet or hawthorn a wild rose, beautiful beyond compare though it be, would scarce have dared to bloom. Then there were gravelled pavements, with lamp-posts, and, more dreadful than anything else, tram-lines, with rattling bell-ringing cars, and shouts of unromantic conductors.
This was civilisation, and the well-dressed clerks or bagmen who went hurrying along the streets were too busy even to glance at the prettily-curtained windows of the lofty caravans, though one or two did cast an admiring glance at the young and beautiful girl with sweet, laughing eyes, and wealth of bonnie hair that leaned over the half door of her little home on wheels and the noble hound that lay on guard beside her.
Street after street, noise and bustle, stir and din, how these children of the wilds hated it all, but worse was to come! They passed through unsavoury slums, where every fourth house was either a public or a pawnbroker’s; where sluts—half dressed sluts with arms akimbo—lolled at the openings of yawning courts; where ragged children played bare-headed, bare-legged, in gutters, and idle, unkempt youths smoked at filthy corners.
Peggy kept indoors now, ay, and took noble Ralph in beside her also, the dog was too good for such grim civilisation as this. And she sighed as she thought of the greenery of the woods and fields she had left behind her. And so, on and on till they reached their pitch at last. It was—somewhere, and that is all the girl knew or cared. On a piece of waste land in a neighbourhood that was mean, and all about the show—which did not open to-night—unwholesome children yelled and howled till far into the night.
Molly Muldoon came into Peggy’s caravan to comfort her, and so did wee Willie. But they only just sat and talked, for no music could be thought of to-night. This would but encourage these youthful imps, those civilised savages, to stay still longer.
“It be only for one night, lovie,” said Molly, to comfort her, “bless your sweet face, my dearie, you’ll forget all this in after days.”
But it took two whole days to load up the show for the far-northern Clyde, days of wretchedness and misery, little food by day and little sleep at night, and there was neither peace nor pleasure until the big steamer got out and away on the blue of the Channel.
The weather was fine, the sea smooth, and the vessel made excellent progress. It was the sweet time of the year, not only on the land they had left, but on the ocean too. Just a day of mal-de-mer or hardly even that, and then the young people settled down to enjoy themselves. Everything was so new and delightful to them, and the great steamer—a merchantman she was, and rarely carried passengers—seemed bent on showing herself off to the very greatest advantage. Clean and tidy she was, her flush decks ivory white both fore and aft; her dark funnel dandified with two stripes of vermilion, and she bobbed and bowed to every advancing wave as if she and they were on terms of the utmost intimacy, which was quite true, or as if she and they had never fallen out, which was not correct, only whenever they had quarrelled it had been owing to the interference of a third party—the surly wind.
The caravans had been taken off their wheels and lay—the largest amidships, with one astern of it, and one—Peggy’s—forward. All day these gipsy folks passed in and out of their caravans as if they had been on shore, but at night they were all snugly cabined or berthed below.