“But they seem to be very pleasant persons,” Tess rejoined decidedly.
The children ran away from them. Perhaps they had been ordered to by the older Gypsies. By and by Tess, at least, grew somewhat worried when they did not find either of the women who had sold them the yellow and green basket. Dot, secretly, hoped the two in question had gone away.
Suddenly, however, the two Kenway girls came face to face with somebody they did know. But so astonished were they by this discovery that for a long minute neither could believe her eyes!
“Sammy Pinkney!” gasped Tess at last.
“It—ain’t—never!” murmured the smaller girl.
The figure which had tried to dodge around the end of a motor van to escape observation looked nothing at all like the Sammy Pinkney the Kenway girls had formerly known. Never in their experience of Sammy—not even when he had slipped down the chimney at the old Corner House and landed on the hearth, a very sooty Santa Claus—had the boy looked so disgracefully ragged and dirty.
“Well, what’s the matter with me?” he demanded defiantly.
“Why—why there looks to be most everything the matter with you, Sammy Pinkney,” declared Tess, with disgust. “What do you s’pose your mother would say to you?”
“I ain’t going home to find out,” said Sammy.
“And—and your pants are all tored,” gasped Dot.