“But say!” Sammy Pinkney whispered to Neale in an awestruck voice, “you know how the Gypsies do when they steal kids, don’t you? They stain ’em with walnut juice and you can’t tell ’em then from their own kids.”
“Well, I guess we should know Tess and Dot, if they were stained as black as Petunia Blossom’s pickaninnies,” snorted Neale. “The little girls aren’t in this bunch, for sure!”
Meanwhile the constable had shown his star to King David Stanley and explained the errand they were here upon. The chief Gypsy vigorously denied having seen the lost children—as indeed he had not at that time—but he promised to look for them and have the tribe look in that vicinity immediately after breakfast.
“And if we find them you shall learn of it at once, young sir,” the big Gypsy assured Neale. “I will myself bring you word at the village where you are stopping.”
He spoke very good English, did the king, and seemed to be really sympathetic. But Neale O’Neil turned the automobile about, and with anxious heart drove back to Arbutusville.
They made him go to bed, once he arrived at the lodging where the older girls and Mrs. Heard were staying. Neale was completely worn out, and even Agnes refrained from letting him see how troubled and distraught they all were because of his non-success in finding Tess and Dot. Therefore, Neale was sound asleep when a man wearing brown velveteen and with gold rings in his ears rattled into town in a ramshackle old buggy, but behind a high-stepping horse. It was King David Stanley, and he hunted out Constable Munro at once and told him that the two lost children had been found and had been brought into the Gypsy camp.
Not being entirely sure that Tess and Dot were the two in which the automobile party were interested, the chief of the Romany tribe had judged it better to bring the news rather than the children.
“You know how our people are sometimes looked upon by the Gentiles,” he said gravely. “If I had taken the little girls away from the camp, and their friends had appeared there, asking for them, my act in removing them would look suspicious.”
“You’re an all-right feller, if ye be a Gyp.,” declared Mr. Munro, and he took King David over to the lodging where the automobile party was staying.
By this time the girls and Mrs. Heard were in the lowest depths of despair. Ruth was even seriously discussing sending a telegram to Mr. Howbridge.