At last what she sought was seen, a horseman so small because of the distance that he appeared no larger than a toy going rapidly away. Sitting erect, the girl gazed down in the other direction and saw the garden city of San Seritos between the mountains and the sea.
“Ho, Binnie!” she cried, her black eyes glowing. “I know where we’ll go.—Back to that beach place where the flowers of gold are.”
And then, in the glory of the still early morning, with her black hair flying back of her, the girl in the red and yellow dress galloped down to the highway and rode around the village, that no-one might see her and arrest her because she was a gypsy.
There were but few astir at so early an hour, but the sun was high in the heavens when at last she reached the little ravine that led down to the sea.
This time she breakfasted alone in the shadow of the high hedge, and the shining white birds did not come.
“Perhaps they only came for little Tirol,” she thought. Then springing up, she stretched her arms toward the gleaming blue sky as she said: “I do want little Tirol to be happy.”
This was an impulse and not a prayer, for the gypsies had no religion, and Nan knew nothing really of the heaven of the gorigo.
Then, telling Binnie to wait for her she opened the gate and entered the garden. The masses of golden and scarlet bloom, the glistening of many colors in the fountain, the joyous song of birds in the red-berried pepper trees fascinated the gypsy girl, and she danced about like some wild thing, up and down the garden paths, pausing now and then to press her cheek passionately against a big yellow crysanthemum that stood nearly as tall as she, and to it she would murmur lovingly in strange Romany words.
She was following a path which she and Tirol had not found, suddenly she paused and listened. She had heard voices, and peering through the low hanging branches of an ornamental tree, she saw a pretty cottage by the side of great iron gates that stood ajar. Here lived the head gardener and his little family. A buxum, kindly faced young woman was talking to a small girl of seven.
“Now, Bertha, watch Bobbie careful,” she was saying. “Mammy is going up to the big house. The grand ladies is comin’ home today an’ every-thin’ must be spic and ready.”