Gypsy Nan clapped her hands. “And we’ll ride a race on the hard sand close to the sea.”
“Great!” ejaculated the lad. “That will be two weeks from to-day. I’ll have to order my portion of beefsteak and mashed potatoes doubled, I guess.” Then he added with a merry twinkle, “Promise me that you’ll wear the gypsy-looking dress.”
“Oh, I will,” Nan cried, “for I love it.” Then she added, “Robert Widdemere, you don’t believe that I am truly a gypsy, do you?”
The lad shook his head and his brown eyes were laughing. “Why, of course not Lady Red Bird! Gypsies are interesting enough, in their way, but they are not like you. They are thieves—”
The girl sprang up from the stump on which she had been seated, and her eyes flashed. “They are not all thieves, Robert Widdemere,” she cried, “and many of them are just as good and kind as gorigo could be. Manna Lou was a beautiful young gypsy woman long ago, when I first remember her, and she could have had a much happier life if she had hot chosen of her own free will to care for that poor little cripple boy Tirol, and for the motherless Nan. I wish I had not run away from the caravan now. I hate the gorigo, who always call my people thieves!” Then turning to the amazed and speechless lad, she inquired with flashing eyes, “Are there no thieves among your people? Indeed there are, but they are not all called thieves! My Manna Lou taught me not to steal, and I have never taken even a flower that did not belong to me. I’m going back, Robert Widdemere! I’m going back to Manna Lou.”
The girl burst into a passion of tears as she turned toward the gate. The lad, deeply touched, forgetting his weakness, was at her side and placing a hand on her arm, he implored, “Oh Lady Red Bird, forgive me. I see now how wrong it is to condemn a whole race because of the few. Promise me that you won’t go back. It is knowing you that has helped me to get well, and if you go away, I will be lonelier than ever.”
The boy had returned to his chair and he looked suddenly pale and tired. Nan’s heart was touched, and she said, “Robert Widdemere, now that you know I am really a gypsy, do you still care for my friendship?”
“I care more to be your friend, than for anything else in the whole world,” the lad said sincerely.
“Then I’ll not go back to the caravan,” she promised, a smile flashing through the tears. “Goodbye, Robert Widdemere. I’ll come again tomorrow.”
These two little dreamed that the nurse, Miss Squeers, hidden behind a clump of shrubbery, had seen and heard all that had passed, nor could they know that upon returning to the house, she had at once written to the lad’s mother.