“I hate music—that kind, anyway. It’s like the croaking of a frog. I would rather dance if I wasn’t so lame and my arms so sore.”
“Come along, then; playing a while will cure you, I guess. You have got most too smart since you ran away and stole your livin’ from the white ladies.”
“I didn’t steal it; they gave it to me, and didn’t whip me either.”
“Then they didn’t give you what you deserved; but let me tell you, you’ll not get a chance to get away again very soon,” said the old gypsy, with a grin that made her fairly hideous.
Zula made no reply, but as she arose to her feet, scarcely able to stand at all, she was making a strong resolution in regard to a secret that a second party did not possess. Some day she would execute the plan which she had laid out, but she must work with the utmost caution. She was only a gypsy, which fact she 64 fully realized, but there was something away in the distant future that her heart cried out for, and she would reach out until she could grasp it, if she died in the attempt. She was a gypsy, and she knew she could never be a fine lady, but she might find a way out of this terrible darkness and find at least a break in the clouds, if not the broad open sunshine in which she thought many a one lived.
She had made a resolution to escape from Crisp, but how was it to be done? She had more than half made up her mind that could she get back to Mrs. Platts, she would tell her all about her mother, and all the trouble she had gone through, but in that case they would know she was a gypsy, and the thought caused a blush of shame to pass over her face.
When the dance was over she put away the guitar with painfully tired arms and an aching heart. When she saw Crisp, as he moved about, cast exultant glances at her, and saw her mother watching her every movement, then was her resolution formed, not to be changed, for let come what would, hardships, torture, or even death, nothing should change her purpose. She would escape, and as she sat quietly working with her beads, making many pretty articles for sale, her brain was working more briskly than her fingers, trying to devise a means of escape.