“Now get up there,” said the lady who was the leader. “We shall walk across the fields and join you later. You understand where you are to wait for us, William?”
She came nearer and shouted, “You understand, William?”
William nodded ambiguously. “’Ent a Vool,” he said.
The ladies departed. “You’ll be all right, Dick,” cried the actress kindly.
He sat up where he had been put, trying to look as Orphan Dick as possible after all that had occurred.
§ 7
“Do you know the wind on the heath—have you lived the Gypsy life? Have you spoken, wanderers yourselves, with ‘Romany chi and Romany chal’ on the wind-swept moors at home or abroad? Have you tramped the broad highways, and, at close of day, pitched your tent near a running stream and cooked your supper by starlight over a fire of pinewood? Do you know the dreamless sleep of the wanderer at peace with himself and all the world?”
For most of us the answer to these questions of the Amateur Camping Club is in the negative.
Yet every year the call of the road, the Borrovian glamour, draws away a certain small number of the imaginative from the grosser comforts of a complex civilization, takes them out into tents and caravans and intimate communion with nature, and, incidentally, with various ingenious appliances designed to meet the needs of cooking in a breeze. It is an adventure to which high spirits and great expectations must be brought, it is an experience in proximity which few friendships survive—and altogether very great fun.
The life of breezy freedom resolves itself in practice chiefly into washing up and an anxious search for permission to camp. One learns how rich and fruitful our world can be in bystanders, and how easy it is to forget essential groceries....