"In my foolishness, my daughter, I sits like a stone, and he springs to his feet, and snatches up his things, and says, 'Good-bye, old gipsy woman, and thank you very much. I should like to stay with you,' he says, 'but Nurse is calling me, and Mother does get so frightened if I am long away and she doesn't know where. But I shall come back.'
"I never quite knows, my daughter, whether it was the echo that repeated his words, or whether it was my own voice I hears, as I stretches my old arms after him, crying, 'Come back!'
"But he runs off shouting, 'Coming, coming!'
"And the wood deafens me, it is so full of voices.
"Christian! Christian!—Coming! Coming!
"And I thinks I has some kind of a fit, my daughter, for when I wakes, the wood is as still as death, and he is gone, as dreams goes."
CHAPTER V.
"I really feel for the tinker-mother," whispered Mrs. Hedgehog.