"Well, well, you aint a-goin' to have her," said Mother Rodesia. "I'm goin' to ask thirty shillin's for her and thirty shillin's for the boy. That'll be three pund—not a bad night's work; eh, Jack?"
"No," replied Jack; but then he continued after a pause, "You'll tell him, won't you, mother, to be good to the children. I wouldn't like to think that little 'un was treated cruel, and her sperit broke—she has got a fine sperit, bless her; I wouldn't like it to be broke. I don't care for the little boy. There's nothing in 'im."
"Well, stop talking now," said Mother Rodesia. "They must be missed at the Rectory by this time, and they'll be sendin' people out to look for 'em. It's a rare stroke of luck that nobody knows that we are camping in the Fairy Dell, for if they did they would be sure to come straight to us, knowin' that poor gypsies is always supposed to kidnap children. Now, Jack, you just hold the pony as still as you can, and I'll slip the clothes off the pair of 'em."
Little Diana, in her deep sleep, was not at all disturbed when stout hands lifted her away from Orion, and when she lay stretched out flat on a large lap. One by one her clothes were untied and slipped off her pretty little body, and some very ugly, sack-like garments substituted in their place. Diana had only a dim feeling in her dreams that mother was back again, and was undressing her, and that she was very glad to get into bed. And when the same process of undressing took place on little Orion, he was still sounder asleep and still more indifferent to the fact that he was turned sometimes over on his face, and sometimes on his back, and that his pretty, dainty clothes, which his own mother had bought for him, were removed, never to be worn by him again.
"Now, then," said Mother Rodesia, when she had laid the two children back again upon the straw, "when they awake, and if Ben is not there, we must dye their faces with walnut juice; but we can't begin that now, for they are sure to howl a good bit, and if folks are near, they will hear them and come to the rescue. Jack, have you got that spade 'andy?"
The man, without a word, lifted a portion of the straw in the cart, and took out a spade.
"That's right," said the woman. "You make a deep hole under that tree, and put all the clothes in. Bury 'em well. I'll rescue 'em and pawn 'em myself when we go to the West of England in the winter, but for the present they must stay under ground. See, I'll wrap 'em up in this good piece of stout brown paper, and then perhaps they won't get much spoiled."
Jack took the little bundle (there were the soft, pretty socks, the neat little shoes, even the ribbon with which Diana's hair was tied), and twisted them all up into a bundle. Then his mother wrapped the bundle in the piece of brown paper, and gave it to him to bury.
This being done the pony was once more whipped up, and the cart proceeded at a rapid rate. They were now on the highroad, and going in the direction of a large town. The town was called Maplehurst. It was fifteen miles away from the Rectory of Super-Ashton.
Little Diana slept on and on, and the sun was beginning to send faint rays of light into the eastern sky, when at last she opened her eyes.