“Oh, clip it, then; clip it away. I want to be quite the real thing. Have you got a pair of scissors?”
The girl ran back to the tent, and presently returned to shear poor Annie’s beautiful hair in truly rough fashion.
“Now, miss, you look much more like, only your arms are a bit too white. Stay, we has got some walnut-juice; we was just a-using of it. I’ll touch you up fine, miss.”
So she did, darkening Annie’s brown skin to a real gipsy tone.
“You’re, a dear, good girl,” said Annie, in conclusion; and as the girl’s father called her roughly at this moment, she was obliged to go away, looking ungainly enough in the English child’s neat clothes.
Chapter Forty One.
Disguised.
Annie ran out of the field, mounted the stile which led into the wood, and stood there until the gipsy man and girl, and the boy with the donkey, had finally disappeared. Then she left her hiding-place, and taking her little gingham bag out of the long grass, secured it once more in the front of her dress. She felt queer and uncomfortable in her new dress, and the gipsy girl’s heavy shoes tired her feet; but she was not to be turned from her purpose by any manner of discomforts, and she started bravely on her long trudge over the dusty roads, for her object was to follow the gipsies to their next encampment, about ten miles away. She had managed, with some tact, to obtain a certain amount of information from the delighted gipsy girl. The girl told Annie that she was very glad they were going from here; that this was a very dull place, and that they would not have stayed so long but for Mother Rachel, who for some reasons of her own, had refused to stir.