The girl, the child, and the dog found themselves in a comparatively strange country—Annie had completely lost her bearings. She looked around her for some sign of the gipsies’ encampment; but whether she had really gone a greater distance than she imagined in those underground vaults, or whether the tents were hidden in some hollow of the ground, she did not know; she was only conscious that she was in a strange country, that Nan was clinging to her and crying for her breakfast, and that Tiger was sniffing the air anxiously. Annie guessed that Tiger could take them back to the camp, but this was by no means her wish. When she emerged out of the underground passage she was conscious for the first time of a strange and unknown experience. Absolute terror seized the brave child: she trembled from head to foot, her head ached violently, and the ground on which she stood seemed to reel, and the sky to turn round. She sat down for a moment on the green grass. What ailed her? where was she? how could she get home? Nan’s little piteous wail, “Me want my bekfas’, me want my nursie, me want Hetty,” almost irritated her.
“Oh, Nan,” she said at last piteously, “have you not got your own Annie? Oh, Nan, dear little Nan, Annie feels so ill!”
Nan had the biggest and softest of baby hearts—breakfast, nurse, Hetty, were all forgotten in the crowning desire to comfort Annie. She climbed on her knee and stroked her face and kissed her lips.
“’Oo better now?” she said in a tone of baby inquiry.
Annie roused herself with a great effort.
“Yes, darling,” she said; “we will try and get home. Come, Tiger. Tiger, dear, I don’t want to go back to the gipsies; take me the other way—take me to Oakley.”
Tiger again sniffed the air, looked anxiously at Annie, and trotted on in front. Little Nan in her ragged gipsy clothes walked sedately by Annie’s side.
“Where ’oo s’oes?” she said, pointing to the girl’s bare feet.
“Gone, Nan—gone. Never mind, I’ve got you. My little treasure, my little love, you’re safe at last.”
As Annie tottered, rather than walked, down a narrow path which led directly through a field of standing corn, she was startled by the sudden apparition of a bright-eyed girl, who appeared so suddenly in her path that she might have been supposed to have risen out of the very ground.