“Oh, you darling father!” said Firefly, “you darling, you darling! let me kiss you once again. There, now I’m happy!”
“But tell me where the others are, dear child.”
“Just a little way off. We did get so tired, and Helen said that Polly must have gone on the moor, and she said she must and would follow her.”
“We were so tired,” said Bunny.
“And there was a great nail running into my heel,” explained Bob.
“So we sat down here, and tried to pretend we were gipsies,” continued Firefly. “The moon was shining, and that was a little wee bit of comfort, but we didn’t like it much. Father, it isn’t much fun being a gipsy, is it?”
“No, dear; but go on. How long is it since you parted from the others?”
“Half an hour; but it’s all right. Bunny, you can tell that part.”
Bunny puffed himself out, and tried to speak in his most important manner.
“Nell gave me the dog-whistle,” he said, “and I was to whistle it if it was real necessary, not by no means else. I didn’t fancy that I was a gipsy. I thought perhaps I was the driver of a fly, and that when I blew my whistle Nell would be like another driver coming to me. That’s what I thought,” concluded Bunny. But as his metaphors were always extremely mixed and confusing, no one listened to him.