Her agony became almost unendurable. Suddenly, she perceived that the door of the parlour had not been shut, that it was a little ajar. Why need she sit there? It was so awful to remain still; so frightful to do nothing at all.
She stole softly to the door, opened it, and peeped out. There was no one in the hall, and the hall door itself stood wide open.
“Mind what you’re about. Ha, ha!” shrieked the parrot.
But Harriet was in no mood to mind. She crossed the hall on tip-toe, rushed to the open door, drew a deep breath, and the next moment was skimming herself, light as a bird, over the ground in the direction of the gipsy encampment. Harriet could, indeed, run like the wind, and never had she ran faster than on this occasion.
“It was I,” she thought, “who caused him to be lost, so I will find him again; yes, I will find him if it kills me.”
Suddenly she drew up on the edge of a piece of common. Here only yesterday, surely, were many brown tents and many brown people. Here was this fascinating house on wheels of which she had spoken so much to little Ralph. But now—she could not believe her eyes!
The place was empty. She could see, even by the moonlight, patches of yellow grass which had been covered by the tents, and here and there she could also perceive a bone or two, or a scrap of broken bread. But not a gipsy was in sight, not a tent within view, not a dog, not a brown baby. The gipsies had gone! Why had they gone? They were there, she knew, that very afternoon, for she had seen the smoke curling up from the house on wheels, as she and Ralph had gone with Pattie to the village.
The gipsies had gone away quickly: of course they had taken Ralph with them. Now what was she to do? She stood still in a shadowy part of the field, and, as she did so, she distinctly heard the sound of wheels, and listening, there floated also to her ears the sound of many voices singing.
Her school-companions were returning from their picnic. They were coming back, as arranged, by moonlight. They were happy: they were enjoying themselves. Harriet distinctly heard Robina’s voice above the others. Robina had a clear voice like a bird. Her notes were very high. They seemed to rise up as though, like the larks, they would pierce the sky. Now they rose above the other voices in a sort of torrent of rejoicing. Harriet dug her fingers into her ears.
“Oh, how soon they will be back!” she thought; “and they will miss him, and they will know all about me, and oh—I can’t, can’t stand it! I will follow the gipsies. I wonder where they have gone.”