The Little School-Mothers

by L. T. Meade

Harriet thought for a few minutes. The police had already been to visit that very field. They had gone there in Dr Pyke’s company, and they were taking steps to follow the gipsies on horseback. But Harriet knew something that the police did not know. One of the servants in the house had long ago been a gipsy girl herself; and Harriet, who was much fascinated by stories of the wild brown people, used to talk to this girl when she got a chance. The girl, from time to time, imparted some of the secrets of her people to Harriet. Amongst other things, she had told her of the favourite resting-places of her tribe. This special common was one. But there was another five miles away, in the very heart of a deep wood, where they used to go when they wanted to hide something. The police did not know of this place of refuge in the middle of the High Woods, as they were called; but Harriet remembered it now.

It was five miles away, and she was only a little girl, and she was tired. But what of that if it might be her privilege to find Ralph and bring him back? What mattered any amount of fatigue?

Cora had told her how to get to the hiding-place in the wood. She had described how difficult it was for an ordinary person to find it, but had given Harriet a full description of it in one of her moments of confidence.

“We often wanted to make ourselves scarce,” Cora would say, “and no one ever yet found us there. It was a bonny enough place, too, although the trees grew so thick around that we did not get much sunshine.”

Now Harriet started on her way to the gipsies’ hiding-place in the woods. She was glad of the moonlight, and glad to avoid the road. She crossed many fields, and by and by found herself in a lane with very, very high hedges. The hedges were so high that she could not see a scrap of the world on either side of her. She could only gaze at the stars overhead, and wonder, and wonder, what was going to happen. She might be going wrong for all she knew. But all of a sudden she saw something shining on the road. She stooped and picked it up. It was a child’s broken rattle—the sort of thing which a gipsy child might have.

Now she felt certain that she was on the track of the runaways, and this knowledge gave her confidence. It takes, however, a very long time for a small girl not twelve years of age to walk five miles; and it was long past midnight, and the moon in the sky had set, and real darkness had come over the world before Harriet reached the entrance to the woods.

The lane in which she found herself led straight to these very woods: and oh! if it had been dark in the lane, how black was it here. She found her heart beating, and for a short time had not courage to go on. But then she thought of Ralph. She thought of him so hard that he began to fill all her little world. She wanted him so badly that no pony that ever breathed was now of any consequence to her in comparison. Why should she fear the creatures in the wood? She had no room in her heart for fear.

So she moved gently forward, a little girl, all alone in the black wood! The creatures of the wood must have wondered, and no doubt most of them were very much afraid of her, and retired into their snug little wood homes on her approach. But she saw none of them.

At last she came to a clearing, and in the clearing she perceived what made her heart beat wildly. It was no less a creature than a dog. The gipsies must be close at hand.

The dog was lying on the ground dead asleep. But when Harriet approached, he started and growled. Harriet, led by she knew not what instinct, immediately put her hand on his head. He quivered all over. Whether he would have growled again or bitten her, no one can tell, but in despair she flung herself by his side, and whispered in his ear: