“Oh, do be quiet; I am so miserable!”
No one can quite tell what dogs understand, but certainly this dog growled no more. On the contrary, he licked Harriet’s hand with his hot tongue. She had at last found the gipsies, and she might stay where she was until the first light of the morning. Perhaps poor Harriet slept with her head on the dog’s shaggy neck, but even she herself was not quite sure on that point.
Early, very, very early in the morning, led by Jakes, the gipsies’ dog, she found the house on wheels. The gipsies were tired, and most of them asleep. But when Harriet approached the dogs all barked, and of course the gipsy men all started to their feet, and the toothless old crone came out of the house on wheels, and pretty Flavia followed her.
“What did the little lady want?” they asked. They were all quite inclined to be civil to the little girl.
“I want,” said Harriet, “my own little boy. I am his school-mother, and I want him back again.”
“Oh Harriet! Harriet!” cried Ralph’s little voice.
He popped his small head outside the house on wheels. Not even Flavia could keep him from Harriet now. In one minute he was in her arms, and she was kissing him—oh, with such a world of affection. Somehow, Ralph felt a difference in her kisses, and he loved her at last, and knew that he had not loved her at all before.
“Ralph, you must come home at once,” said Harriet.
“Now, my dear,” said the tall gipsy man who had lured Ralph away on the previous night; “this little boy belongs to us, don’t yer, little man?”
“No, I don’t,” said Ralph. “This is my school-mother, and I belong to her.”