"Ay, good mother, tell us! What?"
But what the good mother had to tell we must leave to the next chapter.
[CHAPTER XIV]
OLD MEMORIES AND A NEW IDEA
"SHE lost her little one when it was six months old," answered the old woman, "and she was grieving and pining, and well-nigh heart-broken, when one day le bon Dieu sent her, in a strange, unlooked-for way, another child!"
"How so, Sophie? Tell us, good mother!"
The old woman went on:
"It was like this, my friends. The gipsy troupe into which my daughter Marie married, were encamped one day on a common, and thither came a lad with an infant in his arms. Towards evening, he sauntered up to the camp and met Marie, and asked her if she would take care of the baby for a while, he having business elsewhere. Marie gladly took the child, having no thought then but to give it back when its young guardian returned.
"But night came on, and the old gipsy chief gave the word to move on, and the boy had not returned. And then arose the great longing in Marie's heart to keep the baby boy—did I say it was a boy?—to comfort her for the loss of her own infant. She yielded to the temptation, and the troupe left the neighbourhood that night, the stranger child with them, and Marie's sore heart has healed now she has a little one in her arms again. Albeit she writes me that she cannot but think sometimes of the child's mother, who may be sorrowing even yet over the loss of her baby."
During the story Tad clutched Phil's arm.