Whitney nodded to her, and we pursued our way. I had been looking at the little girl, who had drawn shyly up to gaze at us. She was fair as a lily, with a sweet face and eyes blue as the sky.
“What humbugs they are!” exclaimed Whitney, alluding to gipsies and tramps in general. “As to this young woman, I should say she’s going off her head!”
“Do you know her husband?”
“Don’t know him from Adam. Johnny, I hope that’s not a stolen child! Fair as she is, she can’t be the woman’s: there’s nothing of the gipsy in her composition.”
“How well the gipsy appears to speak! With quite a refined accent.”
“Gipsies often do, I’ve heard. Let us get on.”
What with this adventure, and dawdling, and taking a wrong turn or two, it was past one o’clock when we got in, and they were laying the cloth for dinner. The green, mossy glade, with the sheltering trees around, the banks and the dells, the ferns and wild-flowers, made a picture of a retreat on a broiling day. The table (some boards, brought from the Hall, and laid on trestles) stood in the middle of the grass; and Helen and Anna Whitney, in their green-and-white muslins, were just as busy as bees placing the dishes upon it. Lady Whitney (with a face redder than beetroot) helped them: she liked to be always doing something. Miss Cattledon and the mater were pacing the dell below, and Miss Deveen sat talking with the Squire and Sir John.
“Have they not got here?” exclaimed William.
“Have who not got here?” retorted Helen.
“Todhetley and the boys.”