“Senseless little thing!” cried Bill: and sat down to his tea again.
“But what a pretty child it was!” observed the mater. “She put me in mind of Lena.”
“Why, Lena’s oceans of years older,” said Helen, free with her remarks as usual. “That child, from the glimpse I caught of her, can’t be more than five or six.”
“She is about seven, miss,” struck in Rednal’s wife, who had just come up with a fresh supply of tea. “It is nigh upon eight years since young Walter North went off and got married.”
“Walter North!” repeated Sir John. “Who’s Walter North? Let me see? The name seems familiar to me.”
“Old Walter North was the parish schoolmaster over at Easton, sir. The son turned out wild and unsteady; and at the time his father died he went off and joined the gipsies. They had used to encamp about here more than they do now, as Rednal could tell you, Sir John; and it was said young North was in love with a girl belonging to the tribe—Bertha Lee. Any way, they got married. Right-down beautiful she was—for a gipsy; and so young.”
“Then I suppose North and his wife are here now—if that’s their child?” remarked Sir John.
“They are here sure enough, sir; somewhere in the wood. Rednal has seen him about this day or two past. Two or three times they’ll be here, pestering, during the summer, and stop ten or twelve days. Maybe young North has a hankering after the old spots he was brought up in, and comes to see ’em,” suggestively added Rednal’s wife; whose tongue ran faster than any other two women’s put together. And that’s saying something.
“And how does this young North get a living?” asked Sir John. “By poaching?—and rifling the poultry-yards?”
“Like enough he do, Sir John. Them tramps have mostly light fingers.”