“’Ello,” he called, in swaggering friendly greeting to the gipsy children. But his friendliness was not returned.
“’E’s stole Helbert’s clothes.”
“You wait till my Dad ketches yer. ’E’ll wallop yer.”
“Ma! ’E’s got our Helbert’s jersey on.”
A woman appeared suddenly at the door of the caravan. She was larger and dirtier and fiercer-looking than anyone William had ever seen before. She advanced upon William, and William, forgetting his dignity as a hero of adventures, fled through the wood in terror, till he could flee no more.
Then he stopped, and discovering that the fat woman was not pursuing him, sat down and leant against a tree to rest. He took out his crumpled packet of provisions, ate one cake and put the rest back again into his pocket. He felt that his extra day had opened propitiously. He was a gipsy. William never felt happier than when he had completely shed his own identity.
He did not regret leaving the members of the gipsy encampment. He had not really liked the look of any of them. There had been something unfriendly even about Helbert. He preferred to be a gipsy on his own. He ran and leapt. He turned cart wheels. He climbed trees. He was riotously happy. He was a gipsy.
Suddenly he saw a little old man stretched out at full length beneath a tree. The little old man was watching something in the grass through a magnifying glass. On one side of him lay a notebook, on the other a large japanned tin case. William, full of curiosity, crept cautiously towards him through the grass on the other side of the tree. He peered round the tree-trunk, and the little old man looking up suddenly found William’s face within a few inches of his own.
“Sh!” said the little old man. “A rare specimen! Ah! Gone! My movement, I am afraid. Never mind. I had it under observation for quite fifteen minutes. And I have a specimen of it.”
He began to write in his notebook. Then he looked up again at William.