There is an old saying that, “What is born in the grain is shown in the fruit.” No sooner had Ralph Clavering recovered his physical strength than he was himself again in all other respects, or even still more dictatorial and abusive if any one offended him than before. At first Lilly was in despair. At last she recollected her own motto, “We must try before we can succeed.”
“Yes, I will try again, and very hard before I give it up in despair.”
The winter had been very severe, and numbers of labourers had been thrown out of work. Ralph was allowed at first only to drive out in the carriage. One day as he was waiting in the porch, filled with the warm sunshine, for his luxurious vehicle to come to the door, two ragged objects were seen approaching up the avenue. One was a thin and tall dark man, the other was a lad of the same foreign complexion. A frown gathered on Ralph’s brow as he saw them. “What do you want here, you fellows?” he shouted out.
“Food and money to pay the doctor, young master,” answered the man, coming up to the floor. “The rest of the family are down with sickness camped in Fouley Copse, and they’ll die if they don’t get help.”
“Then you are gipsies, and we don’t encourage gipsies,” said Ralph.
“You wouldn’t let us die, young master, would you?” asked the man, humbly.
“No fear of that, I’m up to you,” cried Ralph, growing angry. “Be off with you.”
“I’ve always heard that one good turn deserves another, and believed it too, gipsy though I am, but I am not likely to get it this time,” said the man, eyeing Ralph with a glance of contempt.
Just then Lilly, hearing her cousin speaking loudly, came to the hall door. No sooner did she see the man than she exclaimed, “Why, that is the kind gipsy who carried you to Dame Harvey’s cottage, and would take no reward. What is it you want, poor man? Tell us, that we may do what we can.”
The gipsy repeated his previous story.