“Sugar-plum must be tired,” observed Lilly.
“Let us walk our ponies home.”
“No, I hate everything slow,” cried Ralph, hastening on the pony. “If the beast can’t go he won’t suit me, and so he shall soon find who is master.”
Lilly again entreated him to pull up, but he would not listen to her. At some distance before them appeared a figure in a red cloak. Lilly perceived that it was an old gipsy woman with a child at her back. In a copse by the road-side there was a cart with a tent and a fire before it, from which ascended into the clear calm air a thin column of smoke. The old woman was making her way towards the camp, not hearing apparently the tramp of the pony’s hoofs.
“Take care, take care, Ralph,” cried Lilly; “you will ride over that poor old woman if you gallop on.”
“I don’t care if I do,” said Ralph, angry at being spoken to. “She’s only a wretched old gipsy woman.”
“A fellow-creature,” answered Lilly. “Oh, Ralph, take care.”
Ralph galloped on till his pony was close up to the old woman, at a spot where the ground was rough, and there was a somewhat steep descent. He could scarcely have intended actually to ride over the old woman. Just then she heard the pony’s hoofs strike the ground close behind her. She started on one side, and the pony dashed on, shying as he did so. The animal’s foot at that moment struck against a piece of hard clay, and already almost exhausted, down he came, throwing his rider to a considerable distance over his head on the ground. Lilly slipped off her well-trained little pony, which stood perfectly still while she ran to her cousin’s assistance. Ralph’s countenance was pale as death. He groaned heavily, and was evidently much hurt. His pony, as soon as it got up, trotted off to a distance to avoid the beating its young master might have bestowed.
Lilly cried out to the old gipsy woman, who, although she could not hear, saw and understood her gestures. The old woman stood at a distance gazing at the scene, and then slowly and unwillingly came back. Lilly, as she watched Ralph’s countenance, became more and more alarmed. She endeavoured, by every gesture she could make use of, to intimate that she wanted assistance. The old woman knelt down by the lad, and putting her hand on his brow, and then on his arm, gave a grunt, and rising with more agility than could have been expected, hobbled off towards the gipsy camp. Lilly would have run on herself for help, but she dared not leave her cousin on the ground, lest a carriage coming rapidly down the hill might run over him. She anxiously watched the old woman as she approached the tent. No one came forth, and she feared that all the gipsies might be absent, and that no help could be procured. She was herself, in the meantime, not idle. She placed Ralph’s head on her lap, loosened his neckerchief, and chafed his temples, but her efforts were vain; he still remained unconscious, and she fancied that he was growing rather worse than better. Lilly knew that she could not lift him, though she longed to be able to carry him even as far as the green bank by the road-side. She was in despair, and could not refrain from bursting into tears. At last a thin dark man, with long elf-locks, accompanied by two boys as wild-looking as he was, and still more ragged, came running up.