Alas! Harriet was right. When they reached the house, and when she
wildly enquired of Miss Ford if Ralph were anywhere about, she was met
by that astonished woman's instant denial.
"Where have you been yourself?" said Miss Ford, speaking in great
agitation. "We wondered what you and Ralph could be doing, and now you
come here without him, and--and--Dr Pyke, you have brought her! Is
anything wrong?"
"I greatly fear there is, Miss Ford," said the doctor. "Please don't
scold this poor child at present. There is no doubt she has behaved
very badly, but our immediate duty is to find the poor little fellow."
"What poor little fellow? Oh, how you terrify me," said Miss Ford.
"Little Ralph Durrant," said the doctor. "The fact is, Harriet brought
him to my house this afternoon--"
"You dared!" began Miss Ford.
"Oh yes," said the doctor; "she dared a good deal. She was very
naughty, we know that, but there's no use in thinking of her at present.
She left Ralph in my drawing-room, and when she came back for him, he
was gone."
"Oh!" said Miss Ford, "what is to be done?"
"You are certain he has not returned here?"
"Certain?" said the poor teacher; "of course I am certain. But I will
go and enquire: I will look everywhere."
Miss Ford did look. She searched the house; she questioned the maids,
she went to Ralph's own little bedroom, she even penetrated to that snug
nest where Curly Pate lay like a ball of down. Nowhere was Ralph to be
found. She came back at last, with a pale face, to the doctor.
"The child has not returned," she said. "What is to be done?"
"We must lose no time," said Dr Pyke. "Harriet--"
Harriet had seated herself on the first chair. She sat there huddled
up. There is no other word to describe her appearance. Her hat was
pushed forward over her eyes, and those eyes were red with crying. Now,
however, her great terror prevented any further flow of tears.
"Harriet," repeated the doctor, sternly.
"Yes, sir."
"You know more about Ralph than I do. Have you the least--the slightest
idea where he may have gone?"
Harriet thought of the gipsies. She remembered how she had promised
Ralph to take him to see them; how she had failed in her promise.
"Perhaps,"--she said--"oh, I don't know--but he was very much excited
about the gipsies; he may have gone to them."
"We will send at once to enquire," said Miss Ford. "We must on no
account wait until Mrs Burton returns; there is not an instant to
lose."
"I will go myself," said the doctor. "I know where their encampment is.
It is really scarcely likely that they have the child. Gipsies don't
often steal children now-a-days. We may find the little fellow
anywhere. I will also call at the police station, and get the police to
begin to search for him."
When Dr Pyke left the house, Miss Ford turned to Harriet.
"A nice sort of school-mother you have made," she said. "You don't
suppose that you will win your pony after this, you bad girl. Come with
me at once into the third form parlour, and wait there until Mrs Burton
returns. She will then decide what is to be done with you."
"I don't want any pony," suddenly sobbed Harriet. "I only want Ralph.
I know I am desperately naughty, but I don't want anything in all the
world now but Ralph."
"It is easy for you to talk like that now that you have neglected the
poor little fellow so shamefully, and disobeyed Mrs Burton's strictest
orders. Come with me at once, you bad child."
Harriet went. So subdued was she, that she did not even hate Miss Ford
for speaking to her in this way. A minute later, she found herself in
the third form special parlour. One electric light was on. It threw a
dim reflection over the scene. Harriet looked round at the familiar
objects--the table in the middle, the story-books, the globes in their
corner, the birds in their cages, and the parrot in his cage.
The small birds were all asleep. The books and toys, and tables and
chairs could not move; but the parrot was wide awake, and very much
alive. He hopped from side to side and looked hard at Harriet. At
last, he screamed in a noisy, shrill tone:
"Mind what you're about! Ha, ha! Mind what you're about! Ha, ha!"
Poor Harriet. She flung herself down on the floor and cried as though
her heart would break. She was only a little girl still, and not all
bad. That pony with his side-saddle, that perfectly made habit, all the
delights which she had sinned so deeply to obtain, would have been as
ashes now in her mouth. She only wanted Ralph now, and Ralph was far
away. Why had she behaved so badly? Oh what, what was happening?
Her agony became almost unendurable. Suddenly, she perceived that the
door of the parlour had not been shut, that it was a little ajar. Why
need she sit there? It was so awful to remain still; so frightful to do
nothing at all.
She stole softly to the door, opened it, and peeped out. There was no
one in the hall, and the hall door itself stood wide open.
"Mind what you're about. Ha, ha!" shrieked the parrot.
But Harriet was in no mood to mind. She crossed the hall on tip-toe,
rushed to the open door, drew a deep breath, and the next moment was
skimming herself, light as a bird, over the ground in the direction of
the gipsy encampment. Harriet could, indeed, run like the wind, and
never had she ran faster than on this occasion.
"It was I," she thought, "who caused him to be lost, so I will find him
again; yes, I will find him if it kills me."
Suddenly she drew up on the edge of a piece of common. Here only
yesterday, surely, were many brown tents and many brown people. Here
was this fascinating house on wheels of which she had spoken so much to
little Ralph. But now--she could not believe her eyes!
The place was empty. She could see, even by the moonlight, patches of
yellow grass which had been covered by the tents, and here and there she
could also perceive a bone or two, or a scrap of broken bread. But not
a gipsy was in sight, not a tent within view, not a dog, not a brown
baby. The gipsies had gone! Why had they gone? They were there, she
knew, that very afternoon, for she had seen the smoke curling up from
the house on wheels, as she and Ralph had gone with Pattie to the
village.
The gipsies had gone away quickly: of course they had taken Ralph with
them. Now what was she to do? She stood still in a shadowy part of the
field, and, as she did so, she distinctly heard the sound of wheels, and
listening, there floated also to her ears the sound of many voices
singing.
Her school-companions were returning from their picnic. They were
coming back, as arranged, by moonlight. They were happy: they were
enjoying themselves. Harriet distinctly heard Robina's voice above the
others. Robina had a clear voice like a bird. Her notes were very
high. They seemed to rise up as though, like the larks, they would
pierce the sky. Now they rose above the other voices in a sort of
torrent of rejoicing. Harriet dug her fingers into her ears.
"Oh, how soon they will be back!" she thought; "and they will miss him,
and they will know all about me, and oh--I can't, can't stand it! I
will follow the gipsies. I wonder where they have gone."
Harriet thought for a few minutes. The police had already been to visit
that very field. They had gone there in Dr Pyke's company, and they
were taking steps to follow the gipsies on horseback. But Harriet knew
something that the police did not know. One of the servants in the
house had long ago been a gipsy girl herself; and Harriet, who was much
fascinated by stories of the wild brown people, used to talk to this
girl when she got a chance. The girl, from time to time, imparted some
of the secrets of her people to Harriet. Amongst other things, she had
told her of the favourite resting-places of her tribe. This special
common was one. But there was another five miles away, in the very
heart of a deep wood, where they used to go when they wanted to hide
something. The police did not know of this place of refuge in the
middle of the High Woods, as they were called; but Harriet remembered it
now.
It was five miles away, and she was only a little girl, and she was
tired. But what of that if it might be her privilege to find Ralph and
bring him back? What mattered any amount of fatigue?
Cora had told her how to get to the hiding-place in the wood. She had
described how difficult it was for an ordinary person to find it, but
had given Harriet a full description of it in one of her moments of
confidence.
"We often wanted to make ourselves scarce," Cora would say, "and no one
ever yet found us there. It was a bonny enough place, too, although the
trees grew so thick around that we did not get much sunshine."
Now Harriet started on her way to the gipsies' hiding-place in the
woods. She was glad of the moonlight, and glad to avoid the road. She
crossed many fields, and by and by found herself in a lane with very,
very high hedges. The hedges were so high that she could not see a
scrap of the world on either side of her. She could only gaze at the
stars overhead, and wonder, and wonder, what was going to happen. She
might be going wrong for all she knew. But all of a sudden she saw
something shining on the road. She stooped and picked it up. It was a
child's broken rattle--the sort of thing which a gipsy child might have.
Now she felt certain that she was on the track of the runaways, and this
knowledge gave her confidence. It takes, however, a very long time for
a small girl not twelve years of age to walk five miles; and it was long
past midnight, and the moon in the sky had set, and real darkness had
come over the world before Harriet reached the entrance to the woods.
The lane in which she found herself led straight to these very woods:
and oh! if it had been dark in the lane, how black was it here. She
found her heart beating, and for a short time had not courage to go on.
But then she thought of Ralph. She thought of him so hard that he began
to fill all her little world. She wanted him so badly that no pony that
ever breathed was now of any consequence to her in comparison. Why
should she fear the creatures in the wood? She had no room in her heart
for fear.
So she moved gently forward, a little girl, all alone in the black wood!
The creatures of the wood must have wondered, and no doubt most of them
were very much afraid of her, and retired into their snug little wood
homes on her approach. But she saw none of them.
At last she came to a clearing, and in the clearing she perceived what
made her heart beat wildly. It was no less a creature than a dog. The
gipsies must be close at hand.
The dog was lying on the ground dead asleep. But when Harriet
approached, he started and growled. Harriet, led by she knew not what
instinct, immediately put her hand on his head. He quivered all over.
Whether he would have growled again or bitten her, no one can tell, but
in despair she flung herself by his side, and whispered in his ear:
"Oh, do be quiet; I am so miserable!"
No one can quite tell what dogs understand, but certainly this dog
growled no more. On the contrary, he licked Harriet's hand with his hot
tongue. She had at last found the gipsies, and she might stay where she
was until the first light of the morning. Perhaps poor Harriet slept
with her head on the dog's shaggy neck, but even she herself was not
quite sure on that point.
Early, very, very early in the morning, led by Jakes, the gipsies' dog,
she found the house on wheels. The gipsies were tired, and most of them
asleep. But when Harriet approached the dogs all barked, and of course
the gipsy men all started to their feet, and the toothless old crone
came out of the house on wheels, and pretty Flavia followed her.
"What did the little lady want?" they asked. They were all quite
inclined to be civil to the little girl.
"I want," said Harriet, "my own little boy. I am his school-mother, and
I want him back again."
"Oh Harriet! Harriet!" cried Ralph's little voice.
He popped his small head outside the house on wheels. Not even Flavia
could keep him from Harriet now. In one minute he was in her arms, and
she was kissing him--oh, with such a world of affection. Somehow, Ralph
felt a difference in her kisses, and he loved her at last, and knew that
he had not loved her at all before.
"Ralph, you must come home at once," said Harriet.
"Now, my dear," said the tall gipsy man who had lured Ralph away on the
previous night; "this little boy belongs to us, don't yer, little man?"
"No, I don't," said Ralph. "This is my school-mother, and I belong to
her."
"You had best let him come," said Harriet, "for the police are looking
for you, and you'll get into dreadful hot water if you keep the little
boy."
"We took charge of him," said the man, sulkily; but a frightened look
crossed his face when Harriet spoke of the police. "He were a poor
lonely little gent, and we took pity on him."
"They were awfu' kind to me!" said Ralph. "They're very nice gipsy
people; and see, they give me this."
He showed his basket with great pride to Harriet.
"See!" he continued, "there's things inside--a knife, and matches, and
all sorts of other things."
"That don't matter now," said Harriet. "You must come back; they're
dreadfully frightened about you at school, and so was I. Gipsy man,"
said Harriet, looking up at the tall man, "will you please saddle a
horse, and put Ralph on its back, and put me there too, for I am
dreadfully tired, and take us to Abbeyfield, and please be quick."
"When my father comes back," said Ralph, "I will talk to him about you,
gipsy man, and about you, pretty gipsy lady." Here he took Flavia's
hand. "And he shall give you money--much--and big money; and I will
come and see you again, for I love you all."
"We'd best take him back," said the man, looking at the toothless old
crone, "or we'll get into trouble with the per-lice."
"Yes," said Harriet, gravely, "and you had best be quick."
So early in the morning the children went back to the school on the
gipsy's tall horse, and the gipsy himself led them. Ralph talked all
the way back, and was very gay and very happy; and when he parted from
the gipsy man he insisted on kissing him, which surprised that person
very much.
"Good-bye, little master," he said, in rather a shamefaced way.
"Good-bye," said Ralph. "And Father will give you money: I'll see he
do."
Thus Ralph returned after his great adventure and Harriet and he went
together, side by side, into Mrs Burton's private sitting-room. There
Harriet told all.
"I don't want the pony," she said in conclusion; "and I'm not a bit fit
to be a school-mother! But I love him all the same."
"I must punish you, Harriet," said Mrs Burton. "I should not do my
duty else. For the remainder of the term, Robina will be Ralph's
school-mother; but you shall see him every day, and it remains with
Ralph himself to decide whether he loves you in future or not."
"Oh, don't I love her just this very instant-minute," said Ralph: and he
flung his arms round Harriet's neck. Thus Harriet found out what real
love meant. She found it out in her pain, the pain she had suffered
during that lonely night--she found it out also in her joy--the joy that
had come to her when she saw Ralph again.
The pony and the habit and the side-saddle did not matter a bit to
Harriet now, for she had more--the true heart of Ralph himself. Love
can destroy jealousy and all bad things in the heart. So it was with
Harriet, even though Robina became the little boy's school-mother, and
even though she won the big prize. Harriet was happy.
Book 2--CHAPTER ONE.