THE ADVENTURE OF THE LOST BABY
They entered Cheltenham at about half-past eleven, and were having
lunch on the top of Leckhampton Hill, on the other side of it, by
half-past one. Robert had not allowed any stop in Cheltenham except for
shopping. "We don't want towns," he said, "except historic ones."
"But this is historic," said Jack; "Jessop was at school here."
The pull up Leckhampton Hill was very stiff, and they were all glad to
take lunch easily, and since Robert had arranged a short day--only
three or four miles more, to a very nice-looking spot on the other side
of Birdlip--they rested with clear consciences; and, as it happened,
rested again in the Birdlip Hotel, where they had tea in the garden
overlooking the Severn Valley on the top of just such a precipice as
Bredon.
It was half-past three before they started again on their next five
miles, and they had done about three of them, and had just passed
Teddington, when Gregory, who was walking with Kink beside Moses,
suddenly dashed ahead towards a bundle which was lying in the middle of
the road.
He bent down over it, and then began to shriek for the others to come
too.
"What is it?" cried Jack, as they raced up.
"It's a baby!" Gregory said, wild with excitement. "A real baby!"
Janet, who had been behind, sprang forward as she heard these
remarkable words, and easily reached the bundle first.
"So it is," she exclaimed, picking it tenderly up and opening the wraps
round its face.
It was a swarthy mite, very tightly bound into its clothes.
"What an extraordinary thing!" said Mary. "Fancy finding a baby on the
road!"
"It has probably been abandoned," said Hester. "Very likely it is of
noble birth, and was stolen by gipsies and stained brown, and now they
are afraid of pursuit and have left it."
"How could it be of noble birth?" Gregory asked. "Look how hideous it
is!"
"Looks have nothing to do with high lineage," said Hester. "There have
been very ugly kings."
"It isn't hideous," said Janet. "It's a perfect darling. But what are
we to do with it?"
"If it's a boy," said Gregory, "let's keep it and make it into a
long-stop. We want one badly." (Gregory, as I have said, hated
fielding.)
"Let's adopt it," said Hester. "Mother often says how she wishes we
were still babies."
"Don't let's adopt it if it's a girl," said Gregory.
"It doesn't matter what a baby is," said Hester,--"whether it's a boy
or a girl. The important thing is that it's a baby. When it gets too
big, we can let it go."
"I'm dreadfully afraid," said Janet, "that we shall have to try to find
out whose it is and give it back now."
"Well," said Mary, "we needn't try too hard, need we?"
"How are you going to try, anyway?" Jack asked, with some scorn. "You
can't stop everyone you see and say, 'Have you lost a baby?' This old
man just coming along, for instance."
"Wouldn't a good way," said Robert, "be to write a little placard:
FOUND, A BABY.
Inquire Within.
and stick it on the caravan?"
They liked that idea, but Janet suggested that it would be best to ask
Kink first.
"There's only one thing to do," said Kink, "and that is to hand it over
to the police at the next place we come to."
"Police again!" said Horace. "You're always talking of the police."
"Well," said Kink, "that's what they're for. And if you think a moment
or two, you'll all see what a trouble a baby would be. We shall reach
Oxenton in a little while, and we can leave the baby there."
But, as it happened, they had no need to, for there suddenly appeared
before them a caravan covered with baskets which was being urged
towards them by a young woman who tugged at the horse's head in a kind
of frenzy. As she drew nearer they could hear that she was wailing.
"It must be her baby," said Janet, holding the bundle up; but the woman
did not see it, and Janet told Jack to run on quickly and meet her, and
tell her that they had the baby and it was not hurt.
Jack did so, and the woman left the horse to be cared for by the man
and boy who walked behind, and ran to Janet, and seized the bundle from
her, and hugged it so tightly that the baby, for the first time,
uttered a little cry.
"Where did you find it?" the gipsy woman asked; and Janet told her the
story.
"It must have rolled out of the van while I was in front with the
horse," said the gipsy. "We didn't miss it. We've had to come back
three miles at least."
By this time the two caravans had met, and the man was brought up by
the woman and told the story, and they all expressed their gratitude to
Janet for nursing the child so kindly.
"Bless your pretty heart!" the gipsy woman said again and again, while
her husband asked if there was anything that they could do for her and
her party.
"I don't think so," said Janet. "We liked to take care of it, of
course."
The gipsy man asked a number of questions about the Slowcoach, and then
suggested that he should show them a good place to camp, and make their
fire for them, and he added: "I'll tell you what--you all come and have
supper with us. I'll bet you've talked about playing at gipsies often
enough; well, we'll get a real gipsy supper--a slap-up one. What's the
time?"
He looked at the sun. "Nearly five. Well, we'll have supper at
half-past seven, and we'll do you proud. Will you come?"
Janet considered.
"Of course, Janet," said Robert.
"Why don't you say yes?" said Gregory.
Hester shrank a little towards the Slowcoach, and Janet went to talk to
Kink.
She came back and thanked the gipsy, but said that they would not all
come, but the boys would gladly do so.
"I'm sorry you won't be there," said the man. "But we'll give the young
gents a square meal--and tasty, too! Something to relish! What do you
say, now," he asked Gregory, "to a hedgehog? I don't expect you've ever
eaten that."
"Hedgehog!" said Gregory. "No, but I've always wanted to." And, in
fact, he had been thinking of nothing else for the last five minutes.
"You shall have it," said the man. "Baked or stewed?"
"Which is best?" Gregory asked.
"Stewed," said the man. "But if you'd like it baked--Or, I'll tell you.
We'll have one of each. We got two to-day. This shall be a banquet."
The gipsies really were very grateful folk. The boy got wood for them;
the man made their fire--much better than it had ever been made
before--and lit it without any paper, and with only one match.
It was at last arranged that they should all share the same supper,
although the woman should sit with the girls and the boys with the man.
And so they did; and they found the hedgehog very good, especially the
baked one, which had been enclosed in a mould of clay and pushed right
into the middle of the fire. It tasted a little like pork, only more
delicate.
"When you invited us to come to supper," Robert said, "you asked what
the time was, and then looked at the sun and said it was nearly five.
And it was--almost exactly. How do you do that?"
"Ah," said the gipsy, "I can't explain. There it is. I know by the sun,
but I can't teach you, because you must live out of doors and never
have a clock, or it's no good."
"And can you tell it when there's no sun?" Robert asked.
"Pretty well," said the man.
"How lucky you are!" said Horace.
"Well, I don't know," said the man. "What about rain? When it's raining
hard, and we're huddling in the van and can't get any dry sticks for
the fire, and our feet are soaked, what are you doing? Why, you're all
snug in your houses, with a real roof over you."
"I'd much rather live in a caravan than a house," said Horace.
The man laughed. "You're a young gent out for a spree," he said. "You
don't count. You wonder at me," he continued, "being able to tell the
time by the skies. But I dare say there's one, at any rate, of you who
can find a train in that thing they call Bradshaw, isn't there?"
"I can," said Robert.
"Well, there you are," said the gipsy. "What's luck? Nothing.
Everyone's got a little. No one's got much."
"Oh, but the millionaires?" said Horace.
"Millionaires!" said the gipsy. "Why, you don't think they're lucky, do
you?"
"I always have done so," said Horace.
"Go on!" said the gipsy. "Why, we're luckier than what they are. We've
got enough to eat and drink,--and no one wants more,--and along with it
no rent and taxes, no servants, no tall hats, no offices, no
motor-cars, no fear of thieves. Millionaires have no rest at all. No
sitting under a tree by the fire smoking a pipe."
"And no hedgehogs," said Gregory.
"No--no hedgehogs. Nothing but butcher's meat that costs its weight in
gold. Take my advice, young gents," said the gipsy, "and never envy
anybody."
Meanwhile the others were very happy by the Slowcoach fire. The gipsy
woman, hugging her baby, kept as close to Janet as if she were a
spaniel. Their name was Lee, she said, and they made baskets. They
lived at Reading in the winter and were on the road all the rest of the
year. The young boy was her brother. His name was Keziah. Her husband's
name was Jasper. The baby's was Rhoda.
Hester was very anxious to ask questions about kidnapping, but she did
not quite like to, and was, in fact, silent.
The gipsy woman noticed it after a while, and remarked upon it. "That
little dark one there," she said; "why doesn't she speak?"
Janet said something about Hester being naturally quiet and thoughtful.
"Oh, no," said the woman, "I know what it is: she's frightened of me.
She's heard stories about the gipsies stealing children and staining
their faces with walnut juice; haven't you, dearie?"
Hester admitted it.
"There," said the woman, laughing triumphantly. "But don't be
frightened, dearie," she added. "That's only stories. And even if it
ever did happen, it couldn't again, what with railway trains and
telegraphs and telephones and motor-cars and newspapers. How could we
help being found out? Why," she continued, "so far from stealing
children, there was a boy running away from school once who offered us
a pound to let him join our caravan and stain his face and go with us
to Bristol, where he could get on to a ship as a stowaway, as he called
it; but Jasper wouldn't let him. I wanted to; but Jasper was dead
against it. 'No,' he said, 'gipsies have a bad enough time as it is,
without getting into trouble helping boys to run away from school.'
That shows what we are, dearie," she added to Hester, with a smile.
"And don't you ever tell fortunes?" Hester asked.
"I won't say I've never done that," the gypsy said.
"Won't you tell mine?" Hester asked. "I've got a sixpence."
"Just cross my hand with it," said the woman, "but don't give it to me.
I couldn't take money from any of you."
So Hester, with her heart beating very fast, crossed the gipsy's hand
with the sixpence, and the gipsy held both hers and peered at them very
hard while Janet nursed the baby.
"This," said the gipsy at last, "is a very remarkable hand. I see
stories and people reading them. I see a dark gentleman and a gentleman
of middling colour."
"Yes," said Hester. "Can't you tell me anything more about them?"
"Well," said the gipsy, "I can't, because they are only little boys
just now. But I see a beautiful wedding. White satin. Flowers.
Bridesmaids."
The gipsy stopped, and Hester drew her hand back. It was terribly
romantic and exciting.
Before the woman said good night and went to her caravan, Hester took
her sixpence to Kink and asked him to bore a hole in it. And then she
threaded it on a piece of string and tied it round the baby's neck.
The gipsy woman was very grateful. "A beautiful wedding," she said
again. "Such flowers! Music, too."
"Wasn't it wonderful?" Hester said to Janet before they went to sleep.
"What?" Janet asked.
"The gipsy knowing I was fond of writing."
"No," said Janet, "it wasn't wonderful at all. There was a great ink
stain on your finger."