In a few moments everyone in Lavender House was made acquainted with
Susan's story. At such a time ceremony was laid aside, dinner
forgotten, teachers, pupils, servants all congregated in the grounds,
all rushed to the spot where Nan's withered daisies still lay, all
peered through the underwood, and all, alas! looked, in vain for the
tall dark woman and the little child. Little Nan, the baby of the
school, had been stolen--there were loud and terrified lamentations.
Nan's nurse was almost tearing her hair, was rushing frantically here,
there, and everywhere. No one blamed the nurse for leaving her little
charge in apparent safety for a few moments, but the poor woman's own
distress was pitiable to see. Mrs Willis took Hester's hand, and told
the poor stunned girl that she was sending to Sefton immediately for two
or three policemen, and that in the meantime every man on the place
should commence the search for the woman and child.
"Without any doubt," Mrs Willis added, "we shall soon have our little
Nan back again; it is quite impossible that the woman, whoever she is,
can have taken her so far away in so short a time."
In the meantime, Annie in her bedroom heard the fuss and the noise. She
leaned out of her window and saw Phyllis in the distance; she called to
her. Phyllis ran up, the tears streaming down her cheeks.
"Oh, something so dreadful!" she gasped; "a wicked, wicked woman has
stolen little Nan Thornton. She ran off with her just where the
undergrowth is so thick at the end of the shady walk. It happened to
her half an hour ago, and they are all looking, but they cannot find the
woman or little Nan anywhere. Oh, it is so dreadful! Is that you,
Mary?"
Phyllis ran off to join her sister, and Annie put her head in again, and
looked round her pretty room.
"The gipsy," she murmured, "the tall, dark gipsy has taken little Nan!"
Her face was very white, her eyes shone, her lips expressed a firm and
almost obstinate determination. With all her usual impulsiveness, she
decided on a course of action--she snatched up a piece of paper and
scribbled a hasty line:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Dear Mother-friend,--However badly you think of Annie, Annie loves you
with all her heart. Forgive me, I must go myself to look for little
Nan. That tall, dark woman is a gipsy--I have seen her before; her name
is Mother Rachel. Tell Hetty I won't return until I bring her little
sister back.--Your repentant and sorrowful Annie."
Annie twisted up the note, directed it to Mrs Willis, and left it on
her dressing-table.
Then, with a wonderful amount of forethought for her, she emptied the
contents of a little purse into a tiny gingham bag, which she fastened
inside the front of her dress. She put on her shady hat, and threw a
shawl across her arm, and then, slipping softly downstairs, she went out
through the deserted kitchens, down the back avenue, and past the
laurel-bush, until she came to the stile which led into the wood--she
was going straight to the gipsies' encampment.
Annie, with some of the gipsy's characteristics in her own blood, had
always taken an extraordinary interest in these queer wandering people.
Gipsies had a fascination for her, she loved stories about them; if a
gipsy encampment was near, she always begged the teachers to walk in
that direction. Annie had a very vivid imagination, and in the days
when she reigned as favourite in the school she used to make up stories
for the express benefit of her companions. These stories, as a rule,
always turned upon the gipsies. Many and many a time had the girls of
Lavender House almost gasped with horror as Annie described the queer
ways of these people. For her, personally, their wildness and their
freedom had a certain fascination, and she was heard in her gayest
moments to remark that she would rather like to be stolen and adopted by
a gipsy tribe.
Whenever Annie had an opportunity she chatted with the gipsy wives, and
allowed them to tell her fortune, and listened eagerly to their
narratives. When a little child she had once for several months been
under the care of a nurse who was a reclaimed gipsy, and this girl had
given her all kinds of information about them. Annie often felt that
she quite loved these wild people, and Mother Rachel was the first gipsy
she cordially shrank from and disliked.
When the little girl started now on her wild-goose chase after Nan she
was by no means devoid of a plan of action. The knowledge she had taken
so many years to acquire came to her aid, and she determined to use it
for Nan's benefit. She knew that the gipsies, with all their wandering
and erratic habits, had a certain attachment, if not for homes, at least
for sites; she knew that as a rule they encamped over and over again in
the same place; she knew that their wanderings were conducted with
method, and their apparently lawless lives governed by strict self-made
rules.
Annie made straight now for the encampment, which stood in a little dell
at the other side of the fairies' field. Here for weeks past the
gipsies' tents had been seen; here the gipsy children had played, and
the men and women smoked and lain about in the sun.
Anne entered the small field now, but uttered no exclamation of surprise
when she found that all the tents, with the exception of one, had been
removed, and that this tent also was being rapidly taken down by a man
and a girl, while a tall boy stood by, holding a donkey by the bridle.
Annie wasted no time in looking for Nan here. Before the girl and the
man could see her, she darted behind a bush, and removing her little bag
of money, hid it carefully under some long grass; then she pulled a very
bright yellow sash out of her pocket, tied it round her blue cotton
dress, and leaving her little shawl also on the ground, tripped gayly up
to the tent.
She saw with pleasure that the girl who was helping the man was about
her own size. She went up and touched her on the shoulder.
"Look here," she said, "I want to make such a pretty play by-and-by--I
want to play that I'm a gipsy girl. Will you give me your clothes, if I
give you mine? See, mine are neat, and this sash is very handsome.
Will you have them? Do. I am so anxious to play at being a gipsy."
The girl turned and stared. Annie's pretty blue print and gay sash were
certainly tempting bait. She glanced at her father.
"The little lady wants to change," she said in an eager voice.
The man nodded acquiescence, and the girl taking Annie's hand, ran
quickly with her to the bottom of the field.
"You don't mean it, surely?" she said. "Eh, but I'm uncommon willing."
"Yes, I certainly mean it," said Annie. "You are a dear, good, obliging
girl, and how nice you will look in my pretty blue cotton! I like that
striped petticoat of yours, too, and that gay handkerchief you wear
round your shoulders. Thank you so very much. Now, do I look like a
real, real gipsy?"
"Your hair ain't ragged enough, miss."
"Oh, clip it, then; clip it away. I want to be quite the real thing.
Have you got a pair of scissors?"
The girl ran back to the tent, and presently returned to shear poor
Annie's beautiful hair in truly rough fashion.
"Now, miss, you look much more like, only your arms are a bit too white.
Stay, we has got some walnut-juice; we was just a-using of it. I'll
touch you up fine, miss."
So she did, darkening Annie's brown skin to a real gipsy tone.
"You're, a dear, good girl," said Annie, in conclusion; and as the
girl's father called her roughly at this moment, she was obliged to go
away, looking ungainly enough in the English child's neat clothes.