The girl, the child, and the dog found themselves in a comparatively
strange country--Annie had completely lost her bearings. She looked
around her for some sign of the gipsies' encampment; but whether she had
really gone a greater distance than she imagined in those underground
vaults, or whether the tents were hidden in some hollow of the ground,
she did not know; she was only conscious that she was in a strange
country, that Nan was clinging to her and crying for her breakfast, and
that Tiger was sniffing the air anxiously. Annie guessed that Tiger
could take them back to the camp, but this was by no means her wish.
When she emerged out of the underground passage she was conscious for
the first time of a strange and unknown experience. Absolute terror
seized the brave child: she trembled from head to foot, her head ached
violently, and the ground on which she stood seemed to reel, and the sky
to turn round. She sat down for a moment on the green grass. What
ailed her? where was she? how could she get home? Nan's little piteous
wail, "Me want my bekfas', me want my nursie, me want Hetty," almost
irritated her.
"Oh, Nan," she said at last piteously, "have you not got your own Annie?
Oh, Nan, dear little Nan, Annie feels so ill!"
Nan had the biggest and softest of baby hearts--breakfast, nurse, Hetty,
were all forgotten in the crowning desire to comfort Annie. She climbed
on her knee and stroked her face and kissed her lips.
"'Oo better now?" she said in a tone of baby inquiry.
Annie roused herself with a great effort.
"Yes, darling," she said; "we will try and get home. Come, Tiger.
Tiger, dear, I don't want to go back to the gipsies; take me the other
way--take me to Oakley."
Tiger again sniffed the air, looked anxiously at Annie, and trotted on
in front. Little Nan in her ragged gipsy clothes walked sedately by
Annie's side.
"Where 'oo s'oes?" she said, pointing to the girl's bare feet.
"Gone, Nan--gone. Never mind, I've got you. My little treasure, my
little love, you're safe at last."
As Annie tottered, rather than walked, down a narrow path which led
directly through a field of standing corn, she was startled by the
sudden apparition of a bright-eyed girl, who appeared so suddenly in her
path that she might have been supposed to have risen out of the very
ground.
The girl stared hard at Annie, fixed her eyes inquiringly on Nan and
Tiger, and then, turning on her heel, dashed up the path, went through a
turn-stile, across the road, and into a cottage.
"Mother," she exclaimed, "I said she warn't a real gipsy: she's a-coming
back, and her face is all streaked like, and she has a little 'un along
with her, and a dawg, and the only one as is gipsy is the dawg. Come
and look at her, mother; oh, she is a fine take-in!"
The round-faced, good-humoured looking mother, whose name was Mrs
Williams, had been washing and putting away the breakfast things when
her daughter entered. She now wiped her hands hastily and came to the
cottage door.
"Cross the road, and come to the stile, mother," said the energetic
Peggy--"oh, there she be a-creeping along--oh, ain't she a take-in?"
"'Sakes alive!" ejaculated Mrs Williams, "the girl is ill! why, she
can't keep herself steady! There! I knew she'd fall; ah! poor little
thing--poor little thing."
It did not take Mrs Williams an instant to reach Annie's side; and in
another moment she had lifted her in her strong arms and carried her
into the cottage, Peggy lifting Nan and following in the rear, while
Tiger walked by their sides.