Five Children and It
a company of gipsies encamped by the side of the road. The vans were
hung all round with wicker chairs and cradles, and flower-stands and
feather brushes. A lot of ragged children were industriously making
dust-pies in the road, two men lay on the grass smoking, and three women
were doing the family washing in an old red watering-can with the top
broken off.
In a moment every gipsy, men, women, and children, surrounded Anthea and
the Baby.
"Let me hold him, little lady," said one of the gipsy women, who had a
mahogany-coloured face and dust-coloured hair; "I won't hurt a hair of
his head, the little picture!"
"I'd rather not," said Anthea.
"Let _me_ have him," said the other woman, whose face was also of the
hue of mahogany, and her hair jet-black, in greasy curls. "I've nineteen
of my own, so I have"--
"No," said Anthea bravely, but her heart beat so that it nearly choked
her.
Then one of the men pushed forward.
"Swelp me if it ain't!" he cried, "my own long-lost cheild! Have he a
strawberry mark on his left ear? No? Then he's my own babby, stolen from
me in hinnocent hinfancy. 'And 'im over--and we'll not 'ave the law on
yer this time."
He snatched the Baby from Anthea, who turned scarlet and burst into
tears of pure rage.
The others were standing quite still; this was much the most terrible
thing that had ever happened to them. Even being taken up by the police
in Rochester was nothing to this. Cyril was quite white, and his hands
trembled a little, but he made a sign to the others to shut up. He was
silent a minute, thinking hard. Then he said--
"We don't want to keep him if he's yours. But you see he's used to us.
You shall have him if you want him"--
"No, no!" cried Anthea,--and Cyril glared at her.
"Of course we want him," said the women, trying to get the Baby out of
the man's arms. The Lamb howled loudly.
"Oh, he's hurt!" shrieked Anthea; and Cyril, in a savage undertone, bade
her "stop it!"
"You trust to me," he whispered. "Look here," he went on, "he's awfully
tiresome with people he doesn't know very well. Suppose we stay here a
bit till he gets used to you, and then when it's bedtime I give you my
word of honour we'll go away and let you keep him if you want to. And
then when we're gone you can decide which of you is to have him, as you
all want him so much."
"That's fair enough," said the man who was holding the Baby, trying to
loosen the red neckerchief which the Lamb had caught hold of and drawn
round his mahogany throat so tight that he could hardly breathe. The
gipsies whispered together, and Cyril took the chance to whisper too. He
said, "Sunset! we'll get away then."
And then his brothers and sisters were filled with wonder and admiration
at his having been so clever as to remember this.
"Oh, do let him come to us!" said Jane. "See, we'll sit down here and
take care of him for you till he gets used to you."
"What about dinner?" said Robert suddenly. The others looked at him with
scorn. "Fancy bothering about your beastly dinner when your br--I mean
when the Baby"--Jane whispered hotly. Robert carefully winked at her and
went on--
"You won't mind my just running home to get our dinner?" he said to the
gipsy; "I can bring it out here in a basket."
His brothers and sisters felt themselves very noble and despised him.
They did not know his thoughtful secret intention. But the gipsies did
in a minute.
"Oh yes!" they said; "and then fetch the police with a pack of lies
about it being your baby instead of ours! D'jever catch a weasel
asleep?" they asked.
"If you're hungry you can pick a bit along of us," said the light-haired
gipsy-woman, not unkindly. "Here Levi, that blessed kid'll howl all his
buttons off. Give him to the little lady, and let's see if they can't
get him used to us a bit."
So the Lamb was handed back; but the gipsies crowded so closely that he
could not possibly stop howling. Then the man with the red handkerchief
said--
"Here, Pharaoh, make up the fire; and you girls see to the pot. Give the
kid a chanst." So the gipsies, very much against their will, went off to
their work, and the children and the Lamb were left sitting on the
grass.
"He'll be all right at sunset," Jane whispered. "But, oh, it is awful!
Suppose they are frightfully angry when they come to their senses! They
might beat us, or leave us tied to trees, or something."
"No, they won't," Anthea said ("Oh, my Lamb, don't cry any more, it's
all right, Panty's got oo, duckie"); "they aren't unkind people, or they
wouldn't be going to give us any dinner."
"Dinner?" said Robert; "I won't touch their nasty dinner. It would choke
me!"
The others thought so too then. But when the dinner was ready--it turned
out to be supper, and happened between four and five--they were all glad
enough to take what they could get. It was boiled rabbit, with onions,
and some bird rather like a chicken, but stringier about its legs and
with a stronger taste. The Lamb had bread soaked in hot water and brown
sugar sprinkled on the top. He liked this very much, and consented to
let the two gipsy women feed him with it, as he sat on Anthea's lap. All
that long hot afternoon Robert and Cyril and Anthea and Jane had to keep
the Lamb amused and happy, while the gipsies looked eagerly on. By the
time the shadows grew long and black across the meadows he had really
"taken to" the woman with the light hair, and even consented to kiss
his hand to the children, and to stand up and bow, with his hand on his
chest--"like a gentleman"--to the two men. The whole gipsy camp was in
raptures with him, and his brothers and sisters could not help taking
some pleasure in showing off his accomplishments to an audience so
interested and enthusiastic. But they longed for sunset.
"We're getting into the habit of longing for sunset," Cyril whispered.
"How I do wish we could wish something really sensible, that would be of
some use, so that we should be quite sorry when sunset came."
The shadows got longer and longer, and at last there were no separate
shadows any more, but one soft glowing shadow over everything; for the
sun was out of sight--behind the hill--but he had not really set yet.
The people who make the laws about lighting bicycle lamps are the people
who decide when the sun sets; she has to do it too, to the minute, or
they would know the reason why!
But the gipsies were getting impatient.
"Now, young uns," the red-handkerchief man said, "it's time you were
laying of your heads on your pillowses--so it is! The kid's all right
and friendly with us now--so you just hand him over and get home like
you said."
The women and children came crowding round the Lamb, arms were held out,
fingers snapped invitingly, friendly faces beaming with admiring smiles;
but all failed to tempt the loyal Lamb. He clung with arms and legs to
Jane, who happened to be holding him, and uttered the gloomiest roar of
the whole day.
"It's no good," the woman said, "hand the little poppet over, miss.
We'll soon quiet him."
And still the sun would not set.
"Tell her about how to put him to bed," whispered Cyril; "anything to
gain time--and be ready to bolt when the sun really does make up its
silly old mind to set."
"Yes, I'll hand him over in just one minute," Anthea began, talking very
fast,--"but do let me just tell you he has a warm bath every night and
cold in the morning, and he has a crockery rabbit to go into the warm
bath with him, and little Samuel saying his prayers in white china on a
red cushion for the cold bath; and he hates you to wash his ears, but
you must; and if you let the soap get into his eyes, the Lamb"--
"Lamb kyes," said he--he had stopped roaring to listen.
The woman laughed. "As if I hadn't never bath'd a babby!" she said.
"Come--give us a hold of him. Come to 'Melia, my precious"--
"G'way, ugsie!" replied the Lamb at once.
"Yes, but," Anthea went on, "about his meals; you really _must_ let me
tell you he has an apple or banana every morning, and bread and milk for
breakfast, and an egg for his tea sometimes, and"--
"I've brought up ten," said the black ringleted woman, "besides the
others. Come, miss, 'and 'im over--I can't bear it no longer. I just
must give him a hug."
"We ain't settled yet whose he's to be, Esther," said one of the men.
"It won't be you, Esther, with seven of 'em at your tail a'ready."
"I ain't so sure of that," said Esther's husband.
"And ain't I nobody, to have a say neither?" said the husband of 'Melia.
Zillah, the girl, said, "An' me? I'm a single girl--and no one but 'im
to look after--I ought to have him."
"Hold your tongue!"
"Shut your mouth!"
"Don't you show me no more of your imperence!"
Everyone was getting very angry. The dark gipsy faces were frowning and
anxious-looking. Suddenly a change swept over them, as if some invisible
sponge had wiped away these cross and anxious expressions, and left only
a blank.
The children saw that the sun really _had_ set. But they were afraid to
move. And the gipsies were feeling so muddled because of the invisible
sponge that had washed all the feelings of the last few hours out of
their hearts, that they could not say a word.
The children hardly dared to breathe. Suppose the gipsies, when they
recovered speech, should be furious to think how silly they had been all
day?
It was an awkward moment. Suddenly Anthea, greatly daring, held out the
Lamb to the red-handkerchief man.
"Here he is!" she said.
The man drew back. "I shouldn't like to deprive you, miss," he said
hoarsely.
"Anyone who likes can have my share of him," said the other man.
"After all, I've got enough of my own," said Esther.
"He's a nice little chap, though," said Amelia. She was the only one who
now looked affectionately at the whimpering Lamb.
Zillah said, "If I don't think I must have had a touch of the sun. _I_
don't want him."
"Then shall we take him away?" said Anthea.
"Well--suppose you do," said Pharaoh heartily, "and we'll say no more
about it!"
And with great haste all the gipsies began to be busy about their tents
for the night. All but Amelia. She went with the children as far as the
bend in the road--and there she said--
"Let me give him a kiss, miss,--I don't know what made us go for to
behave so silly. Us gipsies don't steal babies, whatever they may tell
you when you're naughty. We've enough of our own, mostly. But I've lost
all mine."
She leaned towards the Lamb; and he, looking in her eyes, unexpectedly
put up a grubby soft paw and stroked her face.
"Poor, poor!" said the Lamb. And he let the gipsy woman kiss him, and,
what is more, he kissed her brown cheek in return--a very nice kiss, as
all his kisses are, and not a wet one like some babies give. The gipsy
woman moved her finger about on his forehead as if she had been writing
something there, and the same with his chest and his hands and his
feet; then she said--
"May he be brave, and have the strong head to think with, and the strong
heart to love with, and the strong arms to work with, and the strong
feet to travel with, and always come safe home to his own." Then she
said something in a strange language no one could understand, and
suddenly added--
"Well, I must be saying 'so long'--and glad to have made your
acquaintance." And she turned and went back to her home--the tent by the
grassy roadside.
The children looked after her till she was out of sight. Then Robert
said, "How silly of her! Even sunset didn't put _her_ right. What rot
she talked!"
"Well," said Cyril, "if you ask me, I think it was rather decent of
her"--