Five Children and It, E. Nesbit [good summer reads TXT] 📗

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 “stow 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