Chapter XIV: With the Romany Folk

The woman had a very brown face and wore great hoops of gold in her ears, while on her head was a sort of turban with a fringed end hanging down behind. She certainly was dressed in very gay colors.

She had bright, beady black eyes, and when she saw Tess and Dot Kenway she looked at them very kindly indeed. At least, her smile was broad and her voice, when she spoke, was pleasant. She carried a heaping basket of berries.

"You leetle children out early to pick the berry, eh?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am," said Tess, gravely.

But Dot was more communicative. She said promptly: "We've been out all night."

"Picking berries?" queried the woman. "Not alone, eh?"

"We only just found the berries," declared Dot, the chatterbox. "And, oh! we _were_ so hungry."

"You are out all night?" asked the puzzled woman. "Is it so?"

"We--we got lost from our folks," Tess said, at last.

"You leeve near here, eh?"

"Oh, no," said Tess, now more communicative, "We live in Milton. We were riding in an automobile----"

"No, we weren't!" interposed Dot, rather impolite in her eagerness to get the story perfectly straight. "We were stopping for lunch. Right beside the road. And Tess and I came to pick flowers."

"So you wandered from your friends?" asked the Gypsy. "I see. I see."

"And," added Dot, confidently, "we're hungry."

"Oh, Dot!" exclaimed the scandalized Tess. "Not _now_! Not after eating all these berries!"

"Huh! what's berries?" demanded the smallest Corner House girl. "I want an egg--and milk--and hot muffins--and----"

The Gypsy woman laughed merrily. Although she did not speak English quite like other people, she seemed to understand the language well enough.

"You leetle 'Merican girls come wit' me," she said. "I will find you food. Then we will find your friends."

Tess was a little doubtful of their new acquaintance. She had some fear of Gypsies as a tribe. This one seemed kind enough, and looked kind enough. Nevertheless, Tess felt that they should be careful while in her company.

But she could not explain this to Dot, and Dot was a prattler. The smaller girl's tongue went as fast as a mill-clapper, as Aunt Sarah Maltby often said; and it was particularly energetic this morning as she trotted along beside the Gypsy woman in the green and orange petticoat.

"Ah," said the woman, at last, "your people are reech, eh? They have one of these motor cars, and you leeve in a fine, big house? They will give reward, then, to get you back, eh?"

Just then, before either Tess or Dot could make a rejoinder, they broke through the bushes and entered a beautiful little park in which was pitched the Gypsy camp.

Of course, the two smallest Corner House girls had often heard of Gypsies. Indeed, they had seen more than a few of them. The women often came into Milton to sell basket-work and to tell fortunes.

Indeed, the summer before, when the Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil were at Pleasant Cove, they had had quite an experience with Gypsies--and not a very pleasant experience at that. Tess remembered this, though Dot did not; therefore the older sister was a little troubled as they approached the Gypsy encampment with the gaily dressed woman.

This opening in the woods, with a grassy road running through its center, which was plainly no main-traveled highway, was a lovely spot. The Gypsies are thorough exponents of the out-of-door life, now so much talked about; and they have, too, some idea of the beautiful and picturesque.

This encampment had been selected because of the pleasant little brook running near, and the real beauty of the spot. There were six big covered wagons, all brightly painted. Besides, four tents were set up, and there were coops of chickens and other signs that the encampment was more or less permanent.

On the appearance of the two strange little girls with the Gypsy woman, there was a rush of dogs, chickens, goats, pigs and children toward the newcomers. Tess and Dot clung together and tried to get behind the green and orange petticoat. The woman shouted something in a strange tongue, and drove the children and dogs back. The other curious riff-raff of the camp had to be actually kicked out of the path.

There were several cooking fires in the camp, a number of men and women in sight, and at least fifty horses grazing at one end of the park, watched by several half-grown youths. Plainly there was a big tribe of the Romany folk encamped in this spot.

The woman with the gay petticoat, having given up her basket of berries to a girl, led the visitors by the hand, one on either side, to the nearest fire, where a big man in brown velveteen garments, including a peaked cap, and wearing gold hoops in his ears and a heavy gold chain around his neck, was sitting in a green-painted easy chair.

This man was a person of much importance, it was evident. Nobody else came near him as the woman approached with the two little Corner House girls.

He was not a bad looking man at all, though his face was deeply graven in lines, and wind and weather had tanned his face and hands like leather. Again in that strange language which Tess and Dot did not know, the woman spoke to this man, who was certainly the leader of the Gypsies.

The man's eyes twinkled at the children, and he smiled. But he did not win their confidence. However, he shouted for another woman almost at once, and she came from the fire with two plates of steaming hot stew--either of rabbits or squirrels, Tess did not know which. And neither she nor Dot cared.

They were, indeed, very hungry. A diet of blueberries is not a filling one--especially when one has been without anything else to eat for so long as had the little Corner House girls. The woman with whom they had come into the camp sat down with them, having reported to the big man, and ate, too. They sat cross-legged on the grass, and had only spoons to eat with, and thick slices of very good ryebread to sop up the gravy of the stew. The woman said her name was Mira, and the children found her very pleasant and talkative.

"I wish our folks would come along in the automobile," Tess said, longingly, when their hunger was partly appeased.

"Do you s'pose they _will_ come this way?" asked Dot of Mira.

"We shall see. _He_ will 'tend to that," said the woman, coolly, nodding towards the big man in the chair.

Tess was very curious. "Who _is_ he?" she asked, in a whisper. "Who is the man in the chair?"

"King David," said Mira.

"Oh!" gasped Dot. "I've heard of him. Didn't he play on a salt-cellar?"

"Oh, dear me!" cried Tess. "A 'psalter,' Dot--a 'psalter'!"

"Well, what's the difference?" asked the smallest Corner House girl, pouting.

"A good deal," declared Tess, although she had no idea herself just what a psaltery was, and was unaware that she had made a mistake quite as inexcusable as Dot's. "And, anyway," pursued Tess, whose confidence swamped her ignorance of the subject and duly impressed Dot, "anyway, this can't be the same King David."

"No," said the woman. "He is King David Stanley. We are English Gypsies."

"But--but you and he didn't talk English?" Tess suggested, hesitatingly.

"Among ourselves we talk Egyptian," said the woman, proudly. So she called the language of the Gypsies. "We are all Romany folk."

Of course, the children did not understand much about this. But Dot was anxious upon one point, and she whispered to Tess:

"How can that big man be a king? He doesn't wear a crown. Don't all kings wear 'em? I never saw a picture of a king without one on his head--though I should think 'twould make 'em bald."

"Sh!" whispered back Tess. "Maybe they aren't comfortable to wear."

"Well! where's his scalper?"

"His _what_?" gasped Tess.

"His scalper," declared Dot. "Kings always carry 'em in their hands."

"Oh, for mercy's sake!" ejaculated Tess. "A sceptre, you mean."

"Aren't they what kings scalp folks with?"

"Dear me, Dot Kenway!" said Tess, in despair. "Kings aren't like Indians. They don't scalp folks."

"But they order their heads cut off if they don't please 'em," said Dot, unconvinced, and eyeing King David askance.

The Gypsies were, however, all very kind to the visitors. Mira would not allow the wild and scantily dressed children of the camp to annoy the little Corner House girls. And she always drove the dogs away when they came too near, for Dot was frankly afraid of the hungry looking beasts.

But Mira brought a clothes-basket out of one of the tents, and covered in that were six little blind, black puppies, "too cute for anything," as Dot admitted. There were kittens, too, and a hutch of little chickens, and some tame rabbits. When the visiting children were shown two little kids--twins--gamboling around the mother goat, their delight knew no bounds.

These interests held their attention for much of the forenoon--especially Dot's. But Tess began to wonder if something would not soon be done about finding the automobile and their friends. She grew more anxious as noon approached and nothing was said about this mystery.

The King of the Gypsies had disappeared some time before. Mira was busy. And Dot, in spite of a lapful of kittens, began to ask her sister:

"Tess, when are we going to find Ruth and Aggie? I--I don't want to stay here much longer, do you?"