The young gipsy opened her eyes with astonishment remembering, with surprise and delight, that the voice of Catherine would no more trouble her, calling, “Myrtle!  Myrtle! where are you, you idle child?” she smiled, and listened to what gave her pleasure, the note of the thrush singing among the trees.

Near at hand a spring was bubbling out of a cleft; the girl had but to look round to see the living stream running, sparkling and clear, amidst the long grass.  From the rock high overhead hung an arbutus loaded with its gorgeous freight of scarlet berries.

Though Myrtle was thirsty she felt too idle to move amongst all this beauty and all this harmony, and she dropped her pretty brown face, smiling and admiring the daylight through her long dark lashes.

“This is how I am always going to be,” she said.  “How can I help it?  I am an idle girl.  I was made so.”

Dreaming in this lazy way, the picture rose up in her mind of the farm-yard with the proud cock strutting among his hens, and then she remembered the eggs, how they used to find them in the straw in some corner of the barn.

“If I had a couple of hard-boiled eggs,” she thought, “just like those Fritz had yesterday in his bag, with a crust of bread and a little salt, I should like it very well.  But what signifies?  When you can’t get eggs you have blackberries and whinberries.”

A scent of whinberries made her little nostrils dilate with expectation.

“There are some here,” she said; “I can smell them.”

She was right.  The wood was full of them.

In another minute, not hearing the thrush, she raised herself on her elbow and noticed the bird picking at the arbutus-berries.

Then she went to the brook and took a little clear water in her hollow hand, and observed that there was plenty of watercress.

Then she remembered what she had never taken the trouble to think of before, some words of the cure, Niclausse about the birds of the air that God provided for, and the lilies of the field that were more beautiful than the glory of Solomon, and she remembered the lesson about not being anxious for food and clothing, and thought that that would just suit her, for she did not think of any of the teaching of the same great Teacher about industry, and frugality, and living honestly, and so she came to the satisfying conclusion that the true heathens were Catherine and all her people, who were so foolish and wicked as to plough, and sow, and reap, while she was the good Christian, because she was as idle as the day was long.

She was still dwelling on these satisfactory deductions when there was a sudden rustling among the dead leaves and a noise of footsteps.

She was going to run away when a gipsy lad of eighteen or twenty appeared before her—­a tall, lithe, dark fellow with thick woolly hair, shining black eyes, and thick parted lips.

His eyes glittered as he cried—­