Suddenly he turned them on me.  For an instant I was paralyzed and stood still.  I could hear my father bustling down the bank; in a few minutes he would be at home, where my brother and sisters were safe and sound, whilst I was alone and about to reap the reward of my disobedience, in the fate of which he had warned me—­to be taken by gipsies and flitted.

Nothing, my dear children—­my seven dear children—­is more fatal in an emergency than indecision.  I was half disposed to hurry after my father, and half resolved to curl myself into a ball.  I had one foot out and half my back rounded, when the gipsy man pinned me to the ground with a stick, and the gipsy girl strode up.  I could not writhe myself away from the stick, but I gazed beseechingly at the gipsy girl and squealed for my life.

“Let the poor little brute go, Basil,” she said, laughing.  “We’ve three flitted still.”

“Let it go?” cried the young man scornfully, and with another poke, which I thought had crushed me to bits, though I was still able to cry aloud.

The gipsy girl turned her back and went away with one movement and without speaking.

“Sybil!” cried the man; but she did not look round.

“Sybil, I say!”

She was breaking sticks for the fire slowly across her knee, but she made no answer.  He took his stick out of my back, and went after her.

“I’ve let it go,” he said, throwing himself down again, “and a good dinner has gone with it.  But you can do what you like with me—­and small thanks I get for it.”

“I can do anything with you but keep you out of mischief,” she answered, fixing her eyes steadily on him.  He sat up and began to throw stones, aiming them at my three cousins.

“Take me for good and all, instead of tormenting me, and you will,” he said.

“Will you give up Jemmy and his gang?” she asked; but as he hesitated for an instant, she tossed the curls back from her face and moved away, saying, “Not you; for all your talk!  And yet for your sake, I would give up—­”

He bounded to his feet, but she had put the bonfire between them, and before he could get round it, she was on the other side of a tilted cart, where another woman, in a crimson cloak, sat doing something to a dirty pack of cards.

I did not like to see the gipsy man on his feet again, and having somewhat recovered breath, I scrambled down the bank and got home as quickly as the stiffness and soreness of my skin would allow.

I never saw my cousins again, and it was long before I saw any more gipsies; for that day’s adventure gave me a shock to which my children owe the exceeding care and prudence that I display in the choice of our summer homes and winter retreats, and in repressing every tendency to a wandering disposition among the members of my family.

CHAPTER II.

That summer—­I mean the summer when I had seven—­we had the most charming home imaginable.  It was in a wood, and on that side of the wood which is farthest from houses and highroads.  Here it was bounded by a brook, and beyond this lay a fine pasture field.