“Take care, Gertrude, take care.  There is no hurry, and I believe there’s no one in the wood but ourselves.”

“The people at the inn told us that there were gipsies in the neighbourhood,” said the lady; “and oh, Ted! this is exactly the wood I dreamt of, except the purple and white—­”

“Gertrude!  What on earth are you after?”

“The flowers, Ted, the flowers in my dream!  There they are, a perfect carpet of them.  White—­oh, how lovely!—­and there, on the other side, are the purple ones.  What are they, dear?  I know you are a good botanist.  He always raved about your collection.”

“Nonsense, I’m not a botanist.  Several other fellows went in for it when the prize was offered, and all that my collection was good for was his doing.  I never did see any one arrange flowers as he did, I must say.  Every specimen was pressed so as somehow to keep its own way of growing.  And when I did them, a columbine looked as stiff as a dog-daisy.  I never could keep any character in them.  Watson—­the fellow who drew so well—­made vignettes on the blank pages to lots of the specimens—­’Likely Habitats’ we called them.  He used to sit with his paint-box in my window, and Christian used to sit outside the window, on the edge, dangling his legs, and describing scenes out of his head for Watson to draw.  Watson used to say, ’I wish I could paint with my brush as that fellow paints with his tongue’—­and when the vignettes were admired, I’ve heard him say, in his dry way, ’I copied them from Christian’s paintings;’ and the fellows used to stare, for you know he couldn’t draw a line.  And when—­But I say, Gertrude, for Heaven’s sake, don’t devour everything I say with those great pitiful eyes of yours.  I am a regular brute to talk about him.”

“No, Ted, no.  It makes me so happy to hear you, and to know that you know how good he really was, and how much he must have been aggravated before—­”

“For goodness’ sake, don’t cry.  Christian was a very good fellow, a capital fellow.  I never thought I could have got on so well with any one who was—­I mean who wasn’t—­well, of course I mean who was really a gipsy.  I don’t blame him a bit for resenting being bullied about his parents.  I only blame myself for not looking better after him.  But you know that well enough—­you know it’s because I never can forgive myself for having managed so badly when you put him in my care, that I am backing you through this mad expedition, though I don’t approve of it one bit, and though I know John will blame me awfully.”

("It’s the clergywoman,” whispered Mrs. Hedgehog excitedly, “and I must and will see her.”

When it comes to this with Mrs. Hedgehog’s sex, there is nothing for it but to let the dear creatures have their own way, and take the consequences.  She pushed her nose straight through the lower branches of an arbutus in which we were concealed, and I myself managed to get a nearer sight of our new neighbours.