“Hush, hush!” she said, “you’ll have them all coming to see what’s the matter.  The police won’t hurt you, you silly children.  They’d be your best friends if only they could find you.  I’d rather have had nothing to say to them, for fear they should get too much out of Tim, but I see no other way to get you safe home.  But now we mustn’t talk any more, only remember all I’ve said if that man comes.  And to-morrow, when I give you the word, you must be ready,” she went on impressively; “you won’t be afraid with Tim.  I’ll do the best I can, but we’ll have to trust a deal to Tim; and you must do just what he tells you, and never mind if it seems strange and hard.  It’s the only chance for them,” she added to herself, with a strange longing in her beautiful dark eyes, as she again left them, “but if I could but have taken them safe back myself I’d have felt easier in my mind.”

She put in her head again to warn the children not to try to speak to Tim, and if they must speak to each other to do so in a whisper.

But at first their hearts seemed too full to speak.  They just sat with their arms round each other, too bewildered and almost stunned with the good news to take it in.

“Bruvver,” said Pamela at last, “don’t you fink it’s because us has said our prayers such many many times?”

“P’raps,” replied Duke.

“And you don’t fink now what—­you know what you said about Grandpapa and Grandmamma,” said Pamela, her voice faltering.

Duke hesitated.  He was not quite generous enough to own that his gloomy prophecies had been a good deal the result of his being tired and cross and contradictory.  In his heart he had no misgiving such as he had expressed to Pamela—­he had no idea that what he had said might really have been true.

“You don’t fink so, bruvver?” persisted Pam.

“I daresay if us goes back very soon it’ll make them better even if they are very ill.  I think us had better put that in our prayers too—­for us to get back to them so quick that there won’t be time for them to get very ill.  I wouldn’t mind them being just a little ill, would you, sister?  It’d be so nice to see them getting better.”

“I’d rather they wasn’t ill at all,” said Pamela, “but I daresay God’ll understand.  Oh I wish it was to-morrow! don’t you, bruvver?”

“Hush,” said Duke.  “Diana said us mustn’t talk loud—­and see, sister, they’re going to put the horse in and go on again.  Oh how tired I am of going along shaking like this all day!  And don’t you remember, sister, when us was little us used to think it would be so nice to live in a cart like a house, like this?”

“Us never thought how nugly it would be inside,” said Pamela, glancing round the little square space in which they were with great dissatisfaction.  And no wonder—­the waggon was stuffed with bundles and packages of all shapes and sizes; on the sides hung dirty coats and cloaks belonging to some of the tribe, and the only pleasant object to be seen was a heap of nice clean-looking baskets and brooms, which had been brought in here, as the basket-cart was already filled to overflowing.  For the gipsies expected to do a good trade in these things at the Crookford fair.