The Corner House Girls Among the Gypsies

CHAPTER IV – THE GYPSY TRAIL

Mr. Pinkney, Sammy’s father, heard all about it before he arrived home, for he always passed the side door of the old Corner House on his return from business. He came at just that time when Neale O’Neil was telling the assembled family – including Mrs. McCall, Uncle Rufus, and Linda the maid-of-all-work – about the utter wreck of the beet bed.

“I’ve saved what I could – set ’em out, you know, and soaked ’em well,” said the laughing Neale. “But make up your mind, Mrs. McCall, that you’ll have to buy a good share of your beets this winter.”

“Well! What do you know about that, Mr. Pinkney?” demanded Agnes of their neighbor, who had halted at the gate.

“Just like that boy,” responded Mr. Pinkney, shaking his head over his son’s transgressions.

“Just the same,” Neale added, chuckling, “Sammy says you showed him which were weeds and which were beets, Aggie.”

“Of course I did,” flung back the quick-tempered Agnes. “And so did Uncle Rufus. But that boy is so heedless – ”

“I agree that Sammy pays very little attention to what is told him,” said Sammy’s father.

Here Tess put in a soothing word, as usual: “Of course he didn’t mean to pull up all your beets, Mrs. McCall.”

“And I don’t like beets anyway,” proclaimed Dot.

“He certainly must have worked hard,” Ruth said, producing a fifty-cent piece and running down the steps to press it into Mr. Pinkney’s palm. “I am sure Sammy had no intention of spoiling our beet bed. And I am not sure that it is not partly our fault. He should not have been left all the afternoon without some supervision.”

“He should be more observing,” said Mr. Pinkney. “I never did see such a rattlebrain.”

“‘The servant is worthy of his hire,’” quoted Ruth. “And tell him, Mr. Pinkney, that we forgive him.”

“Just the same,” cried Agnes after their neighbor, “although Sammy may know beans, as Neale says, he doesn’t seem to know beets! Oh, what a boy!”

So Mr. Pinkney brought home the story of Sammy’s mistake and he and his wife laughed over it. But when Mrs. Pinkney called upstairs for the boy to come down to a late supper she got only a muffled response that he “didn’t want no supper.”

“He must be sick,” she observed to her husband, somewhat anxiously.

“He’s sick of the mess he’s made – that’s all,” declared Mr. Pinkney cheerfully. “Let him alone. He’ll come around all right in the morning.”

Meanwhile at the Corner House the Kenway sisters had something more important (at least, as they thought) to talk about than Sammy Pinkney and his errors of judgment. What Dot had begun to call the “fretful silver bracelet” was a very live topic.

The local jeweler had pronounced the bracelet of considerable value because of its workmanship. It did not seem possible that the Gypsy women could have dropped the bracelet into the basket they had sold the smaller Corner House girls and then forgotten all about it.

“It is not reasonable,” Ruth Kenway declared firmly, “that it could just be a mistake. That basket is worth two dollars at least; and they sold it to the children for forty-five cents. It is mysterious.”

“They seemed to like Tess and me a whole lot,” Dot said complacently. “That is why they gave it to us so cheap.”

“And that is the very reason I am worried,” Ruth added.

“Why don’t you report it to the police?” croaked Aunt Sarah Maltby. “Maybe they’ll try to rob the house.”

“O-oh,” gasped Dot, round-eyed.

“Who? The police?” giggled Agnes in Ruth’s ear.

“Maybe we ought to look again for those Gypsy ladies,” Tess said. “But the bracelet is awful pretty.”

“I tell you! Let’s ask June Wildwood. She knows all about Gypsies,” cried Agnes. “She used to travel with them. Don’t you remember, Ruth? They called her Queen Zaliska, and she made believe tell fortunes. Of course, not being a real Gypsy she could not tell them very well.”

“Crickey!” ejaculated Neale O’Neil, who was present. “You don’t believe in that stuff, do you, Aggie?”

“I don’t know whether I do or not. But it’s awfully thrilling to think of learning ahead what is going to happen.”

“Huh!” snorted her boy friend. “Like the weather man, eh? But he has some scientific data to go on.”

“Probably the Gypsy fortune tellers have reduced their business to a science, too,” Ruth calmly said.

“Anyhow,” laughed Neale, “Queen Zaliska now works in Byburg’s candy store. Some queen, I’ll tell the world!”

“Neale!” admonished Ruth. “Such slang!”

“Come on, Neale,” said the excited Agnes. “Let you and me go down to Byburg’s and ask her about the bracelet.”

“I really don’t see how June can tell us anything,” observed Ruth slowly.

“Anyway,” Agnes briskly said, putting on her hat, “we need some candy. Come on, Neale.”

The Wildwoods were Southerners who had not lived long in Milton. Their story is told in “The Corner House Girls Under Canvas.” The Kenways were very well acquainted with Juniper Wildwood and her sister, Rosa. Agnes felt privileged to question June about her life with the Gypsies.

“I saw Big Jim in town the other day,” confessed the girl behind the candy counter the moment Agnes broached the subject. “I am awfully afraid of him. I ran all the way home. And I told Mr. Budd, the policeman on this beat, and I think Mr. Budd warned Big Jim to get out of town. There is some talk about getting a law through the Legislature putting a heavy tax on each Gypsy family that does not keep moving. That will drive them away from Milton quicker than anything else. And that Big Jim is a bad, bad man. Why! he’s been in jail for stealing.”

“Oh, my! He’s a regular convict, then,” gasped Agnes, much impressed.

“Pshaw!” said Neale. “They don’t call a man a convict unless he has been sent to the State prison, or to the Federal penitentiary. But that Big Jim looked to be tough enough, when we saw him down at Pleasant Cove, to belong in prison for life. Remember him, Aggie?”

“The children did not say anything about a Gypsy man,” observed his friend. “There were two Gypsy women.”

She went on to tell June Wildwood all about the basket purchase and the finding of the silver bracelet. The older girl shook her head solemnly as she said:

“I don’t understand it at all. Gypsies are always shrewd bargainers. They never sell things for less than they cost.”

“But they made that basket,” Agnes urged. “Perhaps it didn’t cost them so much as Ruth thinks.”

June smiled in a superior way. “Oh, no, they didn’t make it. They don’t waste their time nowadays making baskets when they can buy them from the factories so much cheaper and better. Oh, no!”

“Crackey!” exclaimed Neale. “Then they are fakers, are they?”

“That bracelet is no fake,” declared Agnes.

“That is what puzzles me most,” said June. “Gypsies are very tricky. At least, all I ever knew. And if those two women you speak of belonged to Big Jim’s tribe, I would not trust them at all.”

“But it seems they have done nothing at all bad in this case,” Agnes observed.

“Tess and Dot are sure ahead of the game, so far,” chuckled Neale in agreement.