The Little School-Mothers

“A nice sort of school-mother you have made,” she said. “You don’t suppose that you will win your pony after this, you bad girl. Come with me at once into the third form parlour, and wait there until Mrs Burton returns. She will then decide what is to be done with you.”

“I don’t want any pony,” suddenly sobbed Harriet. “I only want Ralph. I know I am desperately naughty, but I don’t want anything in all the world now but Ralph.”

“It is easy for you to talk like that now that you have neglected the poor little fellow so shamefully, and disobeyed Mrs Burton’s strictest orders. Come with me at once, you bad child.”

Harriet went. So subdued was she, that she did not even hate Miss Ford for speaking to her in this way. A minute later, she found herself in the third form special parlour. One electric light was on. It threw a dim reflection over the scene. Harriet looked round at the familiar objects – the table in the middle, the story-books, the globes in their corner, the birds in their cages, and the parrot in his cage.

The small birds were all asleep. The books and toys, and tables and chairs could not move; but the parrot was wide awake, and very much alive. He hopped from side to side and looked hard at Harriet. At last, he screamed in a noisy, shrill tone:

“Mind what you’re about! Ha, ha! Mind what you’re about! Ha, ha!”

Poor Harriet. She flung herself down on the floor and cried as though her heart would break. She was only a little girl still, and not all bad. That pony with his side-saddle, that perfectly made habit, all the delights which she had sinned so deeply to obtain, would have been as ashes now in her mouth. She only wanted Ralph now, and Ralph was far away. Why had she behaved so badly? Oh what, what was happening?

Her agony became almost unendurable. Suddenly, she perceived that the door of the parlour had not been shut, that it was a little ajar. Why need she sit there? It was so awful to remain still; so frightful to do nothing at all.

She stole softly to the door, opened it, and peeped out. There was no one in the hall, and the hall door itself stood wide open.

“Mind what you’re about. Ha, ha!” shrieked the parrot.

But Harriet was in no mood to mind. She crossed the hall on tip-toe, rushed to the open door, drew a deep breath, and the next moment was skimming herself, light as a bird, over the ground in the direction of the gipsy encampment. Harriet could, indeed, run like the wind, and never had she ran faster than on this occasion.

“It was I,” she thought, “who caused him to be lost, so I will find him again; yes, I will find him if it kills me.”

Suddenly she drew up on the edge of a piece of common. Here only yesterday, surely, were many brown tents and many brown people. Here was this fascinating house on wheels of which she had spoken so much to little Ralph. But now – she could not believe her eyes!

The place was empty. She could see, even by the moonlight, patches of yellow grass which had been covered by the tents, and here and there she could also perceive a bone or two, or a scrap of broken bread. But not a gipsy was in sight, not a tent within view, not a dog, not a brown baby. The gipsies had gone! Why had they gone? They were there, she knew, that very afternoon, for she had seen the smoke curling up from the house on wheels, as she and Ralph had gone with Pattie to the village.

The gipsies had gone away quickly: of course they had taken Ralph with them. Now what was she to do? She stood still in a shadowy part of the field, and, as she did so, she distinctly heard the sound of wheels, and listening, there floated also to her ears the sound of many voices singing.

Her school-companions were returning from their picnic. They were coming back, as arranged, by moonlight. They were happy: they were enjoying themselves. Harriet distinctly heard Robina’s voice above the others. Robina had a clear voice like a bird. Her notes were very high. They seemed to rise up as though, like the larks, they would pierce the sky. Now they rose above the other voices in a sort of torrent of rejoicing. Harriet dug her fingers into her ears.

“Oh, how soon they will be back!” she thought; “and they will miss him, and they will know all about me, and oh – I can’t, can’t stand it! I will follow the gipsies. I wonder where they have gone.”

Harriet thought for a few minutes. The police had already been to visit that very field. They had gone there in Dr Pyke’s company, and they were taking steps to follow the gipsies on horseback. But Harriet knew something that the police did not know. One of the servants in the house had long ago been a gipsy girl herself; and Harriet, who was much fascinated by stories of the wild brown people, used to talk to this girl when she got a chance. The girl, from time to time, imparted some of the secrets of her people to Harriet. Amongst other things, she had told her of the favourite resting-places of her tribe. This special common was one. But there was another five miles away, in the very heart of a deep wood, where they used to go when they wanted to hide something. The police did not know of this place of refuge in the middle of the High Woods, as they were called; but Harriet remembered it now.

It was five miles away, and she was only a little girl, and she was tired. But what of that if it might be her privilege to find Ralph and bring him back? What mattered any amount of fatigue?

Cora had told her how to get to the hiding-place in the wood. She had described how difficult it was for an ordinary person to find it, but had given Harriet a full description of it in one of her moments of confidence.

“We often wanted to make ourselves scarce,” Cora would say, “and no one ever yet found us there. It was a bonny enough place, too, although the trees grew so thick around that we did not get much sunshine.”

Now Harriet started on her way to the gipsies’ hiding-place in the woods. She was glad of the moonlight, and glad to avoid the road. She crossed many fields, and by and by found herself in a lane with very, very high hedges. The hedges were so high that she could not see a scrap of the world on either side of her. She could only gaze at the stars overhead, and wonder, and wonder, what was going to happen. She might be going wrong for all she knew. But all of a sudden she saw something shining on the road. She stooped and picked it up. It was a child’s broken rattle – the sort of thing which a gipsy child might have.

Now she felt certain that she was on the track of the runaways, and this knowledge gave her confidence. It takes, however, a very long time for a small girl not twelve years of age to walk five miles; and it was long past midnight, and the moon in the sky had set, and real darkness had come over the world before Harriet reached the entrance to the woods.

The lane in which she found herself led straight to these very woods: and oh! if it had been dark in the lane, how black was it here. She found her heart beating, and for a short time had not courage to go on. But then she thought of Ralph. She thought of him so hard that he began to fill all her little world. She wanted him so badly that no pony that ever breathed was now of any consequence to her in comparison. Why should she fear the creatures in the wood? She had no room in her heart for fear.

So she moved gently forward, a little girl, all alone in the black wood! The creatures of the wood must have wondered, and no doubt most of them were very much afraid of her, and retired into their snug little wood homes on her approach. But she saw none of them.

At last she came to a clearing, and in the clearing she perceived what made her heart beat wildly. It was no less a creature than a dog. The gipsies must be close at hand.

The dog was lying on the ground dead asleep. But when Harriet approached, he started and growled. Harriet, led by she knew not what instinct, immediately put her hand on his head. He quivered all over. Whether he would have growled again or bitten her, no one can tell, but in despair she flung herself by his side, and whispered in his ear:

“Oh, do be quiet; I am so miserable!”

No one can quite tell what dogs understand, but certainly this dog growled no more. On the contrary, he licked Harriet’s hand with his hot tongue. She had at last found the gipsies, and she might stay where she was until the first light of the morning. Perhaps poor Harriet slept with her head on the dog’s shaggy neck, but even she herself was not quite sure on that point.

Early, very, very early in the morning, led by Jakes, the gipsies’ dog, she found the house on wheels. The gipsies were tired, and most of them asleep. But when Harriet approached the dogs all barked, and of course the gipsy men all started to their feet, and the toothless old crone came out of the house on wheels, and pretty Flavia followed her.

“What did the little lady want?” they asked. They were all quite inclined to be civil to the little girl.

“I want,” said Harriet, “my own little boy. I am his school-mother, and I want him back again.”

“Oh Harriet! Harriet!” cried Ralph’s little voice.

He popped his small head outside the house on wheels. Not even Flavia could keep him from Harriet now. In one minute he was in her arms, and she was kissing him – oh, with such a world of affection. Somehow, Ralph felt a difference in her kisses, and he loved her at last, and knew that he had not loved her at all before.

“Ralph, you must come home at once,” said Harriet.

“Now, my dear,” said the tall gipsy man who had lured Ralph away on the previous night; “this little boy belongs to us, don’t yer, little man?”

“No, I don’t,” said Ralph. “This is my school-mother, and I belong to her.”

“You had best let him come,” said Harriet, “for the police are looking for you, and you’ll get into dreadful hot water if you keep the little boy.”

“We took charge of him,” said the man, sulkily; but a frightened look crossed his face when Harriet spoke of the police. “He were a poor lonely little gent, and we took pity on him.”

“They were awfu’ kind to me!” said Ralph. “They’re very nice gipsy people; and see, they give me this.”

He showed his basket with great pride to Harriet.

“See!” he continued, “there’s things inside – a knife, and matches, and all sorts of other things.”

“That don’t matter now,” said Harriet. “You must come back; they’re dreadfully frightened about you at school, and so was I. Gipsy man,” said Harriet, looking up at the tall man, “will you please saddle a horse, and put Ralph on its back, and put me there too, for I am dreadfully tired, and take us to Abbeyfield, and please be quick.”

“When my father comes back,” said Ralph, “I will talk to him about you, gipsy man, and about you, pretty gipsy lady.” Here he took Flavia’s hand. “And he shall give you money – much – and big money; and I will come and see you again, for I love you all.”

“We’d best take him back,” said the man, looking at the toothless old crone, “or we’ll get into trouble with the per-lice.”

“Yes,” said Harriet, gravely, “and you had best be quick.”

So early in the morning the children went back to the school on the gipsy’s tall horse, and the gipsy himself led them. Ralph talked all the way back, and was very gay and very happy; and when he parted from the gipsy man he insisted on kissing him, which surprised that person very much.

“Good-bye, little master,” he said, in rather a shamefaced way.

“Good-bye,” said Ralph. “And Father will give you money: I’ll see he do.”

Thus Ralph returned after his great adventure and Harriet and he went together, side by side, into Mrs Burton’s private sitting-room. There Harriet told all.