296 _ The Little Minister

“ Don’t look at me,” she said, “and I will tell
you everything.” He dropped his eyes listlessly,
and had he not asked her a question from time
to time, she would have doubted whether he
heard her.

“ After all,” she said, “a gypsy dress is my
birthright, and so the Thrums people were scarcely
wrong in calling me an Egyptian. It is a pity
any one insisted on making me something diifer-
ent. I believe I could have been a good gypsy.’

“Who were your parents?” Gavin asked,
without looking up.

“You ask that,” she said, “‘ because you have
a good mother. It is not a question that would
occur to me. My mother— If she was bad,
may not that be some excuse for me? Ah, but
I have no wish to excuse myself. Have you
seen a gypsy cart with a sort of hammock swung
beneath it in which gypsy children are carried
about the country? If there are no children, the
pots and pans are stored in it. Unless the roads
are rough it’ makes a comfortable cradle, and it
was the only one I ever knew. Well, one day I
suppose the road was rough, for I was capsized.
I remember picking myself up after a little and
running after the cart, but they did not hear my
cries. I sat down by the roadside and stared
after the cart until I lost sight of it. That was
in England, and I was not three years old.”

“ But surely,” Gavin said, “they came back to
look for you?”

“So far as I know,” Babbie answered, hardly,
“they did not come back. I have never seen
them since. I think they were drunk. My