gipsies and flitted.

Nothing, my dear children--my seven dear children--is more fatal in an
emergency than indecision. I was half disposed to hurry after my father,
and half resolved to curl myself into a ball. I had one foot out and
half my back rounded, when the gipsy man pinned me to the ground with a
stick, and the gipsy girl strode up. I could not writhe myself away from
the stick, but I gazed beseechingly at the gipsy girl and squealed for
my life.

"Let the poor little brute go, Basil," she said, laughing. "We've three
flitted still."

"Let it go?" cried the young man scornfully, and with another poke,
which I thought had crushed me to bits, though I was still able to cry
aloud.

The gipsy girl turned her back and went away with one movement and
without speaking.

"Sybil!" cried the man; but she did not look round.

"Sybil, I say!"

She was breaking sticks for the fire slowly across her knee, but she
made no answer. He took his stick out of my back, and went after her.

"I've let it go," he said, throwing himself down again, "and a good
dinner has gone with it. But you can do what you like with me--and small
thanks I get for it."

"I can do anything with you but keep you out of mischief," she answered,
fixing her eyes steadily on him. He sat up and began to throw stones,
aiming them at my three cousins.

"Take me for good and all, instead of tormenting me, and you will," he
said.

"Will you give up Jemmy and his gang?" she asked; but as he hesitated
for an instant, she tossed the curls back from her face and moved away,
saying, "Not you; for all your talk! And yet for your sake, _I_ would
give up--"

He bounded to his feet, but she had put the bonfire between them, and
before he could get round it, she was on the other side of a tilted
cart, where another woman, in a crimson cloak, sat doing something to a
dirty pack of cards.

I did not like to see the gipsy man on his feet again, and having
somewhat recovered breath, I scrambled down the bank and got home as
quickly as the stiffness and soreness of my skin would allow.

I never saw my cousins again, and it was long before I saw any more
gipsies; for that day's adventure gave me a shock to which my children
owe the exceeding care and prudence that I display in the choice of our
summer homes and winter retreats, and in repressing every tendency to a
wandering disposition among the members of my family.

CHAPTER II.

That summer--I