r anyone, or give anything away, or anything like that,
don't go and tell everyone what you're doing, just for them to say what
a jolly good sort you are."

"Oh, yes, I see!" said Una; "that _would_ be a horrid way of giving
things, wouldn't it, Tom? Yours is an ever so much nicer kind of way."

Tom grunted, feeling all of a sudden rather bashful; for it was not
often that he talked about himself or his own doings. He was rather
the odd one of the family--Norah and Dan being such very great friends,
and having so many little plays and fancies together in which he had no
share; and Philip and the elder girls being rather inclined to class
him with Norah and Dan--as one of the "little ones"--when they came
home for the holidays.

"There they are!" he said suddenly. "Look, Una, you can see their
wigwam through the trees--that funny sort of hut-place with a rounded
roof."

[Illustration: "'There they are!' he said suddenly."]

"The gipsies?" said Una. "Oh, Tom, do they live in that funny little
house?"

"Yes," said Tom, "and when they want to go somewhere else they just
pack up their hut--it all comes to piece somehow--and then go off in
that cart. It must be awfully jolly to live like that."

"Yes, in the summer," Una agreed, "but not in the winter, Tom. Oh,
no!--not in the cold, cold winter, when the snow is on the ground," and
Una gave a little shiver at the thought.

"No," said Tom, "not in the winter, perhaps, and not when they haven't
enough to eat, like these now. The woman said she'd only had half a
loaf of bread to give her children all yesterday, and that is why
mother sent them a great can of soup by Barnes this morning, and I'm
taking them these things now, because they're going on to-morrow
towards the hospital where the children's father is. Now, what are you
going to do, Una? Are you coming too, or going to stay here?"

"I'll stay here," said Una, "if you can carry all the parcels."

"Yes, I can," said Tom. "I carried them all the way from the shop to
where I met you in the wood."

Una piled the parcels carefully one on the top of the other in Tom's
arms, then sat down on the mossy root of a tree, and watched him as he
crossed the common towards the little brown hut among the gorse bushes.

A thin wreath of smoke curled upwards from a small fire in front of the
hut; and as Tom drew nearer two children began to throw twigs and
branches on the fire, making it crackle and blaze while they