"I don't know what I mean: it's hidden from me," she answered, taking the words in a somewhat different light from what he meant to imply. "I think it may be sudden sickness; or it may be trouble: whatever it is, it will end badly." Whitney nodded to her, and we pursued our way. I had been looking at the little girl, who had drawn shyly up to gaze at us. She was fair as a lily, with a sweet face and eyes blue as the sky. "What humbugs they are!" exclaimed Whitney, alluding to gipsies and tramps in general. "As to this young woman, I should say she's going off her head!" "Do you know her husband?" "Don't know him from Adam. Johnny, I hope that's not a stolen child! Fair as she is, she can't be the woman's: there's nothing of the gipsy in her composition." "How well the gipsy appears to speak! With quite a refined accent." "Gipsies often do, I've heard. Let us get on." What with this adventure, and dawdling, and taking a wrong turn or two, it was past one o'clock when we got in, and they were laying the cloth for dinner. The green, mossy glade, with the sheltering trees around, the banks and the dells, the ferns and wild-flowers, made a picture of a retreat on a broiling day. The table (some boards, brought from the Hall, and laid on trestles) stood in the middle of the grass; and Helen and Anna Whitney, in their green-and-white muslins, were just as busy as bees placing the dishes upon it. Lady Whitney (with a face redder than beetroot) helped them: she liked to be always doing something. Miss Cattledon and the mater were pacing the dell below, and Miss Deveen sat talking with the Squire and Sir John. "Have they not got here?" exclaimed William. "Have who not got here?" retorted Helen. "Todhetley and the boys." "Ages ago. They surmised that you two must be lost, stolen, or strayed." "Then where are they?" "Making themselves useful. Johnny Ludlow, I wish you'd go after them, and tell them of all things to bring a corkscrew. No one can find ours, and we think it is left behind." "Why, here's the corkscrew, in my pocket," called out Sir John. "Whatever brings it there? And---- What's that great thing, moving down to us?" It was Tod with a wooden stool upon his head, legs upwards. Rednal the gamekeeper lived close by, and it was arranged that we should borrow chairs, and things, from his cottage. We sat down to dinner at last--and a downright jolly dinner it was. Plenty of good things to eat; cider, lemonade, and champagne to drink: and every one talking together, and bursts of laughter. "Look at Cattledon!" cried Bill in my ear. "She is as merry as the rest of us."