"Thanks aw-filly!" said Ralph. "But, perhaps," he added, after a minute's pause. "I had best not have it, for Father would not like me to." "Oh, please yourself," said Harriet. "Have you had enough breakfast?" "Yes, thank you awfully, and it was _so_ good. I suppose," added Ralph, a little timidly, "we'd best begin my lessons now. I hate reading to myself, but I suppose I must learn." "You needn't learn from me," said Harriet. "I'm not going to give you any lessons." "Oh--but--oughtn't you to?" "Whether I ought to or not, I don't mean to," said Harriet. "Now, look here, what shall we do with ourselves?" "I don't know," said Ralph, who was so excited and interested that he leaned up against Harriet, who would have given worlds to push him away, but did not dare. "You're very nice, really, truly," he said, and he touched her lank hair with his little brown hand. "Yes, am I not nice?" said Harriet, smiling at him. "Now, if you were to choose me for your school-mother, you would have a jolly time." "Am I to choose who I like?" said Ralph. "Of course, you are. We are all trying our hands on you; but you are to make your own choice. Didn't the other girls tell you?" "No." "Do you like being with the others?" "They were _very_ kind," said Ralph. "Did you have a picnic breakfast with them?" "Oh, no." "If I were your school-mother," said Harriet, after a pause, "we would have one every day, and--and--no lessons; and you might play with matches, and you might have a pop-gun, and there's something else we would do." "Oh, what is it?" "We'd go and see the gipsies." "But I am frightened of gipsies," said Ralph. As he spoke he pressed a little nearer to Harriet. "Are there gipsies about?" "There are some gipsies living two fields off--you look almost like a gipsy boy yourself, you are so dark. There are a lot of little brown babies rolling about on the grass, and big brown men, and big brown women, and there are dogs, and a donkey, and an old horse; but the most wonderful thing of all is the house on wheels." "The house on wheels?" said Ralph. "Yes, the old horse draws it, and the gipsies live inside; oh, it is wonderful!" "Aren't gipsies very wicked people?" "Wicked?" said Harriet. "They're the most lovely people in all the world. I can't take you to see them to-day, but if I were your school-mother, we would manage to slip off and have a good time with them. They love little brown boys like you, and you would love them. Oh, you don't know what a gipsy is! Frightened of them, are you? Well, I'll tell you a story of what they did for me when I ran away once and stayed with them for a whole night. I never had such a good time in all my life." Harriet made up a story out of her head. It is true she had once been for a very frightened half-hour with some gipsies on the common nearest to her father's house; but that time now was changed into something quite fairy-like.