"Here we be!" said Flavia; "and I'll just find the prettiest basket of all for you, and I'll find a knife, too, and show you how to sharpen sticks so as to make them like arrows. I'll show yer lots o' things, and I'll be real good to yer." "Only--I must be going home," said Ralph, who, somehow, now that he had got into the house on wheels, was not quite so sure that he liked it. It was so full of smoke, and so crowded with furniture, and there were such a number of brown babies bobbing up their heads in every direction that at first he felt he could not breathe. And then he wondered why his eyes hurt so much. "You shall go home," said Flavia, "as soon as ever the house moves across the field." "Perhaps," said Ralph, trying to be very polite and not to show the least scrap of fear, "perhaps, gipsy lady, it might be best for me not to wait just now for your pretty house to move. Perhaps I had best come 'nother day, pretty lady, 'cause my school-mother will be coming back, and she'll be wanting me." "Where do you live?" asked Flavia. "In a big school with a lot of girls. I's the only boy, and I's staying there till Father comes back to fetch me." "He must mean Abbeyfield," said the toothless crone, raising her head from where she was lying on a bundle of old sacks. She had a pipe in her mouth, and as she spoke she puffed out a volume of smoke. "Now, to think of it," said Flavia. "Is that the house, the pretty house, you're in? We go past Abbeyfield: we'll put you out when we get there; it'll save a lot of time." "But," said Ralph, very nearly crying, and very nearly losing his manhood, "I's not to wait in that house; I's to wait in the house of a doctor--in a hot drawing-room. Oh, please, let me out!" "There," said Flavia, "we're off at last. Just once across the field, little master, and then back you'll go, basket and all." It was exciting; with whoops, and shouts, and cracking of several whips, the house on wheels began slowly to go forward. Gipsy men ran by it, and gipsy children shouted at each side of it, and the mongrel dogs all barked in chorus; and one little boy sat very still inside with a sad, beating heart. What was going to happen? It was lovely to be in a house that moved, and Flavia was very pretty. But, somehow, he was very nearly losing his manhood, and he did think that in another minute tears must rush to his eyes. Book 1--CHAPTER ELEVEN. THE TERROR. The fair was delightful. The merry-go-rounds were much more enchanting than anything Harriet had ever dreamed about. Pattie was very generous, too, with her shilling, and that shilling seemed to go a long way.