Harriet went. So subdued was she, that she did not even hate Miss Ford for speaking to her in this way. A minute later, she found herself in the third form special parlour. One electric light was on. It threw a dim reflection over the scene. Harriet looked round at the familiar objects--the table in the middle, the story-books, the globes in their corner, the birds in their cages, and the parrot in his cage. The small birds were all asleep. The books and toys, and tables and chairs could not move; but the parrot was wide awake, and very much alive. He hopped from side to side and looked hard at Harriet. At last, he screamed in a noisy, shrill tone: "Mind what you're about! Ha, ha! Mind what you're about! Ha, ha!" Poor Harriet. She flung herself down on the floor and cried as though her heart would break. She was only a little girl still, and not all bad. That pony with his side-saddle, that perfectly made habit, all the delights which she had sinned so deeply to obtain, would have been as ashes now in her mouth. She only wanted Ralph now, and Ralph was far away. Why had she behaved so badly? Oh what, what was happening? Her agony became almost unendurable. Suddenly, she perceived that the door of the parlour had not been shut, that it was a little ajar. Why need she sit there? It was so awful to remain still; so frightful to do nothing at all. She stole softly to the door, opened it, and peeped out. There was no one in the hall, and the hall door itself stood wide open. "Mind what you're about. Ha, ha!" shrieked the parrot. But Harriet was in no mood to mind. She crossed the hall on tip-toe, rushed to the open door, drew a deep breath, and the next moment was skimming herself, light as a bird, over the ground in the direction of the gipsy encampment. Harriet could, indeed, run like the wind, and never had she ran faster than on this occasion. "It was I," she thought, "who caused him to be lost, so I will find him again; yes, I will find him if it kills me." Suddenly she drew up on the edge of a piece of common. Here only yesterday, surely, were many brown tents and many brown people. Here was this fascinating house on wheels of which she had spoken so much to little Ralph. But now--she could not believe her eyes! The place was empty. She could see, even by the moonlight, patches of yellow grass which had been covered by the tents, and here and there she could also perceive a bone or two, or a scrap of broken bread. But not a gipsy was in sight, not a tent within view, not a dog, not a brown baby. The gipsies had gone! Why had they gone? They were there, she knew, that very afternoon, for she had seen the smoke curling up from the house on wheels, as she and Ralph had gone with Pattie to the village.