All round them there were tangles of bramble, red and copper and orange, and fiery spotted leaves. Where it was damp the dew still lay under the burning bracken and the yellow ragwort stood up like plumes and feathers of gold. Here they went slower, pushing through the broom, whose black pods rattled as they passed. In front of them a little string of smoke was rising, and when they reached it, they found that it came from the chimneys of a caravan which was drawn up in a clearing. Maggie and her two friends crouched down and looked at it through the bracken. They saw a large blue van and a battered-looking green one, which stood with their shafts resting on the ground. A couple of horses grazed, unharnessed, a few yards away. In a circle of stones burned a fire, over which hung a black caldron, and a woman, with a string of red beads round her neck, was nursing a baby on the top step of the blue van. “Oh, what a lovely baby!” whispered Maggie, as she gazed at them. “So it is,” replied the Cochin-China cock amiably. Alfonso turned up his beak, for he had no domestic tastes. “I must go a little nearer,” said Maggie. “Oh, look! the woman can see us. I really will ask her to show it to me.” “Ma’am,” she said, making a curtsey, “may I look at your little child?” [Illustration: “MAGGIE TOOK IT AND BEGAN TO ROCK IT ABOUT.”] The woman exchanged glances of rather contemptuous amusement with a man who had come out of the van and stood behind her. Then she held the baby out to Maggie, and Maggie took it and began to rock it about as if she had minded babies, and not poultry, all her life. “Well, I never!” said the man. He wore small gold rings in his ears. At this moment there arose a most furious noise from some fowls that were wandering about among the van wheels, where a fight was beginning. Alfonso had already managed to pick a quarrel with someone of his own sex, and the hens were screeching as the two birds crouched opposite to each other, making leaps into the air and striking out until the feathers flew. “Alfonso! Alfonso! stop this moment!” screamed Maggie. “Oh! what a way to behave!” But she could not get at him because of the baby she held. “He has dreadful manners,” moaned the Cochin-China cock. But he would not have said that if Alfonso had been able to hear him. “Well,” said the man, vaulting down the steps, “that’s the finest little game-bird I ever saw.” And without more ado he separated the fighters and pushed Alfonso under a basket that stood upside down near the van. There was a hole in it, and through this Alfonso stuck his head and crowed at the top of his voice. “What are you doing to him?” cried Maggie. “He is my friend, and we are travelling together.” “He’s mine now,” replied the man, “for I’m going to keep him.” “But I can’t part from him—you have got no right to take him away.” And the tears rushed to Maggie’s eyes at the thought. “Best come along too,” said the woman, who spoke little.