One afternoon as she sat with Rhoda under the trees, a man came towards them from the tents. He had a long pointed nose, and was very grandly dressed for a gipsy, for he wore a bright-coloured scarf and waistcoat and his fingers were covered with silver rings. Maggie thought him very nice, for he joined them and seemed to admire Alfonso very much. The little cock strutted about, ruffling himself out as the man watched him. He loved notice. The gipsy threw him a handful of corn from his pocket, and when he went off again to the tents, he kept looking back with a smile. Rhoda took up her guitar once more for she had laid it down at his approach, though she was in the middle of a song. “I never sing to _him_,” she said. It was a pleasant time they spent in the fir-woods, and Maggie began to think there could be nothing better than life in the caravan. She loved the open air and the blue mists, the silver spider webs and the winking eyes of the little fires that were lit among the trees at night. She loved the whispering branches and the red toadstools and the sceptres of tall ragwort, that were beginning to fade as the days went by. She did not want to leave the place, and, besides that, she did not want to leave Rhoda. But early one morning, as she was gathering wood a little way from the van, she glanced up to find Rhoda standing before her. Her guitar was under her arm and a little bundle in her hand. “I have come to say good-bye,” said she. “Yes, I am going, and you must not tell anybody. I can’t stay any more in our camp. I shall take my guitar and go and make my living by singing at fairs, as I have done before. So I’ve come to say good-bye to you first.” Maggie was too much surprised to answer. “It is because of the man you saw,” continued Rhoda, “the man I will not sing for. He is the richest gipsy in the country, and I hate him; but he loves me. My mother says I must marry him. He has given her presents of money and necklaces and fine clothes, and she has promised me to him. They don’t know I have gone, but by to-night I shall be miles away, and I will never come back. He is the most hateful man in the world.” “And now I shall never see you any more!” cried Maggie. “Oh, but I hope you will,” replied Rhoda. “I like you, and you like me, and when you are at a fair some day, you’ll hear my guitar, and come and speak to me and be glad to see me. You will, won’t you?” And she turned away towards the edge of the wood, and Maggie went a little distance with her. “May I tell Dan?” she asked, as they parted. “Oh, Dan knows,” said Rhoda. Then she went away through the tree-stems into the open country, and Maggie stood at the outskirts of the wood watching her until she disappeared among the shorn fields, looking back and waving her hand.