ttle hot fat hand into
mine, and tried to pull me after her out of the room.

"What do you want?" I asked.

Jicks answered in one untranslatable compound word:

"Man-Gee-gee."

I suffered myself to be pulled out of the room--to see "Man-Gee-gee," to
play "Man-Gee-gee," or to eat "Man-Gee-gee," it was impossible to tell
which. I was pulled along the passage--I was pulled out to the front
door. There--having approached the house inaudibly to us, over the
grass--stood the horse, cart, and man, waiting to take the case of gold
and silver plates back to London. I looked at Oscar, who had followed me.
We now understood, not only the masterly compound word of Jicks
(signifying man and horse, and passing over cart as unimportant), but the
polite attention of Jicks in entering the house to inform us, after a
rest and a drink, of a circumstance which had escaped our notice. The
driver of the cart had, on his own acknowledgment, been investigated and
questioned by this extraordinary child; strolling up to the door of
Browndown to see what he was doing there. Jicks was a public character at
Dimchurch. The driver knew all about her. She had been nicknamed "Gipsy"
from her wandering habits, and had shortened the name in her own dialect,
into "Jicks." There was no keeping her in at the rectory, try how you
might: they had long since abandoned the effort in despair. Sooner or
later, she turned up again--or somebody brought her back--or one of the
sheep-dogs found her asleep under a bush, and gave the alarm. "What goes
on in that child's head," said the driver, regarding Jicks with a sort of
superstitious admiration, "the Lord only knows. She has a will of her
own, and a way of her own. She _is_ a child; and she _aint_ a child. At
three years of age, she's a riddle none of us can guess. And that's the
long and the short of what I know about her."

While this explanation was in progress, the carpenter who had nailed up
the case, and the carpenter's son, accompanying him, joined us in front
of the house. They followed Oscar in, and came out again, bearing the
heavy burden of precious metal--more than one man could conveniently
lift--between them.

The case deposited in the cart, carpenter senior and carpenter junior got
in after it, wanting "a lift" to Brighton.

Carpenter senior, a big burly man, made a joke. "It's a lonely country
between this and Brighton, sir," he said to Oscar. "Three of us will be
none too many to see your p