wing.

"'His mother was a good daughter to you,' I thinks; 'and if you hadn't
sold him--sold your own flesh and blood--for ten golden sovereigns to
the clergywoman, he might have been a good son to your old age.'

"At last I could bear idleness and the lone company of my own thoughts
no longer, my daughter, and I sets off to travel on my own account,
taking money at back-doors, and living on broken meats I begged into the
bargain, and working at nights instead of thinking. I knows a few arts,
my daughter, of one sort and another, and I puts away most of what I
takes, and changes it when the copper comes to silver, and _the silver
comes to gold_."

"I wonder you never went to see if he was alive," said Sybil.

"I did, my daughter. I went several times under various disguisements,
which are no difficulty to those who know how to adopt them, and with
servant's jewellery and children's toys, I had sight of him more than
once, and each time made me wilder to get him back."

"And you never tried?"

"The money was not ready. One must act honourably, my daughter. I
couldn't pick up my own grandson as if he'd been a stray hen, or a few
clothes off the line. It took me five years to save those ten pounds.
Five long miserable years."

"Miserable!" cried the gipsy girl, flinging her hair back from her eyes.
"Miserable! Happy, you mean; too happy! It is when one can do nothing--"

She stopped, as if talking choked her, and the old woman, who seemed to
pay little attention to any one but herself, went on,

"It was when it was all but saved, and I hangs about that country,
making up my plans, that he comes to me himself, as I sits on the
outskirts of a wood beyond the village, in no manner of disguisement,
but just as I sits here."

"He came to you?" said Sybil.

"He comes to me, my daughter; dressed like any young nobleman of eight
years old, but bareheaded and barefooted, having his cap in one hand,
and his boots and stockings in the other.

"'Good-morning, old gipsy woman,' says he. 'I heard there was an old
gipsy woman in the wood; so I came to see. Nurse said if I went about in
the fields, by myself, the gipsies would steal me; but I told her I
didn't care if they did, because it must be so nice to live in a wood,
and sleep out of doors all night. When I grow up, I mean to be a wild
man on a desert island, and dress in goats' skins. I sha'n't wear
hats--I hate them; and I don't like shoes and stockings either. When