For one thing, he was penniless, except for a few
coppers that had escaped Moll's covetous eyes and grasping fingers the
last time she rifled his pockets, when she supposed him to be asleep;
and for another, he was not used to railway journeys. He had never, in
fact, been inside a railway carriage in all his life, and he would have
hated and shrunk from the attention he would most assuredly have
attracted from all sorts of people--pity, horror, shrugs, smiles, grins,
jeers, and laughter. It was bad enough to be stared at in booths and
fairs when he was dressed up as a general in a shabby scarlet uniform
and plumed hat with Bruno by his side. That was different. That was the
only way he had ever hit upon by which he might honestly earn his food
and shelter, such as it was. But from choice the dwarf had always
avoided his fellow-creatures. Surrounded by the strong, the
self-satisfied, the handsome, the gay, the consciousness of his own
oddity and deformity was borne in upon his sensitive spirit in the
keenest manner; but in the woods and fields, by the roadside and the
hedgerows, he felt another person entirely. There Bambo forgot that he
was so unlike his fellows; and among the birds, the beasts, the trees,
the flowers, with God's wide heaven above and the green earth under
foot, this simple, large-souled child of nature dropped his burden, and
for the time being felt happy and at home.

He knew quite well the way along which he proposed to travel, for he had
footed it from Firdale to Barchester more than once when he was a boy.
In the scattered cottages and herdsmen's huts there were simple, kindly
souls, who would welcome any one from the outside world, and willingly
give them a bit of bread, a drink of milk, with maybe a shakedown by
their fireside for the night, without asking any awkward questions or
gazing too curiously at the odd little man and his charming companions.
They might get a lift, too, for a few miles now and again in a cart or
wagon going between one and another of the few farms along the route.
Bambo sincerely hoped they should, for Joan would not be able to walk
very far at once. Her feet were tender, and her shoes were thin. Bambo
knew she should have to be carried the greater part of the way, and his
great anxiety was lest his fund of strength, which had gradually grown
so sadly small, should fail him before he had completed his self-imposed
task. What would become of the little ones if he were for