s, and, though they said nothing, the little pair were
far less babyish and foolish in some ways than the gipsies, who judged
them by their delicate appearance and small stature, had any idea of.
But still they were very young, and there is no telling how soon they
would have begun to get accustomed to their strange life,--how soon even
the remembrance of Grandpapa and Grandmamma and their pretty peaceful
home, of Toby and Miss Mitten, of the garden and their little white
beds, of Nurse and Biddy and Dymock, and all that had hitherto made up
their world,--would have begun to grow dim and hazy, and at last seem
only a dream, of which Mick, and the Missus and Diana, and the others,
and the green lanes, with the waggons ever creeping along, and the
coarse food and coarser talking and laughing and scolding, were the
reality, had it not been for some fortunate events which opened out to
them the hope of escape before they had learnt to forget they were in
prison.

Tim was a great favourite in the gipsy camp. He was not one of them, but
he did not seem to remember any other life; in any case he never spoke
of it, and he was so much better tempered and obliging than the cruel,
quarrelsome gipsy boys, that it was always to him that ran the two or
three tiny black-eyed children when their mothers had cuffed them out of
the way; it was always he who had a kind word or a pat on the head for
the two half-starved curs that slunk along beside or under the carts.
There was no mystery about his life--he was not a stolen child, and he
could faintly remember the little cottage where he had lived with his
mother before she died, leaving him perfectly friendless and penniless,
so that he was glad to pick up an odd sixpence, or even less, wherever
he could, till one day he fell in with Mick, who offered him his food
and the chance of more by degrees, as he wanted a sharp lad to help him
in his various trades--of pedlar, tinker, basket-maker, wicker-chair
mender, etc., not to speak of poultry-stealing, orchard-robbing, and
even child-thieving when he got a chance that seemed likely to be
profitable.

Poor little Tim--he had learnt very scanty good in his short life! His
mother, bowed down with care and sorrow--for her husband, a thatcher by
trade, had been killed by an accident, leaving her with the boy of three
years old and two delicate babies, who both died--had barely managed to
keep herself and him alive by working in the fields, and s