"The hares and foxes were down four days ago, and the liquid-manure pumps
like a snow man," the bailiff said.... "Yes, you can lie in the laithes
and welcome--if you can find 'em. Maybe you'll help us find our sheep
too--"

The gipsies had done so. Coming back again, they had had some ado to
discover the spot where their three caravans made a hummock of white
against a broken wall.

The women--they had four women with them--began that afternoon to weave
the mats and baskets they hawked from door to door; and in the forenoon
of the following day one of them, the black-haired, soft-voiced quean
whom the bailiff had heard called Annabel, set her babe in the sling on
her back, tucked a bundle of long cane-loops under her oxter, and trudged
down between eight-foot walls of snow to the Abbey Farm. She stood in the
latticed porch, dark and handsome against the whiteness, and then,
advancing, put her head into the great hall-kitchen.

"Has the lady any chairs for the gipsy woman to mend?" she asked in a
soft and insinuating voice....

They brought her the old chairs; she seated herself on a box in the
porch; and there she wove the strips of cane in and out, securing each
one with a little wooden peg and a tap of her hammer. The child remained
in the sling at her back, taking the breast from time to time over her
shoulder; and the silver wedding ring could be seen as she whipped the
cane, back and forth.

As she worked, she cast curious glances into the old hall-kitchen. The
snow outside cast a pallid, upward light on the heavy ceiling-beams; this
was reflected in the polished stone floor; and the children, who at first
had shyly stopped their play, seeing the strange woman in the porch--the
nearest thing they had seen to gipsies before had been the old itinerant
glazier with his frame of glass on his back--resumed it, but still eyed
her from time to time. In the ancient walnut chair by the hearth sat the
old, old lady who had told them to bring the chairs. Her hair, almost
as white as the snow itself, was piled up on her head _a la Marquise_;
she was knitting; but now and then she allowed the needle in the little
wooden sheath at her waist to lie idle, closed her eyes, and rocked
softly in the old walnut chair.

"Ask the woman who is mending the chairs whether she is warm enough
there," the old lady said to one of the children; and the child went
to the porch with the message.

"Thank you, little missie--thank you, lad