th a pack of lies
about it being your baby instead of ours! D'jever catch a weasel
asleep?" they asked.

"If you're hungry you can pick a bit along of us," said the light-haired
gipsy-woman, not unkindly. "Here Levi, that blessed kid'll howl all his
buttons off. Give him to the little lady, and let's see if they can't
get him used to us a bit."

So the Lamb was handed back; but the gipsies crowded so closely that he
could not possibly stop howling. Then the man with the red handkerchief
said--

"Here, Pharaoh, make up the fire; and you girls see to the pot. Give the
kid a chanst." So the gipsies, very much against their will, went off to
their work, and the children and the Lamb were left sitting on the
grass.

"He'll be all right at sunset," Jane whispered. "But, oh, it is awful!
Suppose they are frightfully angry when they come to their senses! They
might beat us, or leave us tied to trees, or something."

"No, they won't," Anthea said ("Oh, my Lamb, don't cry any more, it's
all right, Panty's got oo, duckie"); "they aren't unkind people, or they
wouldn't be going to give us any dinner."

"Dinner?" said Robert; "I won't touch their nasty dinner. It would choke
me!"

The others thought so too then. But when the dinner was ready--it turned
out to be supper, and happened between four and five--they were all glad
enough to take what they could get. It was boiled rabbit, with onions,
and some bird rather like a chicken, but stringier about its legs and
with a stronger taste. The Lamb had bread soaked in hot water and brown
sugar sprinkled on the top. He liked this very much, and consented to
let the two gipsy women feed him with it, as he sat on Anthea's lap. All
that long hot afternoon Robert and Cyril and Anthea and Jane had to keep
the Lamb amused and happy, while the gipsies looked eagerly on. By the
time the shadows grew long and black across the meadows he had really
"taken to" the woman with the light hair, and even consented to kiss
his hand to the children, and to stand up and bow, with his hand on his
chest--"like a gentleman"--to the two men. The whole gipsy camp was in
raptures with him, and his brothers and sisters could not help taking
some pleasure in showing off his accomplishments to an audience so
interested and enthusiastic. But they longed for sunset.

[Illustration: He consented to let the two gypsy women feed him]

"We're getting into the habit of longing for sunset," Cyril whispered.
"How