terribly--cease
to smile, but not cease to stare.

That second day he fared better, too, than the first; for he came on
a family of mongrel gipsies, who fed him well out of their kettle,
and, taken with his looks, thought to keep him for begging purposes.
But now that Gibbie's confidence in human nature had been so rudely
shaken, he had already begun, with analysis unconscious, to read the
human countenance, questioning it; and he thought he saw something
that would hurt, in the eyes of two of the men and one of the women.
Therefore, in the middle of the night, he slipped silently out of
the tent of rags, in which he had lain down with the gipsy children,
and ere the mothers woke, was a mile up the river.

But I must not attempt the detail of this part of his journey. It
is enough that he got through it. He met with some adventures, and
suffered a good deal from hunger and cold. Had he not been hardy as
well as fearless he must have died. But, now from this quarter, now
from that, he got all that was needful for one of God's birds. Once
he found in a hedge the nest of an errant and secretive hen, and
recognizing the eggs as food authorized by the shop windows and
market of the city, soon qualified himself to have an opinion of
their worth. Another time he came upon a girl milking a cow in a
shed, and his astonishment at the marvels of the process was such,
that he forgot even the hunger that was rendering him faint. He had
often seen cows in the city, but had never suspected what they were
capable of. When the girl caught sight of him, staring with open
mouth, she was taken with such a fit of laughter, that the cow,
which was ill-tempered, kicked out, and overturned the pail. Now
because of her troublesomeness this cow was not milked beside the
rest, and the shed where she stood was used for farm-implements
only. The floor of it was the earth, beaten hard, and worn into
hollows. When the milk settled in one of these, Gibbie saw that it
was lost to the girl, and found to him: undeterred by the astounding
nature of the spring from which he had just seen it flow, he threw
himself down, and drank like a calf. Her laughter ended, the girl
was troubled: she would be scolded for her clumsiness in allowing
Hawkie to kick over the pail, but the eagerness of the boy after the
milk troubled her more. She told him to wait, and running to the
house, returned with two large pieces of oatcake, which she gave
him.