"But don't be frightened,
dearie," she added. "That's only stories. And even if it ever did happen,
it couldn't again, what with railway trains and telegraphs and telephones
and motor-cars and newspapers. How could we help being found out? Why," she
continued, "so far from stealing children, there was a boy running away
from school once who offered us a pound to let him join our caravan and
stain his face and go with us to Bristol, where he could get on to a ship
as a stowaway, as he called it; but Jasper wouldn't let him. I wanted to;
but Jasper was dead against it. 'No,' he said, 'gipsies have a bad enough
time as it is, without getting into trouble helping boys to run away from
school.' That shows what we are, dearie," she added to Hester, with a
smile.
"And don't you ever tell fortunes?" Hester asked.
"I won't say I've never done that," the gypsy said.
"Won't you tell mine?" Hester asked. "I've got a sixpence."
"Just cross my hand with it," said the woman, "but don't give it to me. I
couldn't take money from any of you."
So Hester, with her heart beating very fast, crossed the gipsy's hand with
the sixpence, and the gipsy held both hers and peered at them very hard
while Janet nursed the baby.
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