The Return of the Gypsy Read Online Free PDF Page B

here.”
    “Well, I suppose there is no reason why they shouldn’t be,” replied my mother.
    “They seem to be enjoying the occasion,” added David.
    I was amazed to see Dolly in the crowd. I would not have expected her to venture out on such a night, and certainly not to come to the bonfire. She was standing on the edge of the crowd, looking frail and pretty because her deformity was not discernible. She looked like a young girl though she must be past her mid twenties.
    I whispered to Amaryllis: “Look, there’s Dolly.”
    And at that moment Romany Jake was beside her. He seized her hand and, drawing her along with him, began to dance.
    “Dolly … dancing,” said Amaryllis. “How very strange.”
    I followed them with my eyes for as long as I could. Once or twice as they came round the bonfire they were quite close to the carriage. Dolly looked ecstatic. He glanced my way. There was something I did not understand in his expression but I knew he was telling me how much he wanted me to be dancing with him round the bonfire.
    I waited for them to come round again, but they did not. I continued to look for them but I did not see them again.
    “This will go on through the night,” my mother said.
    “Yes.” My father yawned. “David, take us home now. I think we have had enough. This sort of thing becomes monotonous.”
    “It is a good thing that they all realize what dangers we have come through,” commented David. “There can’t be a man or woman in England tonight who is not proud to be English.”
    “For tonight, yes,” said my mother. “Tomorrow may be another matter.”
    “Lottie, my dear,” said my father, “you have become a cynic.”
    “Crowds make me feel so,” she replied.
    “Come along, David,” commanded my father, and David turned the horses.
    So we rode the short distance back to the house through the lanes which were illuminated by the light from the bonfire. We could see other bonfires spread along the coast like jewels in a necklace.
    “A night to remember,” said David.
    What I would remember most was the sight of Romany
    Jake standing there almost willing me to leave the carriage and go to him; and then hand in hand with Dolly he had disappeared.
    A few days later there was trouble.
    One of the gamekeepers came to see my father. He had caught two gypsies stealing pheasants in the wood. There was a definite boundary between those woods in which the gypsies were allowed to camp and those in which the pheasants were kept. There were notices in every conceivable spot warning that those who trespassed in the private woods would be prosecuted.
    These two men had been seen by the gamekeeper with pheasants in their hands. He had given chase and although he had failed to catch them he had traced them back to the gypsy encampment.
    As a result my father rode out there and warned the gypsies that if any more attempts were made to encroach on the land which was forbidden to them and if those stealing his pheasants were caught, they would be handed over to the law and suffer the consequences; and the gypsies would be moved on and never allowed to camp on his ground again.
    He talked of them over dinner that evening.
    “They are a proud race,” he said. “It’s a pity they don’t settle down and stop wandering over the face of the earth.”
    “I think they like the life under the sun, moon and stars,” I said.
    “Poetic, but uncomfortable,” said Claudine.
    “I suppose,” added David, who always brought a philosophical turn to the conversation, “that if they did not prefer it they would not continue with it.”
    “They’re lazy,” declared Dickon.
    “I am not sure,” contradicted my mother. “They have been doing it for generations. It’s a way of life.”
    “Begging … scrounging … making use of other people’s property!”
    “I believe,” I put in, “that they have an idea that everything on earth is for the use of everybody in it.”
    “A misguided