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Updated: July 22, 2025
Then another thought came, and she drooped her head mournfully. "If I do that they will claim me for their child. `Not all the parsons and all the squires as ever was could prevent it, Seraminta had said. What would happen then? I should have to go away from Wensdale, from father and mother, from Jackie, and all of them at the White House.
Seraminta began to feel doubtful as to the advantages of her theft, and Perrin, the gypsy man, swore at his wife and reproached her in the strongest language for having brought the child away. "I tell you what, my gal," he said one day, "the proper place for that child's the house, an' that's where she'll go soon as I git a chance.
Could it possibly be true that she, Mary Vallance, was the child of such people? What a dreadful thing! She did not feel so frightened this morning, and, her natural spirit partly returning after her night's rest, she was more inclined to believe that Seraminta had spoken falsely. "If I told father all about it," she said to herself, "I don't believe she'd dare to take me away."
"You've bin a fool, Seraminta," said the man, looking down at the baby as she lay flushed with sleep on the woman's lap, her cheeks still wet with tears. "The child'll git us into trouble. That's no common child. Anyone 'ud know it agen, and then where are we? In quod, sure as my name's Perrin." "You're the fool," replied the woman, looking at the man scornfully.
"Jackie," she said softly, very softly, so that Seraminta might not hear, "where does Hamlet sleep at night?" Hamlet was a Danish boar-hound belonging to the squire. "Hamlet," said Jackie. "Why, he sleeps just outside father's bed-room door, and sometimes in the night he walks up and down the corridor, and his tail goes flop up against the door. Once father thought it was thieves."
At Seraminta seated in the cart with her knees almost as high as her nose, and her yellow handkerchief twisted round her head; at the dark Perrin, striding along by the donkey's side; at Mossoo, still adorned with his last dancing ribbon, but ragged and shabby, and so very very tired that he limped along on three legs; at the brown children among the bundles in the cart; and finally at baby.
She was heartbroken to have the clog taken from her, and cried as violently for it as she had done for mammy. "You've got a fine temper of yer own, my young queen," said Seraminta, looking down at the small sobbing form. She did not attempt to quiet her, but turning away proceeded to arrange some bundles in the cart which stood at a short distance.
She was to stop at the White House that night, because it was still wet and stormy, so she resolved not to think of the chickens or Perrin or Seraminta just for that one evening. It would be time enough to be miserable again when morning came. Everything went on merrily until Jackie's guests were all gone away.
And yet, when she thought it over, how could the woman have known about the shoe? And besides, Rice's remark flashed across her, "brown as a berry," certainly that would apply to Seraminta, she was a darker brown than anyone Mary had ever seen. It was true, then, she really was a gypsy child, and if so, they had a right to claim her if they wished. How could she escape it?
But all the while she had an inward feeling that Perrin would outwit her, and get his own way. And this turned out to be the case. Travelling slowly but steadily along, sometimes stopping a day or so in a large town, where Seraminta played the tambourine in the streets, and Mossoo danced, they had now left the north far behind them.
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