LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

In another moment Toby’s nose was in the bowl too,
  to Toby’s supreme content Front.

From behind some stubble A few yards off rose the
  figure of the young boy whom the children had
  seen walking behind the gipsies—­whistling
  while he cut at A branch he held in his hand Page 74

“Here’s some supper for you.  Wake up, and try
  and eat A bit.  It’ll do you good” 89

“They want out A bit,” She said.  “They’re tired
  like with being mewed up in there all day and
  never A breath of air—­no wonder” 132

“Upon my word they are something quite out of the
  common,” He said; “I wouldn’t have missed
  them for A good deal.  What A king and queen
  of the pigmies, or ‘babes in the wood,’ they’d
  make” 173

“I do fink when us is quite big and can do as us
  likes, us must have A boat like this, and always
  go sailing along” 195

    “She is telling them stories of the wood,
     And the Wolf and Little Red Riding-Hood.”
                                The Golden Legend.

CHAPTER I.

How they came to be “Us.”

    “Blue were their eyes as the fairy-flax,
     Their cheeks like the dawn of day.” 
                              Longfellow.

A soft rather shaky sort of tap at the door.  It does not all at once reach the rather deaf ears of the little old lady and tall, still older gentleman who are seated in their usual arm-chairs, one with his newspaper by the window, the other with her netting by the fire, in the exceedingly neat—­neat, indeed, is no word for it—­“parlour” of Arbitt Lodge.  In what part of the country