pence they could by playing tricks or selling little trifles out of the general repository.  And the brother and sister were not at all consoled by being told that before long they should be dressed up in beautiful gold and silver clothes—­“like a real prince and princess,” said Mick, once when he was in a good humour—­and taught to dance like fairies.  For Tim’s words had explained to them the meaning of these fine promises, and, though they said nothing, the little pair were far less babyish and foolish in some ways than the gipsies, who judged them by their delicate appearance and small stature, had any idea of.  But still they were very young, and there is no telling how soon they would have begun to get accustomed to their strange life,—­how soon even the remembrance of Grandpapa and Grandmamma and their pretty peaceful home, of Toby and Miss Mitten, of the garden and their little white beds, of Nurse and Biddy and Dymock, and all that had hitherto made up their world,—­would have begun to grow dim and hazy, and at last seem only a dream, of which Mick, and the Missus and Diana, and the others, and the green lanes, with the waggons ever creeping along, and the coarse food and coarser talking and laughing and scolding, were the reality, had it not been for some fortunate events which opened out to them the hope of escape before they had learnt to forget they were in prison.

Tim was a great favourite in the gipsy camp.  He was not one of them, but he did not seem to remember any other life; in any case he never spoke of it, and he was so much better tempered and obliging than the cruel, quarrelsome gipsy boys, that it was always to him that ran the two or three tiny black-eyed children when their mothers had cuffed them out of the way; it was always he who had a kind word or a pat on the head for the two half-starved curs that slunk along beside or under the carts.  There was no mystery about his life—­he was not a stolen child, and he could faintly remember the little cottage where he had lived with his mother before she died, leaving him perfectly friendless and penniless, so that he was glad to pick up an odd sixpence, or even less, wherever he could, till one day he fell in with Mick, who offered him his food and the chance of more by degrees, as he wanted a sharp lad to help him in his various trades—­of pedlar, tinker, basket-maker, wicker-chair mender, etc., not to speak of poultry-stealing, orchard-robbing, and even child-thieving when he got a chance that seemed likely to be profitable.

Poor little Tim—­he had learnt very scanty good in his short life!  His mother, bowed down with care and sorrow—­for her husband, a thatcher by trade, had been killed by an accident, leaving her with the boy of three years old and two delicate babies, who both died—­had barely managed to keep herself and him alive by working in the fields, and she used to come home at night so tired out that she could scarcely speak to the child,