“Yes, ma’am; and I’ve seen the pony for little Miss Gyp this morning, ma’am.  It’s a mouse pony, five year old, sound, good temper, pretty little paces.  I says to the man:  ‘Don’t you come it over me,’ I says; ’I was born on an ’orse.  Talk of twenty pounds, for that pony!  Ten, and lucky to get it!’ ‘Well,’ he says, ’Pettance, it’s no good to talk round an’ round with you.  Fifteen!’ he says.  ‘I’ll throw you one in,’ I says, ‘Eleven!  Take it or leave it.’  ‘Ah!’ he says, ’Pettance, you know ’ow to buy an ‘orse.  All right,’ he says; ‘twelve!’ She’s worth all of fifteen, ma’am, and the major’s passed her.  So if you likes to have ’er, there she is!”

Gyp looked at her little daughter, who had given one excited hop, but now stood still, her eyes flying up at her mother and her lips parted; and she thought:  “The darling!  She never begs for anything!”

“Very well, Pettance; buy her.”

The “old scoundrel” touched his forelock: 

“Yes, ma’am—­very good, ma’am.  Beautiful evenin’, ma’am.”  And, withdrawing at his gait of one whose feet are at permanent right angles to the legs, he mused:  ‘And that’ll be two in my pocket.’

Ten minutes later Gyp, little Gyp, and Ossian emerged from the garden gate for their evening walk.  They went, not as usual, up to the downs, but toward the river, making for what they called “the wild.”  This was an outlying plot of neglected ground belonging to their farm, two sedgy meadows, hedged by banks on which grew oaks and ashes.  An old stone linhay, covered to its broken thatch by a huge ivy bush, stood at the angle where the meadows met.  The spot had a strange life to itself in that smooth, kempt countryside of cornfields, grass, and beech-clumps; it was favoured by beasts and birds, and little Gyp had recently seen two baby hares there.  From an oak-tree, where the crinkled leaves were not yet large enough to hide him, a cuckoo was calling and they stopped to look at the grey bird till he flew off.  The singing and serenity, the green and golden oaks and ashes, the flowers—­marsh-orchis, ladies’ smocks, and cuckoo-buds, starring the rushy grass—­all brought to Gyp that feeling of the uncapturable spirit which lies behind the forms of nature, the shadowy, hovering smile of life that is ever vanishing and ever springing again out of death.  While they stood there close to the old linhay a bird came flying round them in wide circles, uttering shrill cries.  It had a long beak and long, pointed wings, and seemed distressed by their presence.  Little Gyp squeezed her mother’s hand.

“Poor bird!  Isn’t it a poor bird, mum?”

“Yes, dear, it’s a curlew—­I wonder what’s the matter with it.  Perhaps its mate is hurt.”

“What is its mate?”

“The bird it lives with.”

“It’s afraid of us.  It’s not like other birds.  Is it a real bird, mum?  Or one out of the sky?”

“I think it’s real.  Shall we go on and see if we can find out what’s the matter?”