the gypsy woman would tell the future lives of anybody and what was
going to happen to them, and so I saw this lovely, lovely baby asleep
on a blanket under some bushes, and probably they had stole it from some
good family, so while they was busy I picked it up and run."

"Did they chase you?"

Wilbur Cowan was by now almost abject in his admiration of this fearless
spirit.

"Not at first; but when I got up to our fence I heard some of 'em
yelling like very fiends, and they came after me through the woods, but
I got inside our yard, and the baby woke up and yelled like a very
fiend, and Nathan Marwick came running out of our barn and says: 'What
in time is all this?' And someone told folks in the house and out comes
Harvey D.'s stepmother that he got married to, and Grandpa Gideon and
Cousin Juliana that happened to be there, and all the gypsies rushed up
the hill and everyone made the vilest scene and I had to give back this
lovely baby to the gypsy woman that claimed it. You'd think it was the
only baby in the wide world, the way she made a scene, and not a single
one would listen to reason when I tried to explain. They acted simply
crazy, that's all."

"Gee, gosh!" muttered the Wilbur twin. This was indeed a splendid and
desperate character, and he paid her the tribute of honest envy. He
wished he might have a cruel stepmother of his own, and so perhaps be
raised to this eminence of infamy. "I bet they did something with you!"
he said.

The girl waved it aside with a gesture of repugnance, as if some things