went on--

"You won't mind my just running home to get our dinner?" he said to the
gipsy; "I can bring it out here in a basket."

His brothers and sisters felt themselves very noble and despised him.
They did not know his thoughtful secret intention. But the gipsies did
in a minute.

"Oh yes!" they said; "and then fetch the police with a pack of lies
about it being your baby instead of ours! D'jever catch a weasel
asleep?" they asked.

"If you're hungry you can pick a bit along of us," said the light-haired
gipsy-woman, not unkindly. "Here Levi, that blessed kid'll howl all his
buttons off. Give him to the little lady, and let's see if they can't
get him used to us a bit."

So the Lamb was handed back; but the gipsies crowded so closely that he
could not possibly stop howling. Then the man with the red handkerchief
said--

"Here, Pharaoh, make up the fire; and you girls see to the pot. Give the
kid a chanst." So the gipsies, very much against their will, went off to
their work, and the children and the Lamb were left sitting on the
grass.

"He'll be all right at sunset," Jane whispered. "But, oh, it is awful!
Suppose they are frightfully angry when they come to their senses! They
might beat us, or leave us tied to trees, or something."