The driver turned round to laugh, and the motor instantly took the bit between its teeth and bolted into the stone wall of the churchyard. No one was hurt except the motor, but that had to spend the day at the blacksmith's, we heard afterwards. Thus was the outraged Oswald avenged by Fate.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALICE BEAT THE DONKEY FROM THE CART. THE REST SHOUTED.]

He was not hurt either--though much the motor people would have cared if he had been--and he caught up with the others at the end of the village, for the donkey's pace had been too good to last, and the triumphal progress was resumed.

It was some time before we found a wood sufficiently lurking-looking for our secret purposes. There are no woods close to the village. But at last, up by Bonnington, we found one, and tying our n.o.ble steed to the sign-post that says how many miles it is to Ashford, we cast a hasty glance round, and finding no one in sight disappeared in the wood with our bundles.

We went in just ordinary creatures. We came out gipsies of the deepest dye, for we had got a pennorth of walnut stain from Mr. Jameson the builder, and mixed with water--the water we had brought in a medicine-bottle--it was a prime disguise. And we knew it would wash off, unlike the Condy's fluid we once stained ourselves with during a never-to-be-forgotten game of Jungle-Book.

We had put on all the glorious things we had bagged from Miss Sandal's attic treasures, but still Alice had a small bundle unopened.

"What's that?" Dora asked.

"I meant to keep it as a reserve force in case the fortune-telling didn't turn out all our fancy painted it," said Alice; "but I don't mind telling you now."

She opened the bundle, and there was a tambourine, some black lace, a packet of cigarette papers, and our missing combs.

"What ever on earth----" d.i.c.ky was beginning, but Oswald saw it all. He has a wonderfully keen nose. And he said--

"Bully for you, Alice. I wish I'd thought it myself."

Alice was much pleased by this handsome speech.

"Yes," she said; "perhaps really it would be best to begin with it. It would attract the public's attention, and then we could tell the fortunes. You see," she kindly explained to d.i.c.ky and H.O. and Dora, who had not seen it yet--though Noel had, almost as soon as I did--"you see, we'll all play on the combs with the veils over our faces, so that no one can see what our instruments are. Why, they might be mouth-organs for anything any one will know, or some costly instruments from the far-off East, like they play to sultans in zenanas. Let's just try a tune or two before we go on, to be sure that all the combs work right.

Dora's has such big teeth, I shouldn't wonder if it wouldn't act at all."

So we all papered our combs and did "Heroes," but that sounded awful.

"The Girl I Left Behind Me" went better, and so did "Bonnie Dundee." But we thought "See the Conquering" or "The Death of Nelson" would be the best to begin with.

It was beastly hot doing it under the veils, but when Oswald had done one tune without the veil to see how the others looked he could not help owning that the veils did give a hidden mystery that was a stranger to simple combs.

We were all a bit puffed when we had played for awhile, so we decided that as the donkey seemed calm and was eating gra.s.s and resting, we might as well follow his example.

"We ought not to be too proud to take pattern by the brute creation,"

said Dora.

So we had our lunch in the wood. We lighted a little fire of sticks and fir-cones, so as to be as gipsyish as we could, and we sat round the fire. We made a charming picture in our bright clothes, among what would have been our native surroundings if we had been real gipsies, and we knew how nice we looked, and stayed there though the smoke got in our eyes, and everything we ate tasted of it.

The woods were a little damp, and that was why the fire smoked so. There were the jackets we had cast off when we dressed up, to sit on, and there was a horse-cloth in the cart intended for the donkey's wear, but we decided that our need was greater than its, so we took the blanket to recline on.

It was as jolly a lunch as ever I remember, and we lingered over that and looking romantic till we could not bear the smoke any more.

Then we got a lot of bluebells and we trampled out the fire most carefully, because we know about not setting woods and places alight, rolled up our clothes in bundles, and went out of the shadowy woodland into the bright sunlight, as sparkling looking a crew of gipsies as any one need wish for.

Last time we had seen the road it had been quite white and bare of persons walking on it, but now there were several. And not only walkers, but people in carts. And some carriages pa.s.sed us too.

Every one stared at us, but they did not seem so astonished as we had every right to expect, and though interested they were not rude, and this is very rare among English people--and not only poor people either--when they see anything at all out of the way.

We asked one man, who was very Sunday-best indeed in black clothes and a blue tie, where every one was going, for every one was going the same way, and every one looked as if it was going to church, which was unlikely, it being but Thursday. He said--

"Same place wot you're going to I expect."

And when we said where was that we were requested by him to get along with us. Which we did.

An old woman in the heaviest bonnet I have ever seen and the highest--it was like a black church--revealed the secret to us, and we learned that there was a Primrose _fete_ going on in Sir Willoughby Blockson's grounds.

We instantly decided to go to the _fete_.

"I've been to a Primrose _fete_, and so have you, Dora," Oswald remarked, "and people are so dull at them, they'd gladly give gold to see the dark future. And, besides, the villages will be unpopulated, and no one at home but idiots and babies and their keepers."

So we went to the _fete_.

The people got thicker and thicker, and when we got to Sir Willoughby's lodge gates, which have sprawling lions on the gate-posts, we were told to take the donkey cart round to the stable-yard.

This we did, and proud was the moment when a stiff groom had to bend his proud stomach to go to the head of Bates's donkey.

"This is something like," said Alice, and Noel added:

"The foreign princes are well received at this palace."

"We aren't princes, we're gipsies," said Dora, tucking his scarf in. It would keep on getting loose.

"There _are_ gipsy princes, though," said Noel, "because there are gipsy kings."

"You aren't always a prince first," said Dora; "don't wriggle so or I can't fix you. Sometimes being made a king just happens to some one who isn't any one in particular."

"I don't think so," said Noel; "you have to be a prince before you're a king, just as you have to be a kitten before you're a cat, or a puppy before you're a dog, or a worm before you're a serpent, or----"

"What about the King of Sweden?" Dora was beginning, when a very nice tall, thin man, with white flowers in his b.u.t.tonhole like for a wedding, came strolling up and said--

"And whose show is this? Eh, what?"

We said it was ours.

"Are you expected?" he asked.

We said we thought not, but we hoped he didn't mind.

"What are you? Acrobats? Tight-rope? That's a ripping Burmese coat you've got there."

"Yes, it is. No we aren't," said Alice, with dignity. "I am Zada, the mysterious prophetess of the golden Orient, and the others are mysterious too, but we haven't fixed on their names yet."

"By jove!" said the gentleman; "but who are you really?"

"Our names are our secret," said Oswald, with dignity, but Alice said, "Oh, but we don't mind telling _you_, because I'm sure you're nice.

We're really the Bastables, and we want to get some money for some one we know that's rather poor--of course I can't tell you _her_ name. And we've learnt how to tell fortunes--really we have. Do you think they'll let us tell them at the _fete_. People are often dull at _fetes_, aren't they?"

"By Jove!" said the gentleman again--"by Jove, they are!"