Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. A GYPSY CHILD? rTlHE sun was streaming through Mary's small JL window when she woke up somewhat later than usual the next morning. For a minute she lay with half-closed eyes, feeling very snug and comfortable, quietly gazing at all the well-known objects in the room—at the picture of the little girl reading, which hung opposite her bed, at the book-shelf with all the brightly-covered books she was so fond of, at her canary hopping restlessly in his cage, at the cuckoo clock, and finally at the little clog in the middle of the mantelpiece. But when she came to this her eyes opened wide, she sat up, rubbed them, and looked at it again; for all in a minute, just as we remember a dream, there came back to her the dreadful events of yesterday. The gypsies, the dimly-seen room, the flickering fire, Seraminta's dark face as she described the little shoe. "Ours you'll be for ever." Could it possibly be true that she, Mary Vallance, was the child of such people? What a dreadful thing! She did not feel so frightened this morning, and, her natural spirit partly returning after her night's rest, she was more inclined to believe that Seraminta had spoken falsely. " If I told father all about it," she said to herself, " I don't believe she'd dare totake me away." And yet, when she thought it over, how could the woman have known about the shoe? and besides, Rice's remark flashed across her, " brown as a berry," certainly that would apply to Seraminta, she was a darker brown than anyone Mary had ever seen. It was true, then, she really was a gypsy child, and if so, they had a right to claim her if they wished. How could she escape it? Her only chance lay in keeping perfect silence as they had told her, and also in taking them the money she had promised this evening. How much had...