Johnny Ludlow, First Series. Henry Wood
arresting his noisy hammer.
“See her where?” asked Hannah.
“Close here, a-going that way.”
He pointed to the palings and gate that divided the yard from the three-cornered field. Hannah ran there and stood looking over. The ricks were within a short stone’s throw, but Lena kept close. Hannah called out again, and threw her gaze over the empty field.
“The child’s not there. Where can she have got to, tiresome little thing?”
In the house, and about the house, and out of the house, as the old riddle says, went Hannah. It was jolly to see her. Mrs. Todhetley and Hugh were seated patiently in the basket-chaise before the hall-door, wondering what made Hannah so long. Tod, playing with the mild she-donkey’s ears, and laughing to himself, stood talking graciously to his step-mother. I went round. The Squire had gone riding into Evesham; Dwarf Giles, who made the nattiest little groom in the county, for all his five-and-thirty years, behind him.
“I can’t find Miss Lena,” cried Hannah, coming out.
“Not find Miss Lena!” echoed Mrs. Todhetley. “What do you mean, Hannah? Have you not dressed her?”
“I dressed her first, ma’am, before Master Hugh, and she went out of the nursery. I can’t think where she can have got to. I’ve searched everywhere.”
“But, Hannah, we must have her directly; I am late as it is.”
They were going over to the Court to a children’s early party at the Sterlings’. Mrs. Todhetley stepped out of the basket-chaise to help in the search.
“I had better fetch her, Tod,” I whispered.
He nodded yes. Tod never bore malice, and I suppose he thought Hannah had had enough of a hunt for that day. I ran through the fold-yard to the ricks, and called to Lena.
“You can come out now, little stupid.”
But no Lena answered. There were seven ricks in a group, and I went into all the openings between them. Lena was not there. It was rather odd, and I looked across the field and towards the lane and the coppice, shouting out sturdily.
“Mack, have you seen Miss Lena pass indoors?” I stayed to ask him, in going back.
No: Mack had not noticed her; and I went round to the front again, and whispered to Tod.
“What a muff you are, Johnny! She’s between the ricks fast enough. No danger that she’d come out when I told her to stay!”
“But she’s not there indeed, Tod. You go and look.”
Tod vaulted off, his long legs seeming to take flying leaps, like a deer’s, on his way to the ricks.
To make short of the story, Lena was gone. Lost. The house, the outdoor buildings, the gardens were searched for her, and she was not to be found. Mrs. Todhetley’s fears flew to the ponds at first; but it was impossible she could have come to grief in either of the two, as they were both in view of the barn-door where I and Mack had been. Tod avowed that he had put her amid the ricks to hide her; and it was not to be imagined she had gone away. The most feasible conjecture was, that she had run from between the ricks when Hannah called to her, and was hiding in the lane.
Tod was in a fever, loudly threatening Lena with unheard-of whippings, to cover his real concern. Hannah looked red, Mrs. Todhetley white. I was standing by him when the cook came up; a sharp woman, with red-brown eyes. We called her Molly.
“Mr. Joseph,” said she, “I have heard of gipsies stealing children.”
“Well?” returned Tod.
“There was one at the door a while agone—an insolent one, too. Perhaps Miss Lena–”
“Which way did she go?—which door was she at?” burst forth Tod.
“’Twas a man, sir. He came up to the kitchen-door, and steps inside as bold as brass, asking me to buy some wooden skewers he’d cut, and saying something about a sick child. When I told him to march, that we never encouraged tramps here, he wanted to answer me, and I just shut the door in his face. A regular gipsy, if ever I see one,” continued Molly; “his skin tawny and his wild hair jet-black. Maybe, in revenge, he have stole off the little miss.”
Tod took up the notion, and his face turned white. “Don’t say anything of this to Mrs. Todhetley,” he said to Molly. “We must just scour the country.”
But in departing from the kitchen-door, the gipsy man could not by any possibility have made his way to the rick-field without going through the fold-yard. And he had not done that. It was true that Lena might have run round and got into the gipsy’s way. Unfortunately, none of the men were about, except Mack and old Thomas. Tod sent these off in different directions; Mrs. Todhetley drove away in her pony-chaise to the lanes round, saying the child might have strayed there; Molly and the maids started elsewhere; and I and Tod went flying along a by-road that branched off in a straight line, as it were, from the kitchen-door. Nobody could keep up with Tod, he went so fast; and I was not tall and strong as he was. But I saw what Tod in his haste did not see—a dark man with some bundles of skewers and a stout stick, walking on the other side of the hedge. I whistled Tod back again.
“What is it, Johnny?” he said, panting. “Have you seen her?”
“Not her. But look there. That must be the man Molly spoke of.”
Tod crashed through the hedge as if it had been so many cobwebs, and accosted the gipsy. I followed more carefully, but got my face scratched.
“Were you up at the great house, begging, a short time ago?” demanded Tod, in an awful passion.
The man turned round on Tod with a brazen face. I say brazen, because he did it so independently; but it was not an insolent face in itself; rather a sad one, and very sickly.
“What’s that you ask me, master?”
“I ask whether it was you who were at the Manor-house just now, begging?” fiercely repeated Tod.
“I was at a big house offering wares for sale, if you mean that, sir. I wasn’t begging.”
“Call it what you please,” said Tod, growing white again. “What have you done with the little girl?”
For, you see, Tod had caught up the impression that the gipsy had stolen Lena, and he spoke in accordance with it.
“I’ve seen no little girl, master.”
“You have,” and Tod gave his foot a stamp. “What have you done with her?”
The man’s only answer was to turn round and walk off, muttering to himself. Tod pursued him, calling him a thief and other names; but nothing more satisfactory could he get out of him.
“He can’t have taken her, Tod. If he had, she’d be with him now. He couldn’t eat her, you know.”
“He may have given her to a confederate.”
“What to do? What do gipsies steal children for?”
Tod stopped in a passion, lifting his hand. “If you torment me with these frivolous questions, Johnny, I’ll strike you. How do I know what’s done with stolen children? Sold, perhaps. I’d give a hundred pounds out of my pocket at this minute if I knew where those gipsies were encamped.”
We suddenly lost the fellow. Tod had been keeping him in sight in the distance. Whether he disappeared up a gum-tree, or into a rabbit-hole, Tod couldn’t tell; but gone he was.
Up this lane, down that one; over this moor, across that common; so raced Tod and I. And the afternoon wore away, and we had changed our direction a dozen times: which possibly was not wise.
The sun was getting low as we passed Ragley gates, for we had finally got into the Alcester road. Tod was going to do what we ought to have done at first: report the loss at Alcester. Some one came riding along on a stumpy pony. It proved to be Gruff Blossom, groom to the Jacobsons. They called him “Gruff” because of his temper. He did touch his hat to us, which was as much as you could say, and spurred