CHAPTER V

MOLLY

“What is the matter, itty boy? Why are you kying so?”

And while the voice spoke soft and sweet as the coo of a dove, two little hands very gently, but firmly, clasped Charles’s hands, which were covering his face, and tried to draw them away.

He looked up, and, rubbing the blinding tears from his eyes, he beheld a little girl about six years old. She was a very chubby-cheeked tot of a thing, with short golden curls running over her head, and half covering her eyes, that were looking at him with immense curiosity.

“Are oo a blackamoor?” she asked, shrinking back a step as she saw his face.

“No,” said Charles, bursting into a merry laugh, “but I expect I have rather a dirty face.”

She nodded. “Blacker than oor hands even. But what was you kying for?”

“Well,” said Charles, “for one thing I—well, I’m dreadfully hungry. I believe I could eat a horse.”

“Do you?” said the child, with a glad light in her eyes as she opened a tiny satchel hanging on her plump arm, and taking from it a splendid prancing horse with a king crowned riding on his back, all made of gilt gingerbread. “I’s so glad—here’s a man on horseback from Banbury Fair—can you eat him too?”

“Truly yes, and thank you, little maid,” laughed her new friend, taking the gingerbread from her tiny fingers. “Why, ’tis the King! Long life to his Majesty!” he added, as he bit the man’s head off, and seemed to enjoy it heartily. “What is your name, dear?” he went on, with his mouth full.

“What is oors?” said she, with a roguish twirl of her ripe red lips.

“Charles.”

“Ah, mine’s Molly—Molly Speedwell.”

“And whose little girl are you?”

“I’m the miller’s daughter of Oakside, and there’s my home,” she went on, pointing through the trees, and Charles discerned a red-roofed, white walled cottage standing in a garden. Hard by, upon a high turfy mound, was a mill, whose sails were whirling fast in the morning breeze. “And there’s the mill.”

“Oh,” said Charles, much disconcerted, “well, good-bye, little girl.”

“Don’t go,” pleaded the child, the tears brimming into her eyes.

“Needs must—I’ve got to be in London as quickly as I can. I’m going to see the King—” He stopped short and clapped his hand upon his mouth.

“Then you may as well save yourself the journey, youngster,” said a deep, manly voice behind him, with a laugh of amusement. “The King is hundreds of miles away from London. He started northward three days ago. And what, forsooth, can you be wanting of the King?”

Charles turned dumb with confusion to see before him a man white as a ghost from top to toe with flour. It was the miller, and taking up in his arms the little girl, who ran to him delightedly, he went on, “What can a gipsy boy like you be wanting of the King?”

“I am not a gipsy boy,” began Charles, “that is, I—I——”

“Always tell the truth,” said the miller. “Have you run away—from your camp?” he added, when Charles did not answer. “Where is the camp?”

“That’s just what I don’t know,” said Charles, who was thinking always of the soldiers’ camp, while the miller had, of course, the gipsies’ camp in his mind, as he looked at the little ragged boy, whose face somehow pleased him, in spite of its grimy state.

“I can’t find it, and—and—” and the tears broke forth afresh, “I don’t know what to do.”

And then Molly began to cry bitterly, “Poor itty boy,” she sobbed. “He’s dot no home, daddy.”

“H’m,” grunted the miller, “and a lazy loon anyhow he is, I’ll warrant.”

“No, faith, that I’m not,” contradicted Charles, with a flash of indignation in his eyes.

“Would you like to work, if you’d the chance?” said the miller, “at the mill here, for example?”

“Try me,” said Charles, looking longingly at the sails as they twirled, dazzling as silver in the sunshine. Of all things in the world, next to a colonel, he thought he would like to be a miller, and have to do with those sails and great, fat sacks. “Only try me.”

“Very well, I will for a week,” said the miller, “but, mind you, it isn’t play work. Come along. ’Tis a busy time, and I’ve no objections to an extra hand, if he’s a good, honest one.”

Molly clapped her two little hands with delight, and trotted off indoors to tell her mother all that had happened. And in an hour there was a marvelous sight, for the blackamoor boy was turned into such a whitymoor sort of a figure that there was certainly less chance than ever of anyone recognizing him for the little runaway Prince of Wales.