CHAPTER IX--THE GYPSIES AGAIN

When the rain stopped, Bobby went around to the other entrance and reported herself to Miss Carrington. That teacher always doubted Bobby's excuses, and this time she shook her head over the girl's tardiness.

"You told me you had plenty of time to do your errand within the limit of the recess, Miss Hargrew," said Gee Gee. "Do better next time, please."

"She always acts as though she thought I had an India rubber imagination," muttered Bobby, to her nearest seatmate, "and that I was always stretching it."

"Miss Hargrew, please refrain from communicating in lesson time!" snapped the ever-watchful teacher.

"Dear me!" murmured Bobby. "She's got me again. I _do_ have the worst luck."

And then she wondered what Miss Carrington knew about the strange Gypsy girl, or what Margit knew about Gee Gee.

"I'd like to get better acquainted with that girl," thought Bobby. "There is a mystery about her--and Gee Gee is in it."

But she said nothing to any of the other juniors, judging it best to keep her own counsel. Meanwhile she kept a keen lookout for the girl to appear about the school building again. Several days passed, however, and Bobby saw nothing of her.

Meanwhile the girls who were earnest in the work of putting Central High ahead in the inter-school athletic competition worked hard on the field and under Mrs. Case's eye in the gymnasium.

Bobby was really doing her best on the track. Never had she settled down to such thorough work in any branch of athletics as she had in this effort to make a record for the quarter-mile. Central High needed the points that a champion sprinter could win, just as the school needed the points putting the shot, and the broad jump, would add to its record.

Bobby, the year before, had acted as coxswain of the eight-oared crew; and she had played all season on the big basketball team--the champion nine. But this running was different work.

Now she had no teammates to encourage her, or to keep her up to the mark. It was just what she could do for the school by herself.

"Just by your lonesome, Bobby," Laura Belding told her. "To win the quarter-mile will mean two whole points in June. Think of that! And you can do it."

"I don't know," returned the other girl, in some despondency. "Gee Gee'll likely get something on me before the June meet, and then where'll we be?"

"But you don't _have_ to do things to make Miss Carrington give you demerits."

"Bah! I don't have to do anything at all to get demerits. She's just expecting me to do something all the time, and she 'jumps' me without giving me a chance. Any other girl in the school can cut up much worse than I do and never get a sour look; but I--oh, dear!"

"You see what it is to have a reputation for mischief," said Laura, half inclined to laugh. "Can't you cut out the frolic for this one term? Cure yourself of practical joking and 'joshing' poor Miss Carrington."

"Great Caesar!" ejaculated Bobby. "How could I ever do it?"

Nevertheless, with all her reckless talk, she was really trying her very best to keep out of difficulties in school, and on the other hand to make the best time possible on the cinder track.

Mrs. Case began to try her out now and then, and held the watch on her. Bobby wanted to know how fast she made the quarter; but the instructor put up her watch with a smile and a head-shake.

"That I sha'n't tell you, Miss Hargrew. Not yet. You do your best; that's what you are to do. If you fall back, or I see you losing form, you'll hear about it soon enough."

One morning before school-time Bobby heard Mrs. Ballister scolding at the back door. The old housekeeper did not often scold the maid, for she was a dear old lady and, as Bobby herself said, "as mild-tempered as a lamb." But she heard her say:

"Be off with you! We've nothing for you. Scalawags like you shouldn't prosper--filling a girl's silly head full of more silliness. Go on at once!"

Somehow Bobby had a premonition of what the trouble was about. She ran out upon the side porch and saw two Gypsy women coming around the path from the fear of the house. They were the two who had been at Queen Grace Varey's camp that day on the ridge when the girls of Central High had had their adventure.

"Here is a little lady," whined the old woman. "She will buy of us," lifting up her baskets.

"No, no," said Bobby, shaking her head vigorously.

The other woman recognized her and touched the arm of her companion warningly.

"Surely the little lady will not be unkind to the poor Romany," she whined. "She does not forget what Queen Grace told her?"

"I want to forget it," declared Bobby, with flushed face. "I have nothing for you. Go away--do!"

"Ah-ha, little lady!" chuckled the woman, with a leer. "You are mistress here now--and you can send us away. But remember! Your father will bring home another mistress before mid-summer."

The two women laughed harshly, and turned away, going slowly out of the yard. Bobby remained upon the porch until she had winked back the tears--and bitter tears they were, indeed--and so went slowly in to breakfast.

"Those horrid 'Gyptians," Mrs. Ballister was saying. "I caught them out there trying to tell Sally's fortune. They'd make her believe she was going to fall heir to a fortune, or get a husband, or something, and then we'd lose the best kitchen girl we ever had."

But Bobby felt too serious to smile at the old lady's sputtering. Despite what Laura Belding said, there _must_ be something in the fortunes the Gypsy queen told! How did she know so much about _her?_ Bobby asked herself.

She knew that Bobby had no mother and that she was sure to get into trouble with her teachers. And now the prophecy she had made that her father would bring home a new wife before mid-summer rankled in Bobby Hargrew's mind like a barbed arrow.

For Bobby loved her father very dearly, and had been for years his confidante. It had long been agreed between them that she was going to be his partner in the grocery business, just as though she had been born a boy. And as soon as the little girls were big enough they were to go away to boarding school, Mrs. Ballister should be relieved of the responsibility of the house, and Bobby was going to be the real mistress of the Hargrew home.

And suppose, instead of all these things Father Tom should bring home a new mother to reign over them? The thought was ever in Bobby's mind these days. Not that she had any reason to fear the coming of a step-mother. The only girl at Central High whom she knew that had a step-mother loved her very dearly and made as much of her as though she had been two real mothers. Sue Blakesley had been without a mother long enough to appreciate even a substitute.

But Bobby and Mr. Hargrew had been such close friends and comrades that the girl was jealous of such a possibility as anybody coming into her father's life who could take her place in any degree. She worried over the Gypsy's prophecy continually; she wet her pillow at night with bitter tears because of it, and it sobered and changed her to her schoolmates, as we have seen.

It was a very serious and imminent trouble indeed to the warm-hearted, impulsive girl.

On her way to school that morning she chanced to turn the corner into Whiffle Street just as a dark-browed, shuffling fellow crossed from the other side and trailed along ahead of her toward the schoolhouse. Bobby knew that black face, and the huge gold hoops in his ears, at once. It was the husband of the Gypsy queen.

"Oh, I wonder if the whole encampment is in town hunting for that poor girl, Margit?" thought Bobby. "They are such strange, wicked folk. And look at him--why, that's Gee Gee!"

The lady ahead on the walk, behind whom the Gypsy was walking so stealthily, was none other than Miss Carrington herself. Instantly Bobby's thought flashed to the mysterious inquiries of the girl, Margit Salgo, about the teacher at Central High.

Bobby involuntarily quickened her steps. She was afraid of these Gypsies; but she was curious, too. The whole block was deserted, it seemed, save for herself, Gee Gee, and the man.

Suddenly he hastened his long stride and overtook the teacher. Bobby knew that the fellow accosted Miss Carrington. The lady halted, and shrank a little. But she did not scream, or otherwise betray fear.

"No, lady. Ah'm no beggar. Ma nyme's Jim Varey an' ah'm honest man, so I be. Ah come out o' Leeds, in Yorkshire, an' we be travelin', me an' mine. Wait, lady! Ah've summat tae show ye."

He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a card. He held this card so that Miss Carrington could read what was printed, or written, on it. And she did so, as was evident to Bobby, for she started back a little and uttered a murmured exclamation.

"Ah sees ye knaw ye'r awn nyme, lidy," said Jim Varey, shrewdly. "Yer the lady we're lookin' for, mayhap. 'Tis private business----"

"I can have no business with you, man," exclaimed Miss Carrington. "Why, you're a Gypsy!"

"Aye. I'm Gypsy. An' so was ma fawther an' mither, an' their fawthers an' mithers before 'em. We'm proud of the Romany blood. An' more'n 'us, lady, has mixed with the Romany--an' in other climes aside Yorkshire. But all Romany is one, wherever vound. Ye knaw that, lidy."

"I don't know what you mean! I don't know what you are talking about! What do you want of me?" cried Miss Carrington, quite wildly.

The man drew closer. Bobby was really frightened, too. She opened her own mouth to shriek for help. But the Gypsy did not touch the teacher. Instead, he said in a low, but perfectly clear, voice, so that Bobby heard it plainly:

"I would speak to you, lidy, of the child of Belas Salgo."

Miss Carrington uttered a stifled shriek. Bobby sprang forward, finding her own voice now, and using it to good purpose, too. A door banged, and a gentleman ran out of his house and down to the gate, where the Gypsy had stopped Miss Carrington.

It chanced to be Franklin Sharp, the principal of Central High. Jim Varey saw him coming, glanced swiftly around, evidently considered the time and place unfavorable for further troubling the teacher, and so broke into a run and disappeared.

Mr. Sharp caught Gee Gee before she fell. But she did not utterly lose consciousness. Bobby had caught her hand and clung to it. The girl heard Gee Gee murmur:

"There was no child! There was no child! Oh! Poor Anne! Poor Anne!"

"Let us take her into the house," said Mr. Sharp, kindly. "That ruffian has scared her, I believe. Could you identify him, do you think, Miss Hargrew?"

"Yes, sir," declared Bobby, tremblingly.

But Miss Carrington cried: "Oh, no! Oh, no! Don't go after him--do nothing to him."

And she continued to cry and moan while they took her into the house and put her in the care of Mrs. Sharp. That forenoon Gee Gee did not appear before her classes at Central High. But she was present at the afternoon session and Bobby thought her quite as stern and hard as ever. Nor did the teacher say a word to the girl about the Gypsy, or mention the occasion in any way.