_ CHAPTER XLVII. RESCUED
The girl, the child, and the dog found themselves in a comparatively strange country--Annie had completely lost her bearings. She looked around her for some sign of the gypsies' encampment; but whether she had really gone a greater distance than she imagined in those underground vaults, or whether the tents were hidden in some hollow of the ground, she did not know; she was only conscious that she was in a strange country, that Nan was clinging to her and crying for her breakfast, and that Tiger was sniffing the air anxiously. Annie guessed that Tiger could take them back to the camp, but this was by no means her wish. When she emerged out of the underground passage she was conscious for the first time of a strange and unknown experience. Absolute terror seized the brave child; she trembled from head to foot, her head ached violently, and the ground on which she stood seemed to reel, and the sky to turn round. She sat down for a moment on the green grass. What ailed her? where was she? how could she get home? Nan's little piteous wail, "Me want my bekfas', me want my nursie, me want Hetty," almost irritated her.
"Oh, Nan," she said at last piteously, "have you not got your own Annie? Oh, Nan, dear little Nan, Annie feels so ill!"
Nan had the biggest and softest of baby hearts--breakfast, nurse, Hetty, were all forgotten in the crowning desire to comfort Annie. She climbed on her knee and stroked her face and kissed her lips.
"'Oo better now?" she said in a tone of baby inquiry.
Annie roused herself with a great effort.
"Yes, darling," she said; "we will try and get home. Come, Tiger. Tiger, dear, I don't want to go back to the gypsies; take me the other way--take me to Oakley."
Tiger again sniffed the air, looked anxiously at Annie, and trotted on in front. Little Nan in her ragged gypsy clothes walked sedately by Annie's side.
"Where 'oo s'oes?" she said, pointing to the girl's bare feet.
"Gone, Nan--gone. Never mind, I've got you. My little treasure, my little love, you're safe at last."
As Annie tottered, rather than walked, down a narrow path which led directly through a field of standing corn, she was startled by the sudden apparition of a bright-eyed girl, who appeared so suddenly in her path that she might have been supposed to have risen out of the very ground.
The girl stared hard at Annie, fixed her eyes inquiringly on Nan and Tiger, and then turning on her heel, dashed up the path, went through a turnstile, across the road, and into a cottage.
"Mother," she exclaimed, "I said she warn't a real gypsy; she's a-coming back, and her face is all streaked like, and she has a little'un along with her, and a dawg, and the only one as is gypsy is the dawg. Come and look at her, mother; oh, she is a fine take-in!"
The round-faced, good-humored looking mother, whose name was Mrs. Williams, had been washing and putting away the breakfast things when her daughter entered. She now wiped her hands hastily and came to the cottage door.
"Cross the road, and come to the stile, mother," said the energetic Peggy--"oh, there she be a-creeping along--oh, ain't she a take-in?"
"'Sakes alive!" ejaculated Mrs. Williams, "the girl is ill! why, she can't keep herself steady! There! I knew she'd fall; ah! poor little thing--poor little thing."
It did not take Mrs. Williams an instant to reach Annie's side; and in another moment she had lifted her in her strong arms and carried her into the cottage, Peggy lifting Nan and following in the rear, while Tiger walked by their sides. _