“It sounds very alluring,” said Jane, “but a little uncomfortable.”
“Comfort!” scoffed Jimmy. “You don’t really care about comfort!”
“Yes, I do!” cried Jane. “When I haven’t got it! And so do you. I don’t know you so awfully well, Jimmy, but I know you well enough to know that. You care so much about comfort that you won’t get up in the morning and make your own bed for Agnes! You won’t ride on a milk train instead of the Twentieth Century! I don’t think you’d be so good in a jungle. When I go to a jungle, I think I’ll take Stephen. He’d be very capable there.”
“I’m sure,” said Jimmy cheerfully, “he’d have sanitary plumbing installed in a fortnight. Nevertheless, something tells me that Stephen is no gypsy. If you ever see the Dark Continent with Stephen, you’ll see it in the discreet light shed on it by Thomas Cook and Sons! But as for me, with or without Agnes, I’m going to see the world before I die.”
“Mumsy”—it was little Steve on the threshold—“we want to kiss you good night.”
“Come in,” said Jane. “Come in, all of you.” The three children were lingering in the doorway.
“How’d the game come out, Steve?” asked Jimmy affably.
“Miss Parrot won,” said Steve gloomily. “She always does.”
“I’m going to send you a set of loaded dice,” said Jimmy benevolently. “Come in, kids, and sit down.” He rose as he spoke. “I want to sing to you.” He had picked up his fiddle-case and was removing the violin. Jane looked up in surprise. Jimmy was a strange mixture of contradictions. The children settled themselves delightedly on the floor near the fire. Jimmy tucked his violin under his chin and tuned it airily as he sauntered across the room.
“It’s an old English ballad,” he said, “and a particular favorite of mine. It appeals to your mother, too, who is really a gypsy at heart. Did you know that, children? There she sits by those polished brass andirons looking very pretty in a French tea-gown, but at heart she’s dancing barefoot by a bonfire in a tattered red shawl—dancing in the dark of the moon to the tinkle of a tambourine. When she married your father, children, she jumped over a broomstick. But later he took up with the bond business. That’s the way most of us get married. Did you know that, Cicily? But later we nearly all of us take up with something else and after that we only use broomsticks to sweep with.”
The children were staring at him in wide-eyed fascination. They were still staring when he began softly to sing:
“There were three gypsies a-come to my door,
And downstairs ran my lady, O!
One sang high and the other sang low,
And the other sang bonny, bonny Biscay, O!“Then she pulled off her silk-finished gown
And put on hose of leather, O!
The ragged, ragged rags about our door—
She’s gone with the raggle-taggle gypsies, O!”
Jimmy paused to smile mockingly at Jane, drawing his bow with a flourish across the strings of his violin.
“It was late last night when my lord came home,
Inquiring for his lady, O!
The servants said, on every hand,
She’s gone with the raggle-taggle gypsies, O!“Come saddle me my milk-white steed
And go and fetch my pony, O!
That I may ride and fetch my bride,
Who is gone with the raggle-taggle gypsies, O!“Then he rode high, and he rode low,
He rode through wood and copses too,
Until he came to an open field
And there he spied his lady, O!“What makes you leave your house and land
What makes you leave your money, O?
What makes you leave your new-wedded lord,
To go with the raggle-taggle gypsies, O?”
Again Jimmy paused to smile mockingly at Jane and again his bow swept over a string and a note of triumph quivered in the air.
“Oh, what care I for my house and land.
And what care I for my money, O?
What care I for my new-wedded lord,
I’m off with the raggle-taggle gypsies, O!”
His bow ran wildly, jubilantly over the high strings, then dropped to a sombre note of accusation.
“Last night you slept on a goose-feather bed,
With the sheet turned down so bravely, O!
But tonight you sleep in a cold open field,
Along with the raggle-taggle gypsies, O!”
Again the bow fluttered over the strings. The recreant lady’s laughter seemed tinkling in the room.
“Oh, what care I for a goose-feather bed,
With the sheet turned down so bravely, O!
For tonight I shall sleep in a cold open field,
Along with the raggle-taggle gypsies, O!”
He dropped his bow abruptly. In the sudden silence Steve’s voice rang out shrill with interest.
“And did she?”
“That lady did,” said Jimmy gravely. “She had the courage of her convictions.”
“And she never went back?” pursued
