Gratitude
from the Sea, took the handles of the barrow and off they all went.
Mavis and Francis were too thankful for this unexpected help to ask any questions, though they could not help wondering exactly what it felt like to be a boy who did not mind stealing his own father's Mermaid. It was the boy himself who offered, at the next rest-halt, an explanation.
"You see," he said, "it's like this here. This party in the barrow—"
"I know you don't mean it disrespectfully," said the Mermaid, sweetly; "but not party—and not a barrow."
"Lady," suggested Mavis.
"This lydy in the chariot, she'd been kidnapped—that's how I look at it. Same as what I was."
This was romance indeed; and Mavis recognized it and said:
"You, kidnapped? I say!"
"Yus," said Spangles, "when I was a baby kid. Old Mother Romaine told me, just afore she was took all down one side and never spoke no more."
"But why?" Mavis asked. "I never could understand in the books why gypsies kidnapped babies. They always seem to have so many of their own—far, far more than anyone could possibly want."
"Yes, indeed," said the Mermaid, "they prodded at me with sticks—a multitude of them."
"It wasn't kids as was wanted," said the boy, "it was revenge. That's what Mother Romaine said—my father he was a sort of Beak, so he give George Lee eighteen months for poaching. An' the day they took him the church bells was ringing like mad, and George, as he was being took, he said: ‘What's all that row? It ain't Sunday.' And then they tells him as how the bells was ringing 'cause him that was the Beak—my father, you know—he'd got a
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