The Case of the Gypsy Goodbye

Author:Nancy Springer
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 0100-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THE TWELFTH

AS I HAD ONLY THE MOST RUDIMENTARY NOTION of how to use the reins, I will admit that I felt a bit terrified atop the hansom cab. Certainly I am not afraid of heights, climbing trees for instance—but this high perch moved! Moreover, it moved in close proximity to many other large moving objects. I found myself jostling with vehicles of every description, carriages and carts, cabs and wagons, some light and fast, some heavy and slow, some going one way, some the other, trying to pass each other sometimes so closely that their wheels nearly scraped, or the shafts all but locked—sometimes they do lock, and then there is usually a ruckus if not a fist-fight.

Blessedly, I avoided such a fate. My cab-horse, appropriately named Brownie, knew his business, trotting along sedately and keeping me out of trouble.

“Cab!” shrilled strident female voices in unison from two of the most grandiosely begowned, bejewelled, massively bonneted, and great-bosomed dowagers ever seen upon a London avenue. Although startled to recognise them, I at once shook my head as if I were commissioned to pick up a fare elsewhere, trotting on. Once past them, in afterthought, I wished I had managed to splash some gutter-slop on them. They were Lady Cecily’s termagant aunts, who with the connivance of Cecily’s father had imprisoned and starved her, attempting a forced marriage! Cecily was now safe with her loving mother, and maybe someday I would encounter her again. The thought cheered me so that I smiled as I drove on, although I still did not know how I was going to accomplish what I needed to do today.

Somehow I had to enter Mrs. Culhane’s shop and have a look about. If she were to recognise me, there could be the most unpleasant, even life-threatening, repercussions.

But I tucked the problem into the back of my mind as I trotted on, trusting my peculiar mental processes to deal with it along the way. As I reached the edge of London City and passed into the poorer district, the carts and baskets of street-vendors lined the narrow thoroughfares, sending up the most tempting aromas. Stopping my cab, I bought a meat-pie from a pie-man by pointing with my whip, flipping him twopence as he wrapped my luncheon in brown paper and hefted it up for me to catch. All around me workmen and urchins, shop-girls and washerwomen crowded the cobbles. Nearby, a beggar had attracted a crowd by exhibiting a tame tortoise that would stand on its hind legs for the sake of a treat, stretching higher and more erect until it fell over backwards upon its own shell, oscillating like a rocking-horse, to the great amusement of all.

Eating my meat pie and watching from on high, I laughed as hard as anyone, shaking my head in wonder as I threw a penny. One never knew what one was going to see on an East London street, whether ginger-cake sellers or a dancing bear, a woman hawking buttons and boot-laces or the most outrageous beggars.

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