More than once he had only just escaped falling into its clutches,
and all through his vagrant life he had of course come to regard its
officers as his natural enemies. But he had put all that aside, and,
strong in his good cause, was ready now to turn to them as the
children's protectors. Duke and Pamela, on the contrary, who had no real
reason for being afraid of the police, were in frantic terror; their
poor little imaginations set to work and pictured "prison" as where they
were sure to be sent to. They would rather go back to the gipsies, they
would rather wander about the fields with Tim till they died--rather
_anything_ than go near the police. And they cried and sobbed and hung
upon Tim in their panic of terror, till the poor boy was fairly at his
wit's end, and had to give in so far as to promise to say no more about
it at present. So they spent the early hours of the beautiful spring
morning in a copse outside the little town, where they were quite happy,
and ate the provisions Peter's wife had put up for them with a good
appetite, thinking no more of the future than the birds in the bushes;
while poor Tim was grudging every moment of what he felt to be lost
time, and wondering where they were to get their next meal or find
shelter for the night!
It ended at last in a compromise.
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