Free Dance of the Years by Margery Allingham Page A

defferent from both of ’em,” said Jason, hurrying the whole subject out of the way. “That’s a toss up every time.”
    Larch laughed. “That’s so. He’ll rise to the highest or sink to the lowest. That’s what an old woman told me at Lavenham Fair. Old gyppo woman, she was. That’s about the size of it. He’ll be a mystery packet.”
    â€œI see,” said James, with Galantry dignity. “But he won’t ever be a real Blood.”
    â€œNo, no, boy. He won’t never be a Blood.”
    â€œNot if he wants to?”
    â€œNot if he tears the heart out on him. Course not. He’ll be a half-bred born, won’t he?”
    â€œPerhaps he’ll be better,” said James in revolt.
    â€œI hope he will for the job I want him to do,” said Jason. “That’s why I’m a-breeding of him.”
    James went home by the long way round. He was older than before, he felt, and far more independent. He took a mind to walk round to the hollow behind Lower Wood, where he was not supposed to go. The gypsies were gone from the place, although they had been there recently. The grass was still worn from their wheels, and scarred from their fires. James went carefully round the place and then stalked home through the fields.
    He had no desire to stamp and cavort now, but walked rather sedately, imitating Galantry’s small steps.
    When he got to the house, he ran up the stairs and went into Shulie’s room. It smelled unaired in the hot sunshine, which poured through the closed casement, and was in its customary pickle. James eyed it with new knowledge, and was rather frightened of it. He picked his way to the long mirror and stood looking at himself with a conscious courage which gave him a secret, slightly vicious satisfaction. At first he hoped that the obvious thickness of his neck and chest were something to do with his coat, and when Dorothy found him he was stripped to the waist, his thick bones showing clearly through his soft skin.
    He silenced her scandalized outburst at this evidence of vanity by his first remark.
    â€œI see I’m a bit carty about the head and neck,” he said. “Oh, and Dorothy, you should have told me I was born in a ditch.”

Chapter Six
    Some people cannot be bothered with regret. Dorothy was one of these. She had no time for it, she said, and meant that it was too bitter to be borne.
    As soon as she realized that James knew the things which she had been keeping as a secret, she accepted the fact, and went on from there, counting only the advantages of his discovery. Chief among these was the realization that she had no longer any need to watch what she was saying, and at once she raised the startled little boy to the status of an ally, and made him a party to all her hopes and fears for him.
    As they worked together in the herb garden, or as he followed her about upstairs, among the linen presses, or as she sat on his bed at night, she now had so much to tell him about the whole affair that if there had ever been any hope that the brutality of Larch’s revelation would not take too much effect on the child, it was dashed for ever. James heard the whole story over and over again, and a great deal more besides.
    The oddness, the roughness, the general moral unreliability of gypsies, as well as their pariah qualities, were discussed by the two of them at tremendous length; and he heard much that was true and much that was fantasy and country superstition.
    Had he not had so much of Shulie in him, he might have beenseriously affected; but he was too healthy for that. For a time it is true, he saw himself as the child with the hump or the club foot must see himself; but fortunately for him, Dorothy was very sensible. Her only wild ideas came from her ignorance of certain facts. Psychologically she was sound as a bell. She stood for no fancy nonsense, and she loved James and her one idea was to do him good.