“Come stain your cheeks with nut or berry,
 You’ll find a gipsy’s life is merry.”—GIPSY GLEE.
I DO not know what imp of mischief could have put such a fancy into the dreaming head of Mrs. Carnaby, except Puck—but on a fine morning in August she awoke with a determination to get up a gipsy party, and have a day’s pleasure “under the green-wood tree.” She opened her mind therefore to Mr. C——, as soon as he had opened his eyes, and before breakfast they had arranged the whole affair. Hornsey Wood was stale, and Norwood was rejected, for the very paradoxical reason that it was such a haunt for Gipsies; and Mrs. Carnaby meant to take even her youngest children. After a good deal of debating, Hainault was the Forest fixed upon;—it lay so handy to Whitechapel, and the redletter day was marked to be the Wednesday in the following week, because then Master Carnaby would only lose half a day’s schooling.
Accordingly, on the Wednesday, the Dryads of Wanstead were startled by the rumble of a well-laden tax-cart up that avenue which once led to a princely mansion; and the vehicle at last stopped, and set down its insides and outsides just where the lines of trees branch off into another verdant alley. “It was,” Mrs. Carnaby remarked, “a delicious green spot, and very handy to the Green Man for getting porter.” Mrs. C—— was assisted out of the cart; and then Miss C—— was lifted out by Mr. Hodges; and then the children were lifted out by the Mother; and then the nursemaid, an awkward plainlooking girl that nobody helped, tumbled out. In the mean time, Master C—— jumped out, all agog after blackberrying and birdnesting; and had swarmed half up a tree before his mother’s vigilance discovered, at a single glance, that he was tearing his trowsers,
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 and had his best clothes on. This was a bad setting out for the boy; and the horse was not better, for directly he got out of harness, and felt himself free and at grass, after two or three preliminary kicks and plunges, it occurred to him to indulge in a roll, and so he rolled over a pigeon pie that was unfortunately unpacked, and finished by getting very much up with his fore-legs in a bas............