Dinner time then came again, to the especial delight of the two empty children, though, thanks to the horse and dog, it was principally broken victuals. But on sitting down and counting heads Master C. had a second time absconded during the last bustle; and, as his mother could not touch a morsel for anxiety, Mr. Carnaby was obliged to set out fasting to look for him, and had soon the satisfaction of finding him sitting hatless crying in a wet ditch, and scraping a suit of brown off a suit of blue with an old oyster shell. His father, in the
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 first transport of anger and hunger, gave him what boys call “a regular larruping,” then a good rubbing down with a bunch of fern, and then brought him back to the cold collation, with the comfortable threat that he should go without his dinner. As soon as the culprit could explain for sobbing, he told them that
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 “he had gone for a little walk, like, and saw the most capital donkey with a saddle and bridle feeding wild about the forest as if he belonged to nobody, and he just got on him like, like they used to do at Margate; and then the donkey set off full tear, and never stopped till he came to a tent of gipsies in the middle of the wood; and they all set upon him, and swore at him like anything for running away with their donkey; and then all of a sudden he lost his hat and his handkerchief, and his money out of his pockets like conjuring; then they told him to run for his life, and so he did, and as for the mud it was all along of jumping over a hedge that had no other side to it.” This intelligence threw Mrs. Carnaby into an agony of horror which could only be pacified by their immediately packing up and removing, eatables and all, to a less lonesome place by the side of the road, an operation that was performed by their all pulling and pushing at the cart, as the horse had taken French leave of absence.
It was now Miss Carnaby’s turn to be discomfited: her retiring disposition made her wince under the idea of dining in public; for being market day at Romford, they were over-looked by plenty of farmers and pig butchers: consequently, after a very miffy dialogue with her mother, the young lady took herself off, as she was desired, with “her romantical notions,” to a place of more solitude, and Mr. Hodges, as in gallantry bound, postponed his dinner till his tea to keep her company. In the mean time, Betsey, who had been sent up to the Green Man for the porter, returned with the empty tankard, and a terrified tale of being “cotch’d hold on by a ruffian in the wood, that had drunk up all the beer to all their very good healths.” The first impulse of Mr. Carnaby was to jump up to do justice on the vagabond, but Mrs. C—— had the presence of mind to catch hold of his coat-flaps so abruptly, that before he could well feel his legs, he found himself sitting in a large plum pie, which the children had just set their hearts upon; of course it did not mend his temper to hear the shout from a dozen ragged boys who were looking on; and in the crisis of his vexation, he vented such a fervent devil’s blessing on gipsy parties, and all that proposed them, that Mrs. Carnaby was obliged to take it up, and to tell him sharply, what in reality was true enough, that
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 “if people did have gip............