Short but charming story of a happy go lucky family in the New Forest who take in a girl who's been raised in India during the Raj, like Mary Lennox in "The Secret Garden". Like Mary, she too is spoilt and mardy (as we say round here), but fresh air and good companionship eventually have the desired effect, and by the end she is playing cricket in the garden, rosy-cheeked and no longer cheating. Miss Oldmeadow was befriended by Romanies and took trouble to learn their ways, hence the sympathetic portrait of the "true" gipsy family. One of those reading synchronicities: I had just finished "The Stopping Places" by Dominic Le Bas, all about Romanies and other travellers.
This copy has a pretty bookplate at the front stating that it was a prize for reciting at a Methodist Sunday School Anniversary in 1957.