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diff --git a/18646.txt b/18646.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ba9a24e --- /dev/null +++ b/18646.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5669 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Gypsy's Cousin Joy, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Gypsy's Cousin Joy + +Author: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps + +Release Date: June 21, 2006 [EBook #18646] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GYPSY'S COUSIN JOY *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + GYPSY'S COUSIN JOY + + By + Elizabeth Stuart Phelps + + New York + Dodd, Mead and Company + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +[Illustration] + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by + + GRAVES & YOUNG, + + in the Clerk's Office for the District Court of Massachusetts + + Copyright, 1895, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + PREFACE. + +Having been asked to write a preface to the new edition of the Gypsy +books, I am not a little perplexed. I was hardly more than a girl +myself, when I recorded the history of this young person; and I find it +hard, at this distance, to photograph her as she looks, or ought to look +to-day. She does not sit still long enough to be "taken." I see a lively +girl in pretty short dresses and very long stockings,--quite a Tom-boy, +if I remember rightly. She paddles a raft, she climbs a tree, she skates +and tramps and coasts, she is usually very muddy, and a little torn. +There is apt to be a pin in her gathers; but there is sure to be a laugh +in her eyes. Wherever there is mischief, there is Gypsy. Yet, wherever +there is fun, and health, and hope, and happiness,--and I think, +wherever there is truthfulness and generosity,--there is Gypsy, too. + +And now, the publishers tell me that Gypsy is thirty years old, and that +girls who were not so much as born when I knew the little lady, are her +readers and her friends to-day. + +Thirty years old? Indeed, it is more than that! For is it not thirty +years since the publication of her memoirs? And was she, at that time, +possibly sixteen? Forty-six years? Incredible! How in the world did +Gypsy "grow up?" For that was before toboggans and telephones, before +bicycles and electric cars, before bangs and puffed sleeves, before +girls studied Greek, and golf-capes came in. Did she go to college? For +the Annex, and Smith, and Wellesley were not. Did she have a career? Or +take a husband? Did she edit a Quarterly Review, or sing a baby to +sleep? Did she write poetry, or make pies? Did she practice medicine, or +matrimony? Who knows? Not even the author of her being. + +Only one thing I do know: Gypsy never grew up to be "timid," or silly, +or mean, or lazy; but a sensible woman, true and strong; asking little +help of other people, but giving much; an honor to her brave and loving +sex, and a safe comrade to the girls who kept step with her into middle +life; and I trust that I may bespeak from their daughters and their +scholars a kindly welcome to an old story, told again. + + Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. + +Newton Centre, Mass., +_April, 1895._ + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +CONTENTS + +CHAPTER I NEWS 7 +CHAPTER II SHE SHALL COME? 24 +CHAPTER III ONE EVENING 40 +CHAPTER IV CHESTNUTS 54 +CHAPTER V GYPSY MAKES A DISCOVERY 82 +CHAPTER VI WHO PUT IT IN? 99 +CHAPTER VII PEACE MAYTHORNE'S ROOM 122 +CHAPTER VIII THE STORY OF A NIGHT 148 +CHAPTER IX UP RATTLESNAKE 187 +CHAPTER X WE ARE LOST 211 +CHAPTER XI GRAND TIMES 229 +CHAPTER XII A TELEGRAM 243 +CHAPTER XIII A SUNDAY NIGHT 263 +CHAPTER XIV GOOD BYE 274 + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + + + +GYPSY'S COUSIN JOY + +CHAPTER I + +NEWS + + +The second arithmetic class had just come out to recite, when somebody +knocked at the door. Miss Cardrew sent Delia Guest to open it. + +"It's a--ha, ha! letter--he, he! for you," said Delia, coming up to +the desk. Exactly wherein lay the joke, in the fact that Miss Cardrew +should have a letter, nobody but Delia was capable of seeing; but Delia +was given to seeing jokes on all occasions, under all circumstances. Go +wherever you might, from a prayer-meeting to the playground, you were +sure to hear her little giggle. + +"A letter for you," repeated Delia Guest. "He, he!" + +Miss Cardrew laid down her arithmetic, opened the letter, and read it. +"Gypsy Breynton." + +[Illustration] + +The arithmetic class stopped whispering, and there was a great lull in +the schoolroom. + +"Why I never!" giggled Delia. Gypsy, all in a flutter at having her name +read right out in school, and divided between her horror lest the kitten +she had tied to a spool of thread at recess, had been discovered, and an +awful suspicion that Mr. Jonathan Jones saw her run across his plowed +field after chestnuts, went slowly up to the desk. + +"Your mother has sent for you to come directly home," said Miss Cardrew, +in a low tone. Gypsy looked a little frightened. + +"Go home! Is anybody sick, Miss Cardrew?" + +"She doesn't say--she gives no reasons. You'd better not stop to talk, +Gypsy." + +Gypsy went to her desk, and began to gather up her books as fast as she +could. + +"I shouldn't wonder a bit if the house'd caught afire," whispered Agnes +Gaylord. "I had an uncle once, and his house caught afire--in the +chimney too, and everybody'd gone to a prayer-meeting; they had now, +true's you live." + +"Maybe your father's dead," condoled Sarah Rowe. + +"Or Winnie." + +"Or Tom." + +"Just think of it!" + +"What _do_ you s'pose it is?" + +"If I were you, I guess I'd be frightened!" + +"Order!" said Miss Cardrew, in a loud voice. + +The girls stopped whispering, and Gypsy, in nowise reassured by their +sympathy, hurried out to put on her things. With her hat thrown on one +side of her head, the strings hanging down into her eyes, her sack +rolled up in a bundle under her arm, and her rubbers in her pocket, she +started for home on the full run. Yorkbury was pretty well used to +Gypsy, but everybody stopped and stared at her that morning; what with +her burning cheeks, and those rubbers sticking out of her pocket, and +the hat-strings flying, and the brambles catching her dress, and the mud +splashing up under her swift feet, it was no wonder. + +"Miss Gypsy!" called old Mr. Simms, the clerk, as she flew by the door +of her father's book-store. "Miss Gypsy, my _dear_!" + +But on ran Gypsy without so much as giving him a look, across the road +in front of a carriage, around a load of hay, and away like a bird down +the street. Out ran Gypsy's pet aversion, Mrs. Surly, from a shop-door +somewhere-- + +"Gypsy Breynton, what a sight you be! I believe you've gone clear +crazy--Gypsy!" + +"Can't stop!" shouted Gypsy, "it's a fire or something somewhere." + +Eight small boys at the word "fire" appeared on the instant from nobody +knew where, and ran after her with hoarse yells of "fire! fire! Where's +the engine? Vi----ir-r-!" By this time, too, three dogs and a +nanny-goat were chasing her; the dogs were barking, and the nanny-goat +was baaing or braying, or whatever it is that nanny-goats do, so she +swept up to the house in a unique, triumphal procession. + +Winnie came out to meet her as she came in at the gate panting and +scarlet-faced. + +Fifty years instead of five might Winnie have been at that moment, and +all the cares of Church and State on the shoulders of his pinafore, to +judge from the pucker in his chin. There was always a pucker in Winnie's +chin, when he felt--as the boys call it--"big." + +"What do s'pose, Gypsy?--don't you wish you knew?" + +"What?" + +"Oh, no matter. _I_ know." + +"Winnie Breynton!" + +"Well," said Winnie, with the air of a Grand Mogul feeding a chicken, "I +don't care if I tell you. We've had a temmygral." + +"A telegram!" + +"I just guess we have; you'd oughter seen the man. He'd lost his nose, +and----" + +"A telegram! Is there any bad news? Where did it come from?" + +"It came from Bosting," said Winnie, with a superior smile. "I s'posed +you knew _that_! It's sumfin about Aunt Miranda, I shouldn't wonder." + +"Aunt Miranda! Is anybody sick? Is anybody dead, or anything?" + +"I don't know," said Winnie, cheerfully. "But I guess you wish you'd +seen the envelope. It had the funniest little letters punched through on +top--it did now, really." + +Gypsy ran into the house at that, and left Winnie to his meditations. + +Her mother called her from over the banisters, and she ran upstairs. A +small trunk stood open by the bed, and the room was filled with the +confusion of packing. + +"Your Aunt Miranda is sick," said Mrs. Breynton. + +"What are you packing up for? You're not going off!" exclaimed Gypsy, +incapable of taking in a greater calamity than that, and quite +forgetting Aunt Miranda. + +"Yes. Your uncle has written for us to come right on. She is very sick, +Gypsy." + +"Oh!" said Gypsy, penitently; "dangerous?" + +"Yes." + +Gypsy looked sober because her mother did, and she thought she ought to. + +"Your father and I are going in this noon train," proceeded Mrs. +Breynton, rolling up a pair of slippers, and folding a wrapper away in +the trunk. "I think I am needed. The fever is very severe; +possibly--contagious," said Mrs. Breynton, quietly. Mrs. Breynton made +it a rule to have very few concealments from her children. All family +plans which could be, were openly and frankly discussed. She believed +that it did the children good to feel that they had a share in them; +that it did them good to be trusted. She never kept bad tidings from +them simply because they were bad. The mysteries and prevarications +necessary to keep an unimportant secret, were, she reasoned, worse for +them than a little anxiety. Gypsy must know some time about her aunt's +sickness. She preferred she should hear it from her mother's lips, see +for herself the reasons for this sudden departure and risk, if risk +there were, and be woman enough to understand them. + +Gypsy looked sober now in earnest. + +"Why, mother! How can you? What if you catch it?" + +"There is very little chance of that, one possibility in a hundred, +perhaps. Help me fold up this dress, Gypsy--no, on the bed--so." + +"But if you should get sick! I don't see why you need go. She isn't your +own sister anyway, and she never did anything for us, nor cared anything +for us." + +"Your uncle wants me, and that is enough. I want to be to her a sister +if I can--poor thing, she has no sister of her own, and no mother, +nobody but the hired nurses with her; and she may die, Gypsy. If I can +be of any help, I am glad to be." + +Her mother spoke in a quiet, decided tone, with which Gypsy knew there +was no arguing. She helped her fold her dresses and lock her trunk, very +silently, for Gypsy, and then ran away to busy herself with Patty in +getting the travelers' luncheon. When Gypsy felt badly, she always +hunted up something to do; in this she showed the very best of her good +sense. And let me tell you, girls, as a little secret--in the worst +fits of the "blues" you ever have, if you are guilty of having any, do +you go straight into the nursery and build a block house for the baby, +or upstairs and help your mother baste for the machine, or into the +dining-room to help Bridget set the table, or into the corner where some +diminutive brother is crying over his sums which a very few words from +you would straighten, or into the parlor where your father sits shading +his eyes from the lamplight, with no one to read him the paper; and +before you know it, you will be as happy as a queen. You don't believe +it? Try and see. + +Gypsy drowned her sorrow at her mother's departure, in broiling her +mutton-chops and cutting her pie, and by the time the coach drove to the +door, and the travelers stood in the entry with bag and baggage, all +ready to start, the smiles had come back to her lips, and the twinkle to +her eyes. + +"Good-bye, father! O-oh, mother Breynton, give me another kiss. +There!--one more. Now, if you don't write just as soon as you get +there!" + +"Be a good girl, and take nice care of Winnie," called her mother from +the coach-window. And then they were driven rapidly away, and the house +seemed to grow still and dark all at once, and a great many clouds to be +in the warm, autumn sky. The three children stood a moment in the entry +looking forlornly at each other. I beg Tom's pardon--I suppose I should +have said the two children and the "young man." Probably never again in +his life will Tom feel quite as old as he felt in that sixteenth year. +Gypsy was the first to break the dismal silence. + +"How horrid it's going to be! You go upstairs and she won't be there, +and there'll be nobody coming home from the store at night, and, +then--you go round, and it's so still, and nobody but me to keep house, +and Patty has just what she likes for breakfast, for all me, and _I_ +think Aunt Miranda needn't have gone and been sick, anyway." + +"A most sensible and sympathizing niece," observed Tom, in his +patronizing way. + +"Well, you see, I suppose I don't care very much about Aunt Miranda," +said Gypsy, confidentially. "I'm sorry she's sick, but I didn't have a +bit nice time in Boston last vacation, and she scolded me dreadfully +when I blew out the gas. What is it, Patty? Oh, yes--come to dinner, +boys." + +"I say," remarked Winnie, at the rather doleful dinner-table, "look +here, Gypsy." + +"What?" + +[Illustration] + +"S'posin' when they'd got Aunt Miranda all nailed into her +coffin--tight in--she should be _un_-deaded, and open her eyes, and +begin--begin to squeal, you know. S'pose they'd let her out?" + +Just four days from the morning Mrs. Breynton left, Tom came up from the +office with a very sober face and a letter. + +Gypsy ran out to meet him, and put out her hand, in a great hurry to +read it. + +"I'll read it to you," said Tom; "it's to me. Come into the parlor." + +They went in, and Tom read: + + "My Dear Son: + + "I write in great haste, just to let you know that your Aunt Miranda + is gone. She died last night at nine o'clock, in great distress. I + was with her at the last. I am glad I came--very; it seems to have + been a comfort to her; she was so lonely and deserted. The funeral + is day after to-morrow, and we shall stay of course. We hope to be + home on Monday. There has been no time yet to make any plans; I + can't tell what the family will do. Poor Joy cannot bear to be left + alone a minute. She follows me round like a frightened child. The + tears come into my eyes every time I look at her, for the thoughts + of three dear, distant faces that might be left just so, but for + God's mercy to them and to me. She is just about Gypsy's age and + height, you know. The disease proved _not_ to be contagious, so you + need feel no anxiety. A kiss to both the children. Your father sends + much love. We shall be glad to get home and see you again. + + "Very lovingly, + + "Mother." + +Inside the note was a slip for Gypsy, with this written on it: + + "I must stop to tell you, Gypsy, of a little thing your aunt said + the day before she died. She had been speaking of Joy in her weak, + troubled way--of some points wherein she hoped she would be a + different woman from her mother, and had then lain still a while, + her eyes closed, something--as you used to say when you were a little + girl--very _sorry_ about her mouth, when suddenly she turned and + said, 'I wish I'd made Gypsy's visit here a little pleasanter. Tell + her she must think as well as she can of her auntie, for Joy's sake, + now.'" + +Gypsy folded up the paper, and sat silent a moment, thinking her own +thoughts, as Tom saw, and not wishing to be spoken to. + +Those of you who have read "Gypsy Breynton" will understand what these +thoughts might be. Those who have not, need only know that Gypsy's aunt +had been rather a gay, careless lady, well dressed and jeweled, and fond +enough of dresses and jewels; and that in a certain visit Gypsy made her +not long ago, she had been far from thoughtful of her country niece's +comfort. + +And this was how it had ended. Poor Aunt Miranda! + +"Well," said Gypsy, at last, with something dim in her eyes, "I dare say +I was green and awkward, and it was half my fault. I never could +understand how people could just turn round when anybody dies, and say +they were good and perfect, when it wasn't any such a thing, and I can't +say I think she was, for it would be a lie. But I won't say anything +more against her. Poor Joy, poor Joy! Not to have any mother, Tom, just +think! Oh, just _think_!" + + + + +CHAPTER II + +SHE SHALL COME? + + +Supper was ready. It had been ready now for ten minutes. The cool, white +cloth, bright glass, glittering silver, and delicate china painted with +a primrose and an ivy-leaf--the best china, and very extravagant in +Gypsy, of course, but she thought the occasion deserved it--were all +laid in their places upon the table. The tea was steeped to precisely +the right point; the rich, mellow flavor had just escaped the clover +taste on one side, and the bitterness of too much boiling on the other; +the delicately sugared apples were floating in their amber juices in the +round glass preserve-dish, the smoked halibut was done to the most +delightful brown crispness, the puffy, golden drop-cakes were smoking +from the oven, and Patty was growling as nobody but Patty could growl, +for fear they would "slump down intirely an' be gittin' as heavy as +lead," before they could be eaten. + +There was a bright fire in the dining-room grate; the golden light was +dancing a jig all over the walls, hiding behind the curtains, coquetting +with the silver, and touching the primroses on the plates to a perfect +sunbeam; for father and mother were coming. Tom and Gypsy and Winnie +were all three running to the windows and the door every two minutes and +dressed in their very "Sunday-go-to-meeting best;" for father and mother +were coming. Tom had laughed well at this plan of dressing up--Gypsy's +notion, of course, and ridiculous enough, said Tom; fit for babies like +Winnie, and _girls_. (I wish I could give you in print the peculiar +emphasis with which Tom was wont to dwell on this word.) But for all +that, when Gypsy came down in her new Scotch plaid dress, with her +cheeks so red, and her hair so smooth and black; and Winnie strutted +across the room counting the buttons on his best jacket, Tom slipped +away to his room, and came down with his purple necktie on. + +It made a pretty, homelike picture--the bright table and the firelight, +and the eager faces at the window, and the gay dresses. Any father and +mother might have been glad to call it all their own, and come into it +out of the cold and the dark, after a weary day's journey. + +These cozy, comfortable touches about it--the little conceit of the +painted china, and the best clothes--were just like Gypsy. Since she +was glad to see her father and mother, it was imperatively necessary +that she should show it; there was no danger but what her joy would have +been sufficiently evident--where everything else was--in her eyes; but +according to Gypsy's view of matters, it must express itself in some +sort of celebration. Whether her mother wouldn't have been quite as well +pleased if her delicate, expensive porcelain had been kept safely in the +closet; whether, indeed, it was exactly right for her to take it out +without leave, Gypsy never stopped to consider. When she wanted to do a +thing, she could never see any reasons why it shouldn't be done, like a +few other girls I have heard of in New England. However, just such a +mother as Gypsy had was quite likely to pardon such a little +carelessness as this, for the love in it, and the welcoming thoughts. + +"They're comin', comin', comin'," shouted Winnie, from the door-steps, +where, in the exuberance of his spirits, he was trying very hard to +stand on his head, and making a most remarkable failure--"they're +comin' lickitycut, and I'm five years old, 'n' I've got on my best +jacket, 'n' they're comin' slam bang!" + +"Coming, coming, coming!" echoed Gypsy, about as wild as Winnie himself, +and flying past him down to the gate, leaving Tom to follow in Tom's own +dignified way. + +Such a kissing, and laughing, and talking, and delightful confusion as +there was then! Such a shouldering of bags and valises and shawls, such +hurrying of mother in out of the cold; such a pulling of father's +whiskers, such peeping into mysterious bundles, and pulling off of +wrappers, and hurrying Patty with the tea-things; and questions and +answers, and everybody talking at once--one might have supposed the +travelers had been gone a month instead of a week. + +"My kitty had a fit," observed Winnie, the first pause he could find. + +"And there are some letters for father," from Tom. + +"Patty has a new beau," interrupted Gypsy. + +"It was an awfully fit," put in Winnie, undiscouraged; "she rolled under +the stove, 'n' tell _you_ she squealed, and----" + +"How is uncle?" asked Tom, and it was the first time any one had thought +to ask. + +"Then she jumped--splash! into the hogshead," continued Winnie, +determined to finish. + +"He is not very well," said Mr. Breynton, gravely, and then they sat +down to supper, talking the while about him. Winnie subsided in great +disgust, and devoted himself, body, mind, and heart, to the drop-cakes. + +"Ah, the best china, I see," said Mrs. Breynton, presently, with one of +her pleasantest smiles, and as Mrs. Breynton's smiles were always +pleasant, this was saying a great deal. "And the Sunday things on, +too--in honor of our coming? How pleasant it all seems! and how glad I +am to be at home again." + +Gypsy looked radiant--very much, in fact, like a little sun dropped +down from the sky, or a jewel all ablaze. + +Some mothers would have reproved her for the use of the china; some who +had not quite the heart to reprove would have said they were sorry she +had taken it out. Mrs. Breynton would rather have had her handsome +plates broken to atoms than to chill, by so much as a look, the glow of +the child's face just then. + +There was decidedly more talking than eating done at supper, and they +lingered long at the table, in the pleasant firelight and lamplight. + +"It seems exactly like the resurrection day for all the world," said +Gypsy. + +"The resurrection day?" + +"Why, yes. When you went off I kept thinking everybody was dead and +buried, all that morning, and it was real horrid--Oh, you don't know!" + +[Illustration] + +"Gypsy," said Mrs. Breynton, a while after supper, when Winnie had gone +to bed, and Tom and his father were casting accounts by the fire, "I +want to see you a few minutes." Gypsy, wondering, followed her into the +parlor. Mrs. Breynton shut the door, and they sat down together on the +sofa. + +"I want to have a talk with you, Gypsy, about something that we'd better +talk over alone." + +"Yes'm," said Gypsy, quite bewildered by her mother's grave manner, and +thinking up all the wrong things she had done for a week. Whether it was +the time she got so provoked at Patty for having dinner late, or scolded +Winnie for trying to paint with the starch (and if ever any child +deserved it, he did), or got kept after school for whispering, or +brought down the nice company quince marmalade to eat with the blanc +mange, or whether---- + +"You haven't asked about your cousin, Joy," said her mother, +interrupting her thinking. + +"Oh!--how is she?" said Gypsy, looking somewhat ashamed. + +"I am sorry for the child," said Mrs. Breynton, musingly. + +"What's going to become of her? Who's going to take care of her?" + +"That is just what I came in here to talk about." + +"Why, I don't see what I have to do with it!" said Gypsy, astonished. + +"Her father thinks of going abroad, and so there would be no one to +leave her with. He finds himself quite worn out by your aunt's sickness, +the care and anxiety and trouble. His business also requires some member +of the firm to go to France this fall, and he has almost decided to go. +The only thing that makes him hesitate is Joy." + +"I see what you mean now, mother--I see it in your eyes. You want Joy +to come here." Gypsy spoke in a slow, uncomfortable way, as if she were +trying very hard not to believe her own words. + +"Yes," said Mrs. Breynton, "that is it." + +Gypsy's bright face fell. "Well?" she said, at last. + +"I told your uncle," said her mother, "that I could not decide on the +spot, but would let him know next week. The question of Joy's coming +here will affect you more than any member of the family, and I thought +it only fair to you that we should talk it over frankly before it is +settled." + +Gypsy had a vague notion that all mothers would not have been so +thoughtful, but she said nothing. + +"I do not wish," proceeded Mrs. Breynton, "to make any arrangement in +which you cannot be happy; but I have great faith in your kind heart, +Gypsy." + +"I don't like Joy," said Gypsy, bluntly. + +"I know that, and I am sorry it is so," said her mother. "I understand +just what Joy is. But it is not all her fault. She has not been trained +just as you have, Gypsy. She was never taught and helped to be a +generous gentle child, as you have been taught and helped. Your uncle +and aunt felt differently about these things; but it is no matter about +that now--you will understand it better when you are older. It is +enough for you to know that Joy has great excuse for her faults. Even if +they were twice as great as they are, one wouldn't think much about them +now; the poor child is in great trouble, lonely and frightened and +motherless. Think, if God took away _your_ mother, Gypsy." + +"But Joy didn't care much about her mother," said honest Gypsy. "She +used to scold her, Joy told me so herself. Besides, I heard her, ever so +many times." + +"Peace be with the dead, Gypsy; let all that go. She was all the mother +Joy had, and if you had seen what I saw a night or two before I came +away, you wouldn't say she didn't love her." + +"What was it?" asked Gypsy. + +"Your auntie was lying all alone, upstairs. I went in softly, to do one +or two little things about the room, thinking no one was there. + +"One faint gaslight was burning, and in the dimness I saw that the sheet +was turned down from the face, and a poor little quivering figure was +crouched beside it on the bed. It was Joy. She was sobbing as if her +heart would break, and such sobs--it would have made you cry to hear +them, Gypsy. She didn't hear me come in, and she began to talk to the +dead face as if it could hear her. Do you want to know what she said?" + +Gypsy was looking very hard the other way. She nodded, but did not +speak, gulping down something in her throat. + +"This was what she said--softly, in Joy's frightened way, you know: +'You're all I had anyway,' said she. 'All the other girls have got +mothers, and now I won't ever have any, any more. I did used to bother +you and be cross about my practising, and not do as you told me, and I +wish I hadn't, and-- + +"Oh--hum, look here--mother," interrupted Gypsy, jumping up and +winking very fast, "isn't there a train up from Boston early Monday +morning? She might come in that, you know." + +Mrs. Breynton smiled. + +"Then she may come, may she?" + +"I rather think she may," said Gypsy, with an emphasis. "I'll write her +a letter and tell her so." + +"That will be a good plan, Gypsy. But you are quite sure? I don't want +you to decide this matter in too much of a hurry." + +"She'll sleep in the front room, of course?" suggested Gypsy. + +"No; if she comes, she must sleep with you. With our family and only one +servant, I could hardly keep up the extra work that would cause for six +months or a year." + +"Six months or a year! In my room!" + +Gypsy walked back and forth across the room two or three times, her +merry forehead all wrinkled into a knot. + +"Well," at last, "I've said it, and I'll stick to it, and I'll try to +make her have a good time, anyway." + +"Come here, Gypsy." + +Gypsy came, and one of those rare, soft kisses--very different from the +ordinary, everyday kisses--that her mother gave her when she hadn't +just the words to say how pleased she was, fell on her forehead, and +smoothed out the knot before you could say "Jack Robinson." + +That very afternoon Gypsy wrote her note to Joy: + + "Dear Joy: + + "I'm real sorry your mother died. You'd better come right up here + next week, and we'll go chestnutting over by Mr. Jonathan Jones's. I + tell you it's splendid climbing up. If you're very careful, you + needn't tear your dress _very_ badly. Then there's the raft, and you + might play baseball, too. I'll teach you. + + "You see if you don't have a nice time. I can't think of anything + more to say. + + "Your affectionate cousin, + + "Gypsy." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +ONE EVENING + + +So it was settled, and Joy came. There was no especial day appointed for +the journey. Her father was to come up with her as soon as he had +arranged his affairs so that he could do so, and then to go directly +back to Boston and sail at once. + +Gypsy found plenty to do, in getting ready for her cousin. This having a +roommate for the first time in her life was by no means an unimportant +event to her. Her room had always been her own especial private +property. Here in a quiet nook on the broad window-sill she had curled +herself up for hours with her new story-books; here she had locked +herself in to learn her lessons, and keep her doll's dressmaking out of +Winnie's way; here she had gone away alone to have all her "good cries;" +here she sometimes spent a part of her Sabbath evenings with her most +earnest and sober thoughts. + +Here was the mantel-shelf, covered with her little knick-knacks that no +one was ever allowed to touch but herself--pictures framed in pine +cones, boxes of shell-work, baskets of wafer-work, cologne-bottles, +watchcases, ivy-shoots and minerals, on which the dust accumulated at +its own sweet will, and the characteristic variety and arrangement +whereof none ever disputed with her. What if Joy should bring a trunkful +of ornaments? + +There in the wardrobe were her treasures covering six shelves--her +kites and balls of twine, fishlines and doll's bonnets, scraps of gay +silk and jackknives, old compositions and portfolios, colored paper and +dried moss, pieces of chalk and horse-chestnuts, broken jewelry and +marbles. It was a curious collection. One would suppose it to be a sort +of co-partnership between the property of a boy and girl, in which the +boy decidedly predominated. + +[Illustration] + +Into this wardrobe Gypsy looked regretfully. Three of those +shelves--those precious shelves--must be Joy's now. And what _should_ +be done with the things? + +Then there were the bureau drawers. What sorcerer's charms, to say +nothing of the somewhat unwilling fingers of a not very enthusiastic +little girl, could cram the contents of four (and those so full that +they were overflowing through the cracks) into two? + +Moreover, as any one acquainted with certain chapters in Gypsy's past +history will remember, her premises were not always celebrated for the +utmost tidiness. And here was Joy, used to her elegant carpets and +marble-covered bureaus, and gas-fixtures and Cochituate, with servants +to pick up her things for her ever since she was a baby! How shocked she +would be at the dust, and the ubiquitous slippers, and the slips and +shreds on the carpet; and how should she have the least idea what it was +to have to do things yourself? + +However, Gypsy put a brave face on it, and emptied the bureau drawers, +and squeezed away the treasures into three shelves, and did her best to +make the room look pleasant and inviting to the little stranger. In +fact, before she was through with the work she became really very much +interested in it. She had put a clean white quilt upon the bed, and +looped up the curtain with a handsome crimson ribbon, taken from the +stock in the wardrobe. She had swept and dusted every corner and +crevice; she had displayed all her ornaments to the best advantage, and +put fresh cologne in the bottles. She had even brought from some +sanctum, where it was folded away in the dark, a very choice silk flag +about four inches long, that she had made when the war began, and was +keeping very tenderly to wear when Richmond was taken, and pinned it up +over her looking-glass. + +On the table, too, stood her Parian vase filled with golden and +blood-red maple-leaves, and the flaming berries of the burning-bush. +Very prettily the room looked, when everything was finished, and Gypsy +was quite proud of it. + +Joy came Thursday night. They were all in the parlor when the coach +stopped, and Gypsy ran out to meet her. + +A pale, sickly, tired-looking child, draped from head to foot in black, +came up the steps clinging to her father's hand, and fretting over +something or other about the baggage. + +Gypsy was springing forward to meet her, but stopped short. The last +time she had seen Joy, she was in gay Stuart-plaid silk and corals. She +had forgotten all about the mourning. How thin and tall it made Joy +look! + +Gypsy remembered herself in a minute and threw her arms warmly around +Joy's neck. But Joy did not return the embrace, and gave her only one +cold kiss. She had inferred from Gypsy's momentary hesitation that she +was not glad to see her. + +Gypsy, on her part, thought Joy was proud and disagreeable. Thus the two +girls misunderstood each other at the very beginning. + +"I'm real glad to see you," said Gypsy. + +"I thought we never should get here!" said Joy, petulantly. "The cars +were so dusty, and your coach jolts terribly. I shouldn't think the town +would use such an old thing." + +Gypsy's face fell, and her welcome grew faint. + +Joy had but little to say at supper. She sat by her father and ate her +muffins like a very hungry, tired child--like a very cross child, Gypsy +thought. Joy's face was always pale and fretful; in the bright lamplight +now, after the exhaustion of the long journey, it had a pinched, +unpleasant look. + +"Hem," coughed Tom, over his teacup. Gypsy looked up and their eyes met. +That look said unutterable things. + +[Illustration] + +If it had not been for Mrs. Breynton, that supper would have been a +dismal affair. But she had such a cozy, comfortable way about her, that +nobody could help being cozy and comfortable if they tried hard for it. +After a while, when Mr. Breynton and his brother had gone away into the +library for a talk by themselves, and Joy began to feel somewhat rested, +she brightened up wonderfully, and became really quite entertaining in +her account of her journey. She thought Vermont looked cold and stupid, +however, and didn't remember having noticed much about the mountains, +for which Gypsy thought she should never forgive her. + +But there was at least one thing Gypsy found out that evening to like +about Joy. She loved her father dearly. One could not help noticing how +restless she was while he was out of the room, and how she watched the +door for him to come back; how, when he did come, she stole away from +her aunt and sat down by him, slipping her hand softly into his. As he +had been all her life the most indulgent and patient of fathers, and was +going, early to-morrow morning, thousands of miles away from her into +thousands of unknown dangers, it was no wonder. + +While it was still quite early, Joy proposed going to bed. She was +tired, and besides, she wanted to unpack a few of her things. So Gypsy +lighted the lamp and went up with her. + +"So I am to sleep with you," said Joy, as they opened the door, in by no +means the happiest of tones, though they were polite enough. + +"Yes. Mother thought it was better. See, isn't my room pretty?" said +Gypsy, eagerly, thinking how pleased Joy would be with the little +welcome of its fresh adornments. + +"Oh, is _this_ it?" + +Gypsy stopped short, the hot color rushing all over her face. + +"Of course, it isn't like yours. We can't afford marble bureaus and +Brussels carpets, but I thought you'd like the maple-leaves, and I +brought out the flag on purpose because you were coming." + +"Flag! Where? Oh, yes. I have one ten times as big as that at home," +said Joy, and then she too stopped short, for she saw the expression of +Gypsy's face. Astonished and puzzled, wondering what she had done, Joy +turned away to unpack, when her eye fell on the vase with its gorgeous +leaves and berries, and she cried out in real delight: "O--oh, how +_pretty_! Why, we don't have anything like this in Boston." + +But Gypsy was only half comforted. + +Joy unlocked her trunk then, and for a few minutes they chatted merrily +over the unpacking. Where is the girl that doesn't like to look at +pretty clothes? and where is the girl that doesn't like to show them if +they happen to be her own? Joy's linen was all of the prettiest pattern, +with wonderful trimmings and embroideries such as Gypsy had seldom seen: +her collars and undersleeves were of the latest fashion, and fluted with +choice laces; her tiny slippers were tufted with velvet bows, and of her +nets and hair-ribbons there was no end. Gypsy looked on without a single +pang of envy, contrasting them with her own plain, neat things, of +course, but glad, in Gypsy's own generous fashion, that Joy had them. + +"I had pretty enough things when you were in Boston," said Joy, +unfolding her heavy black dresses with their plain folds of bombazine +and crape. "Now I can't wear anything but this ugly black. Then there +are all my corals and malachites just good for nothing. Madame St. +Denis--she's the dressmaker--said I couldn't wear a single thing but +jet, and jet makes me look dreadfully brown." + +Gypsy hung up the dress that was in her hand and walked over to the +window. She felt very much as if somebody had been drawing a file across +her front teeth. + +She could not have explained what was the matter. Somehow she seemed to +see a quick picture of her own mother dying and dead, and herself in the +sad, dark dresses. And how Joy could speak so--how she _could_! + +"Oh--only two bureau drawers! Why didn't you give me the two upper +ones?" said Joy, presently, when she was ready to put away her collars +and boxes. + +"Because my things were in there," said Gypsy. + +"But your things were in the lower ones just as much." + +"I like the upper drawers best," said Gypsy, shortly. + +"So do I," retorted Joy. + +The hot color rushed over Gypsy's face for the second time, but now it +was a somewhat angry color. + +"It wasn't very pleasant to have to give up any, and there are all those +wardrobe shelves I had to take my things off from too, and I don't think +you've any right to make a fuss." + +"That's polite!" said Joy, with a laugh. Gypsy knew it wasn't, but for +that very reason she wouldn't say so. + +One more subject of dispute came up almost before this was forgotten. +When they were all ready to go to bed, Joy wanted the front side. + +"But that's where I always sleep," said Gypsy. + +"There isn't any air over the back side and I can't breathe," said Joy. + +"Neither can I," said Gypsy. + +"I never can get to sleep if I don't have the place I'm used to," said +Joy. + +"You can just as well as I can," said Gypsy. "Besides, it's my bed." + +This last argument appeared to be unanswerable, and Gypsy had it her +way. + +She thought it over before she went to sleep, which was not very soon; +for Joy was restless, and tossed on her pillow, and talked in her +dreams. Of course the front side and the upper drawers belonged to +her--yes, of course. She had only taken her rights. She would be +obliged to anybody to show her where she was to blame. + +Joy went to sleep without any thoughts, and therein lay just the +difference. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +CHESTNUTS + + +Something woke Gypsy very early the next morning. She started up, and +saw Joy standing by the bed, in the faint, gray light, all dressed and +shivering with the cold. + +"Well, I never!" said Gypsy. + +"What's the matter?" + +"What on earth have you got your dress on in the middle of the night +for?" + +"It isn't night; it's morning." + +"Morning! it isn't any such a thing." + +"'Tis, too. I heard the clock strike five ever so long ago." + +Gypsy had fallen back on the pillow, almost asleep again. She roused +herself with a little jump. + +"See _here_!" + +"Ow! how you frightened me," said Joy, with another jump. + +[Illustration] + +"Did I? Oh, well"--silence. "I don't see"--another silence--"what you +wear my rubber--rubber boots for." + +"Your rubber boots! Gypsy Breynton, you're sound asleep." + +"Asleep!" said Gypsy, sitting up with a jerk, and rubbing both fists +into her eyes. "I'm just as wide awake as you are. Oh, why, you're +dressed!" + +"Just found that out?" Joy broke into a laugh, and Gypsy, now quite +awake, joined in it merrily. For the first time a vague notion came to +her that she was rather glad Joy came. It might be some fun, after all, +to have somebody round all the time to--in that untranslatable girls' +phrase--"carry on with." + +"But I don't see what's up," said Gypsy, winking and blinking like an +owl to keep her eyes open. + +"Why, I was afraid father'd get off before I was awake, so I was +determined he shouldn't. I guess I kept waking up pretty much all night +to see if it wasn't time." + +"I wish he didn't have to go," said Gypsy. She felt sorry for Joy just +then, seeing this best side of her that she liked. For about a minute +she wished she had let her have the upper drawer. + +[Illustration] + +Joy's father started by a very early train, and it was still hardly +light when he sat down to his hurried breakfast, with Joy close by him, +that pale, pinched look on her face, and so utterly silent that Gypsy +was astonished. She would have thought she cared nothing about her +father's going, if she had not seen her standing in the gray light +upstairs. + +"Joyce, my child, you haven't eaten a mouthful," said her father. + +"I can't." + +"Come, dear, do, just a little, to please father." + +Joy put a spoonful of tea to her lips, and put it down. Presently there +was a great rumbling of wheels outside, and the coachman rang the +door-bell. + +"Well, Joy." + +Joy stood up, but did not speak. Her father, holding her close in his +arms, drew her out with him into the entry. Mrs. Breynton turned away; +so did Gypsy and the rest. In a minute they heard Joy go into the parlor +and shut the door, and then her father called out to them with his +cheerful good-byes, and then he was in the coach, and the door was shut. + +Gypsy stole into the parlor. Joy was standing there alone by the window. + +"Why don't you cry?" said Gypsy; "I would." + +"I don't want to," said Joy, moving away. Her sorrow at parting with her +father made her fretful that morning. This was Joy's way. She had +inherited her mother's fashion of taking trouble. Gypsy did not +understand it, and her sympathy cooled a little. Still she really wanted +to do something to make her happy, and so she set about it in the only +ways she knew. + +"See here, Joy," she called, merrily, after breakfast, "let's come out +and have a good time. I have lots and lots to show you out in the barn +and round. Then there is all Yorkbury besides, and the mountains. +Which'll you do first, see the chickens or walk out on the ridge-pole?" + +"On the _what_?" + +"On the ridge-pole; that's the top of the roof, you know, over the +kitchen. Tom and I go out there ever so much." + +"Oh, I'd rather see the chickens. I should think you'd kill yourself +walking on roofs. Wait till I get my gloves." + +"Oh, you don't want gloves in _Yorkbury_," said Gypsy, with a very +superior air. "That's nothing but a Boston fashion. Slip on your hat and +sack in a jiff, and come along." + +"I shall tan my hands," said Joy, reluctantly, as they went out. +"Besides, I don't know what a jiff is." + +"A jiff is--why, it's short for jiffy, I suppose." + +"But what's a jiffy?" persisted Joy. + +"Couldn't tell you," said Gypsy, with a bubbling laugh; "I guess it's +something that's in a terrible hurry. Tom says it ever so much." + +"I shouldn't think your mother would let you use boys' talk," said Joy. +Gypsy sometimes stood in need of some such hint as this, but she did not +relish it from Joy. By way of reply she climbed up the post of the +clothesline. + +Joy thought the chickens were pretty, but they had such long legs, and +such a silly way of squealing when you took them up, as if you were +going to murder them. Besides she was afraid she should step on them. So +they went into the barn, and Gypsy exhibited Billy and Bess and Clover +with the talent of a Barnum and the pride of a queen. Billy was the old +horse who had pulled the family to church through the sand every Sunday +since the children were babies, and Bess and Clover were white-starred, +gentle-eyed cows, who let Gypsy pull their horns and tickle them with +hay, and make pencil-marks on their white foreheads to her heart's +content, and looked at Joy's strange face with great musing beautiful +brown eyes. But Joy was afraid they would hook her, and she didn't like +to be in a barn. + +"What! not tumble on the hay!" cried Gypsy, half way up the ladder into +the loft. "Just see what a quantity there is of it. Did you ever know +such a quantity? Father lets me jump on it 'cause I don't hurt the +hay--very much." + +No. Joy couldn't possibly climb up the ladder. Well, Gypsy would help +her then. By a little maneuvering she persuaded Joy to step up three +rounds, and she herself stood behind her and began to walk up. Joy +screamed and stood still. + +"Go ahead--you can't stop now. I'll keep hold of you," said Gypsy, +choking with laughter, and walking on. There was nothing for Joy to do +but climb, unless she chose to be walked over, so up they went, she +screaming and Gypsy pushing all the way. + +"Now all you have to do is just to get up on the beams and jump off," +said Gypsy, up there, and peering down from among the cobwebs, and +flying through the air, almost before the words were off from her lips. +But Joy wouldn't hear of getting into such a dusty place. She took two +or three dainty little rolls on the hay, but the dried clover got into +her hair and mouth and eyes, and she was perfectly sure there was a +spider down her neck; so Gypsy was glad at last to get her safely down +the ladder and out doors. + +After that they tried the raft. Gypsy's raft was on a swamp below the +orchard, and it was one of her favorite amusements to push herself about +over the shallow water. But Joy was afraid of wetting her feet, or +getting drowned, or something--she didn't exactly know what, so they +gave that up. + +Then Gypsy proposed a game of marbles on the garden path. She played a +great deal with Tom, and played well. But Joy was shocked at the idea. +That was a _boy's_ play! + +"What will you do, then?" said Gypsy, a little crossly. Joy replied in +the tone of a martyr, that she was sure she did not know. Gypsy coughed, +and walked up and down on the garden fence in significant silence. + +Joy was not to go to school till Monday. Meantime she amused herself at +home with her aunt, and Gypsy went as usual without her. + +Saturday afternoon was the perfect pattern of an autumn afternoon. A +creamy haze softened the sharp outline of the mountains, and lay +cloudlike on the fields. The sunlight fell through it like sifted gold, +the sky hung motionless and blue--that glowless, deepening blue that +always made Gypsy feel, she said, "as if she must drink it right +up"--and away over miles of field and mountain slope the maples +crimsoned and flamed. + +Gypsy came home at noon with her hat hanging down her neck, her cheeks +on fire, and panting like the old lady who died for want of breath; +rushing up the steps, tearing open the door, and slamming into the +parlor. + +"Look here!--everybody--where are you? What do you think? Joy! Mother! +There's going to be a great chestnutting." + +"A what?" asked Joy, dropping her embroidery. + +"A chestnutting, up at Mr. Jonathan Jones's trees, this afternoon at two +o'clock. Did you ever hear anything so perfectly mag?"--mag being +"Gypsy" for magnificent. + +"Who are to make the party?" asked her mother. + +"Oh, I and Sarah Rowe and Delia Guest and--and Sarah Rowe and I," said +Gypsy, talking very fast. + +"And Joy," said Mrs. Breynton, gently. + +"Joy, of course. That's what I came in to say." + +"Oh, I don't care to go if you don't want me," said Joy, with a slighted +look. + +"But I do want you. Who said I didn't?" + +"Well," said Joy, somewhat mollified, "I'll go if there aren't any +spiders." + +The two girls equipped themselves with tin pails, thick boots and a +lunch-basket, and started off in high spirits at precisely half-past +one. Joy had a remarkably vague idea of what she was going to do, but +she felt unusually good-natured, as who could help feeling, with such a +sunlight as that and such distant glories of the maple-trees, and such +shadows melting on the mountains! + +"I want to go chestnotting, too-o-o!" called Winnie, disconsolate, in +the doorway. + +"No, Winnie, you couldn't, possibly," said Gypsy, pleasantly, sorry to +disappoint him; but she was quite too well acquainted with Winnie to +undertake a nutting party in his company. + +"Oh, yes, do let's take him; he's so cunning," said Joy. Joy was totally +unused to children, having never had brothers and sisters of her own, +and since she had been there, Winnie had not happened to develop in any +of his characteristic methods. Moreover, he had speedily discovered that +Joy laughed at everything he said; even his most ordinary efforts in the +line of wit; and that she gave him lumps of sugar when she thought of +it; and therefore he had been on his best behavior whenever she was +about. + +"He's so terribly cunning," repeated Joy; "I guess he won't do any +hurt." + +"I won't do any hurt," put in Winnie; "I'm real cunnin', Gypsy." + +"You may do as you like, of course," said Gypsy. "I know he will make +trouble and spoil all the party, and the girls would scold me 'cause I +brought him. I've tried it times enough. If you're a mind to take care +of him, I suppose you can; but you see if you don't repent your +bargain." + +Gypsy was perfectly right; she was not apt to be selfish in her +treatment of Winnie. Such a tramp as this was not at all suited to his +capacities of feet or temper, and if his mother had been there she would +have managed to make him happy in staying home. But Winnie had received +quite too much encouragement; he had no thought of giving up his bargain +now. + +"Gypsy Breynton, you just needn't talk. I'm goin' chestnotting. I'm five +years old. I'm goin' with cousin Joy, and I'll eat just as many +chestnots as you or anybody else, now!" + +Gypsy had not the slightest doubt of that, and the three started off +together. + +They met Sarah Rowe and Delia on the way, and Gypsy introduced them. + +"This is my cousin Joy, and this is Sarah. That one in the shaker bonnet +is Delia Guest. Oh, I forgot. Joy's last name is Breynton, and Sarah is +Sarah Rowe." + +Joy bowed in her prim, cityish way, and Sarah and Delia were so much +astonished thereat that they forgot to bow at all, and Delia stared +rudely at her black dress. There was an awkward silence. + +"Why don't you talk, somebody?" broke out Gypsy, getting desperate. +"Anybody'd think we were three mummies in a museum." + +"I don't think you're very perlite," put in Winnie, with a virtuous +frown; "if you don't let me be a dummy, too, I'll tell mother, and that +would make four." + +This broke the ice, and Sarah and Delia began to talk very fast about +Monday's grammar lesson, and Miss Cardrew, and how Agnes Gaylord put a +green snake in Phoebe Hunt's lunch-basket, and had to stay after school +for it, and how it was confidently reported in mysterious whispers, at +recess, that George Castles told Mr. Guernsey he was a regular old fogy, +and Mr. Guernsey had sent home a letter to his father--not Mr. +Guernsey's father, but George's; he had now, true's you live. + +Now, to Joy, of course, none of this was very interesting, for she had +not been into the schoolroom yet, and didn't know George Castles and +Agnes Gaylord from Adam; and somehow or other it never occurred to Gypsy +to introduce some subject in which they could all take part; and so +somehow it came about that Joy fell behind with Winnie, and the three +girls went on together all the way to Mr. Jones's grove. + +"Isn't it splendid?" called Gypsy, turning around. "I'm having a real +nice time." + +"Ye--es," said Joy, dolefully; "I guess I shall like it better when we +get to the chestnuts." + +Nothing particular happened on the way, except that when they were +crossing Mr. Jonathan's plowed field, Winnie stuck in the mud tight, and +when he was pulled out he left his shoes behind him; that he repeated +this pleasing little incident six consecutive times within five minutes, +varying it by lifting up his voice to weep, in Winnie's own accomplished +style; and that Joy ended by carrying him in her arms the whole way. + +Be it here recorded that Joy's ideal of "cherubic childhood," Winnie +standing as representative cherub, underwent then and there several +modifications. + +"Here we are!" cried Gypsy at last, clearing a low fence with a bound. +"Just see the leaves and the sky. Isn't it just--oh!" + +It was, indeed "just," and there it stopped; there didn't seem to be any +more words to say about it. The chestnut-trees were clustered on a +small, rocky knoll, their golden-brown leaves fluttering in the +sunlight, their great, rich, bursting green burs bending down the boughs +and dropping to the ground. Around them and among them a belt of maples +stood up like blazing torches sharp against the sky--yellow, scarlet, +russet, maroon, and crimson veined with blood, all netted and laced +together, and floating down upon the wind like shattered jewels. Beyond, +the purple mountains, and the creamy haze, and the silent sky. + +It was a sight to make younger and older than these four girls stand +still with deepening eyes. For about a half minute nobody spoke, and I +venture to say the four different kinds of thoughts they had just then +would make a pretty bit of a poem. + +Whatever they were, a fearfully unromantic and utterly indescribable +howl from Winnie put an unceremonious end to them. + +"O-oh! ugh! ah! Gypsy! Joy! I've got catched onto my buttons. My head's +tippin' over the wrong way. Boo-hoo-hoo! Gypsy!" + +The girls turned, and stood transfixed, and screamed till they lost +their breath, and laughed till they cried. + +Winnie, not being of a sentimental turn of mind, had regarded unmoved +the flaming glories of the maple-leaves, and being influenced by the +more earthly attractions of the chestnuts, had conceived the idea of +seizing advantage of the girls' unpractical rapture to be the first on +the field, and take entire and lawful possession thereof. Therefore had +he made all manner of haste to crawl through the fence, and there had he +stuck fast between two bars, balanced like a see-saw, his head going up +and his feet going down, his feet going up and his head going down. + +Gypsy pulled him out as well as she could between her spasms of +laughter. + +"I don't see anythin' to laugh at," said Winnie, severely. "If you don't +stop laughin' I'll go way off into the woods and be a Injun and never +come home any more, and build me a house with a chimney to it, 'n' have +baked beans for supper 'n' lots of chestnots, and a gun and a pistol, +and I won't give _you_ any! Goin' to stop laughin'?" + +It did not take long to pick up the nuts that the wind and the frost had +already strewn upon the ground, and everybody enjoyed it but Joy. She +pricked her unaccustomed fingers on the sharp burs, and didn't like the +nuts when she had tasted of them. + +"They're not the kind of chestnuts we have in Boston," she said; "ours +are soft like potatoes." + +"Oh dear, oh dear, she thought they _grew boiled_!" and there was a +great laugh. Joy colored, and did not relish it very much. Gypsy was too +busy pulling off her burs to notice this. Presently the ground was quite +cleared. + +"Now we must climb," said Gypsy. Gypsy was always the leader in their +plays; always made all their plans. Sarah Rowe was her particular +friend, and thought everything Gypsy did about right, and seldom opposed +her. Delia never opposed anybody. + +"Oh, I don't know how to climb," said Joy, shrinking and shocked. + +"But I'll show you. _This_ isn't anything; these branches are just as +low as they can be. Here, I'll go first and help you, and Sarah can come +next." + +So up went Gypsy, nimble as a squirrel, over the low-hanging boughs that +swayed with her weight. + +"Come, Joy! I can't wait." + +Joy trembled and screamed, and came. She crawled a little ways up the +lowest of the branches, and stopped, frightened by the motion. + +"Catch hold of the upper bough and stand up; then you can walk it," +called Gypsy, half out of sight now among the thick leaves. + +Joy did as she was told--her feet slipped, the lower branch swung away +from under her, and there she hung by both hands in mid-air. She was not +more than four feet from the ground, and could have jumped down without +the slightest difficulty, but that she was altogether too frightened to +do. So she swung back and forth like a lantern, screaming as loud as she +could scream. + +Gypsy was peculiarly sensitive to anything funny, and she quite forgot +that Joy was really frightened; indeed, used as she was to the science +of tree-climbing all her life, that a girl could hang within four feet +of the ground, and not know enough to jump, seemed to her perfectly +incomprehensible. + +"Jump, Joy, jump!" she called, between her shouts of laughter. + +"No, no, don't, you might break your arm," cried Delia Guest, who hadn't +the slightest scruple about telling a falsehood if she were going to +have something to laugh at by the means. Poor Joy was between Scylla and +Charybdis. (If you don't know what that means, go and ask your big +brothers; make them leave their chess and their newspapers on the spot, +and read you what Mr. Virgil has to say about it.) If she hung on she +would wrench her arms; if she jumped, she should break them. She hung, +screaming, as long as she could, and dropped when she could hang no +longer, looking about in an astonishment that was irresistibly funny, at +finding herself alive and unhurt on the soft moss. + +The girls were still laughing too hard to talk. Joy stood up with a very +red face and began to walk slowly away without a word. + +"Where are you goin?" called Gypsy from the branches. + +"Home," said Joy. + +"Oh, don't; come, we won't laugh any mote. Come back, and you needn't +climb. You can stay underneath and pick up while we throw down." + +"No; I've had enough of it. I don't like chestnutting, and I don't like +to be laughed at, either. I shan't stay any longer." + +"I'm real sorry," said Gypsy. "I couldn't help laughing at you, you did +look so terribly funny. Oh, dear, you ought to have seen yourself! I +wish you wouldn't go. If you do, you can find the way alone, I suppose." + +"I suppose so," said Joy, doubtfully. + +"Well, you'd better take Winnie; you know you brought him, and I can't +keep him here. It would spoil everything. Why, where is the child?" + +He was nowhere to be seen. + +"Winnie! Win--nie!" + +There was a great splash somewhere, and a curious bubbling sound, but +where it came from nobody could tell. All at once Delia broke into +something between a laugh and a scream. + +"O--oh, I see! Look there--down in that ditch beyond the +elder-bushes--quick!" + +Rising up into the air out of the muddy ground, without any visible +support whatever, were a pair of feet--Winnie's feet, unmistakably, +because of their copper toes and tagless shoestrings--and kicking +frantically back and forth. "Only that and nothing more." + +"Why, where's the--rest of him?" said Joy, blankly. At this instant +Gypsy darted past her with a sudden movement, flew down the knoll, and +began to pull at the mysterious feet as if for dear life. + +"Why, what _is_ she doing?" cried all the girls in a breath. As they +spoke, up came Winnie entire into the air, head down, dripping, +drenched, black with mud, gasping, nearly drowned. + +Gypsy shook him and pounded him on the back till his breath came, and +when she found there was no harm done, she set him down on a stone, +wiped the mud off from his face, and threw herself down on the grass as +if she couldn't stand up another minute. + +"Crying? Why, no; she's laughing. Did you ever?" + +And down ran the girls to see what was the matter. At the foot of the +knoll was a ditch of black mud. In the middle of this ditch was a round +hole two feet deep, which had been dug at some time to collect water for +the cattle pasturing in the field to drink. Into this hole, Winnie, in +the course of some scientific investigations as to the depth of the +water, had fallen, unfortunately, the wrong end foremost, and there he +certainly would have drowned if Gypsy had not seen him just when she +did. + +But he was not drowned; on the contrary, except for the mud, "as good as +new;" and what might have been a tragedy, and a very sad one, had +become, as Gypsy said, "too funny for anything." Winnie, however, +"didn't see it," and began to cry lustily to go home. + +"It's fortunate you were just going," said Gypsy. "I'll just fill my +pail, and then I'll come along and very likely overtake you." + +Probably Joy didn't fancy this arrangement any too well, but she +remembered that it was her own plan to take the child; therefore she +said nothing, and she and Winnie started off forlornly enough. + +About five o'clock Gypsy walked slowly up the yard with her pail full of +nuts, her hat in her hand, and a gay wreath of maple-leaves on her head. +With her bright cheeks and twinkling eyes, and the broad leaves casting +their gorgeous shadows of crimson and gold upon her forehead, she made a +pretty picture--almost too pretty to scold. + +Tom met her at the door. Tom was very proud of Gypsy, and you could see +in his eyes just then what he thought of her. + +"What a little----" he began, all ready for a frolic, and stopped, and +grew suddenly grave. + +"Where are Joy and Winnie?" + +"Haven't they come?" + +"No." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +GYPSY MAKES A DISCOVERY + + +Gypsy turned very pale. + +"Where are they?" persisted Tom. And just then her mother came out from +the parlor. + +"Why, Gypsy, where are the children?" + +"I'm afraid Joy didn't know the way," said Gypsy, slowly. + +"Did you let her come home alone?" + +"Yes'm. She was tired of the chestnuts, and Winnie fell into the ditch. +Oh, mother!" + +Mrs. Breynton did not say one word. She began to put on her things very +fast, and Tom hurried up to the store for his father. They hunted +everywhere, through the fields and in the village; they inquired of +every shop-keeper and every passer, but no one had seen a girl in black, +with a little boy. There were plenty of girls, and an abundance of +little boys to be found at a great variety of places, but most of the +girls wore green-checked dresses, and the boys were in ragged jackets. +Gypsy retraced every step of the way carefully from the roadside to the +chestnut-trees. Mr. Jonathan Jones, delighted that he had actually +caught somebody on his plowed land, came running down with a terrible +scolding on his lips. But when he saw Gypsy's utterly wretched face and +heard her story, he helped her instead to search the chestnut grove and +the surrounding fields all over. But there was not a flutter of Joy's +black dress, not an echo of Winnie's cry. The sunset was fading fast in +the west, long shadows were slanting down the valley, and the blaze of +the maples was growing faint. On the mountains it was quite blotted out +by the gathering darkness. + +"What _shall_ I do?" cried Gypsy, thinking, with a great sinking at her +heart, how cold the nights were now, and how early it grew quite dark. + +"Hev you been 'long that ere cross-road 't opens aout through the woods +onto the three-mile square?" asked Mr. Jonathan. "I've been a thinkin' +on't as heow the young uns might ha took that ere ef they was flustered +beout knowin' the way neow mos' likely." + +"Oh, what a splendid, good man you are!" said Gypsy, jumping up and +down, and clapping her hands with delight. "Nobody thought of that, and +I'll never run over your plowed-up land again as long as ever I live, +and I'm going right to tell father, and you see if I do!" + +Her father wondered that they had not thought of it, and old Billy was +harnessed in a hurry, and they started for the three-mile cross-roads. +Gypsy went with them. Nobody spoke to her except to ask questions now +and then as to the precise direction the children took, and the time +they started for home. Gypsy leaned back in the carriage, peering out +into the gloom on either side, calling Joy's name now and then, or +Winnie's, and busy with her own wretched thoughts. Whatever they were, +she did not very soon forget them. + +It was very dark now, and very cold; the crisp frost glistened on the +grass, and an ugly-looking red moon peered over the mountain. It seemed +to Gypsy like a great, glaring eye, that was singling her out and +following her, and asking, "Where are Joy and Winnie?" over and over. +"Gypsy Breynton, Gypsy Breynton, where are Joy and Winnie?" She turned +around with her back to it, so as not to see it. + +Once they passed an old woman on the road hobbling along with a stick. +Mr. Breynton reined up and asked if she had seen anything of two +children. + +"Haow?" said the old woman. + +"Have you seen anything of two children along here?" + +"Chilblains? No, I don't have none this time o' year, an' I don't know +what business it is o' yourn, nuther." + +"Children!" shouted Mr. Breynton; "two _children_, a boy and a girl." + +"Speak a little louder, can't you? I'm deaf," said the old woman. + +"Have you--seen anything--of--two--children--a little boy, and a +girl in black?" + +"Chickens? black chickens?" said the old woman, with an angry shake of +the head; "no, I hain't got no chickens for yer. My pullet's white, and +I set a heap on't an' wouldn't sell it to nobody as come askin' oncivil +questions of a lone, lorn widdy. Besides, the cat eat it up las' week, +feathers 'n' all." + +Mr. Breynton concluded there was not much information to be had in that +quarter, and drove on. + +A little way farther they came across a small boy turning somersets in +the ditch. Mr. Breynton stopped again and repeated his questions. + +"How many of 'em?" asked the boy, with a thoughtful look. + +"Two, a boy and a girl." + +"Two?" + +"Yes." + +"A boy and a girl?" + +"Yes." + +"You said one was a boy and t'other was a girl?" repeated the small boy, +looking very bright. + +"Yes. The boy was quite small, and the girl wore a black dress. They're +lost, and we're trying to find them." + +"Be you, now, really!" said the small boy, apparently struck with sudden +and overwhelming admiration. "That is terribly good in you. Seems to me +now I reckon I see two young uns 'long here somewhars, didn't I? Le' me +see." + +"Oh, where, where?" cried Gypsy. "Oh, I'm so glad! Did the little boy +have on a plaid jacket and brown coat?" + +"Waal, now, seems as ef 'twas somethin' like that." + +"And the girl wore a hat and a long veil?" pursued Gypsy, eagerly. + +"Was she about the height of this girl here, and whereabouts did you see +her?" asked Tom. + +"Waal, couldn't tell exactly; somewhars between here an' the village, I +reckon. Seems to me she did have a veil or suthin'." + +"And she was real pale?" cried Gypsy, "and the boy was dreadfully +muddy?" + +"Couldn't say as to that"--the small boy began to hesitate and look +very wise--"don't seem to remember the mud, and on the whole, I ain't +partiklar sure 'bout the veil. Oh, come to think on't, it wasn't a gal; +it was a deaf old woman, an' there warn't no boy noways." + +Well was it for the small boy that, as the carriage rattled on, he took +good care to be out of the reach of Tom's whip-lash. + +It grew darker and colder, and the red moon rode on silently in the sky. +They had come now to the opening of the cross-road, but there were no +signs of the children--only the still road and the shadows under the +trees. + +"Hark! what's that?" said Mr. Breynton, suddenly. He stopped the +carriage, and they all listened. A faint, sobbing sound broke the +silence. Gypsy leaned over the side of the carriage, peering in among +the trees where the shadow was blackest. + +"Father, may I get out a minute?" + +She sprang over the wheel, ran into the cross-road, into a clump of +bushes, pushed them aside, screamed for joy. + +"Here they are, here they are--quick, quick! Oh, Winnie Breynton, do +just wake up and let me look at you! Oh, Joy, I _am_ so glad!" + +And there on the ground, true enough, sat Joy, exhausted and frightened +and sobbing, with Winnie sound asleep in her lap. + +"I didn't know the way, and Winnie kept telling me wrong, and, oh, I was +_so_ tired, and I sat down to rest, and it is so dark, and--and oh, I +thought nobody'd ever come!" + +And poor Joy sprang into her uncle's arms, and cried as hard as she +could cry. + +Joy was thoroughly tired and chilled; it seemed that she had had to +carry Winnie in her arms a large part of the way, and the child was by +no means a light weight. Evidently, Master Winnie had taken matters +pretty comfortably throughout, having had, Joy said, the utmost +confidence in his own piloting, declaring "it was just the next house, +right around the corner, Joy; how stupid in her not to know! he knew all +the whole of it just as well as anything," and was none the worse for +the adventure. Gypsy tried to wake him up, but he doubled up both fists +in his dream, and greeted her with the characteristic reply, "Naughty!" +and that was all that was to be had from him. So he was rolled up warmly +on the carriage floor; they drove home as fast as Billy would go, and +the two children, after a hot supper and a great many kisses, were put +snugly to bed. + +After Joy was asleep, Mrs. Breynton said she would like to see Gypsy a +few moments downstairs. + +"Yes'm," said Gypsy, and came slowly down. They sat down in the +dining-room alone. Mrs. Breynton drew up her rocking-chair by the fire, +and Gypsy took the cricket. + +There was a silence. Gypsy had an uncomfortable feeling that her mother +was waiting for her to speak first. She kicked off her slipper, and put +it on; she rattled the tongs, and pounded the hearth with the poker; she +smoothed her hair out of her eyes, and folded up her handkerchief six +times; she looked up sideways at her mother; then she began to cough. At +last she broke out-- + +"I suppose you want me to say I'm sorry. Well, I am. But I don't see why +I'm to blame, I'm sure." + +"I haven't said you were to blame," said her mother, quietly. "You know +I have had no time yet to hear what happened this afternoon, and I +thought you would like to tell me." + +"Well," said Gypsy, "I'd just as lief;" and Gypsy looked a little, a +very little, as if she hadn't just as lief at all. "You see, 'in the +first place and commencing,' as Winnie says, Joy wanted to take him. +Now, she doesn't know anything about that child, not a thing, and if +she'd taken him to places as much as I have, and had to lug him home +screaming all the way, I guess she would have stopped wanting to, pretty +quick, and I always take Winnie when I can, you know now, mother; and +then Joy wouldn't talk going over, either." + +"Whom did she walk with?" interrupted Mrs. Breynton. + +"Why, with Winnie, I believe. Of course she might have come on with +Sarah and Delia and me if she'd wanted to, but--I don't know----" + +"Very well," said Mrs. Breynton, "go on." + +"Then, you see, Joy didn't like chestnuts, and couldn't climb, and--oh, +Winnie kept losing his shoes, and got stuck in the fence, and you never +_saw_ anything so funny! And then Joy couldn't climb, and she just hung +there swinging; and now, mother, I couldn't help laughing to save me, it +was so exactly like a great pendulum with hoops on. Well, Joy was mad +'cause we laughed and all, and so she said she'd go home. Then--let me +see--oh, it was after that, Winnie tumbled into the ditch, splash in! +with his feet up in the air, and I thought I should _go off_ to see +him." + +"But what about Joy?" + +"Oh, well, Joy took Winnie--he was so funny and muddy, you don't +know--'cause she brought him, you know, and so they came home, and I +thought she knew the way as much as could be, and I guess that's all." + +"Well," said her mother, after a pause, "what do you think about it?" + +"About what?" + +"Do you think you have done just right, Gypsy?" + +"I don't see why not," said Gypsy, uneasily. "It was perfectly fair Joy +should take Winnie, and of course I wasn't bound to give up my nutting +party and come home, just for her." + +"I'm not speaking of what is _fair_, Gypsy. Strictly speaking, Joy had +her _rights_, and you had yours, and the arrangement might have been +called fair enough. But what do you think honestly, Gypsy--were you a +little selfish?" + +Gypsy opened her eyes wide. Honestly she might have said she didn't +know. She was by nature a generous child, and the charge of selfishness +was seldom brought against her. Plenty of faults she had, but they were +faults of quick temper and carelessness. Of deliberate selfishness it +had scarcely ever occurred to her that anybody could think her capable. +So she echoed-- + +"Selfish!" in simple surprise. + +"Just look at it," said her mother, gently; "Joy was your visitor, a +stranger, feeling awkward and unhappy, most probably, with the girls +whom you knew so well, and not knowing anything about the matters which +you talked over. You might, might you not, have by a little effort made +her soon feel at home and happy? Instead of that, you went off with the +girls, and let her fall behind, with nobody but Winnie to talk to." + +Gypsy's face turned to a sudden crimson. + +"Then, a nutting party was a new thing to Joy, and with the care of +Winnie and all, it is no wonder she did not find it very pleasant, and +she had never climbed a tree in her life. This was her first Saturday +afternoon in Yorkbury, and she was, no doubt, feeling lonely and +homesick, and it made her none the happier to be laughed at for not +doing something she had not the slightest idea how to do. Was it quite +generous to let her start off alone, over a strange road, with the care +of a crying----" + +"And muddy," put in Gypsy, with twinkling eyes, "from head to foot, +black as a shoe." + +"And muddy child?" finished Mrs. Breynton, smiling in spite of herself. + +"But Joy wanted to take him, and I told her so. It was her own bargain." + +[Illustration] + +"I know that. But we are not speaking of bargains, Gypsy; we are +speaking of what is kind and generous. Now, how does it strike you?" + +"It strikes me," said Gypsy, in her honest way, after a moment's +pause--"it strikes me that I'm a horrid selfish old thing, and I've +lived twelve years and just found it out; there now!" + +Just as Gypsy was going to bed she turned around with the lamp in her +hand, her great eyes dreaming away in the brownest of brown studies. + +"Mother, is it selfish to have upper drawers, and front sides, and +things?" + +"What are you talking about, Gypsy?" + +"Why, don't my upper drawers, and the front side of the bed, and all +that, belong to me, and must I give them up to Joy?" + +"It is not necessary," said her mother, laughing. But Gypsy fancied +there was a slight emphasis on the last word. + +Joy was sound asleep, and dreaming that Winnie was a rattlesnake and +Gypsy a prairie-dog, when somebody gave her a little pinch and woke her +up. + +"Oh--why--what's the matter?" said Joy. + +"Look here, you might just as well have the upper bureau drawers, you +know, and I don't care anything about the front side of the bed. +Besides, I wish I hadn't let you come home alone this afternoon." + +"Well, you _are_ the funniest!" said Joy. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +WHO PUT IT IN? + + +On Monday Joy went to school. Gypsy had been somewhat astonished, a +little hurt, and a little angry, at hearing her say, one day, that she +"didn't think it was a fit place for her to go--a high school where all +the poor people went." + +But, fit or not, it was the only school to be had, and Joy must go. +Perhaps, on some accounts, Mrs. Breynton would have preferred sending +the children to a private school; but the only one in town, and the one +which Gypsy had attended until this term, was broken up by the marriage +of the teacher, so she had no choice in the matter. The boys at the high +school were, some of them, rude, but the girls for the most part were +quiet, well-behaved, and lady-like, and the instruction was undoubtedly +vastly superior to that of a smaller school. As Gypsy said, "you had to +put into it and study like everything, or else she gave you a horrid old +black mark, and then you felt nice when it was read aloud at +examination, didn't you?" + +"I wouldn't care," said Joy. + +"Why, Joyce Miranda Breynton!" said Gypsy. But Joy declared she +wouldn't, and it was very soon evident that she didn't. She had not the +slightest fancy for her studies; neither had Gypsy, for that matter; but +Gypsy had been brought up to believe it was a disgrace to get bad marks. +Joy had not. She hurried through her lessons in the quickest possible +fashion, anyhow, so as to get through, and out to play; and limped +through her recitations as well as she could. Once Gypsy saw--and she +was thoroughly shocked to see--Joy peep into the leaves of her grammar +when Miss Cardrew's eyes were turned the other way. + +Altogether, matters did not go on very comfortably. Joy's faults were +for the most part those from which Gypsy was entirely free, and to which +she had a special and inborn aversion. On the other hand, many of +Gypsy's failings were not natural to Joy. Gypsy was always forgetting +things she ought to remember. Joy seldom did. Gypsy was thoughtless, +impulsive, always into mischief, out of it, sorry for it, and in again. +Joy did wrong deliberately, as she did everything else, and did not +become penitent in a hurry. Gypsy's temper was like a flash of +lightning, hot and fierce and melting right away in the softest of +summer rains. When Joy was angry she _sulked_. Joy was precise and neat +about everything. Gypsy was not. Then Joy kept still, and Gypsy talked; +Joy told _parts_ of stories, Gypsy told the whole; Joy had some foolish +notions about money and dresses and jewelry, on which Gypsy looked with +the most supreme contempt--not on the dresses, but the notions. +Therefore there was plenty of material for rubs and jars, and of all sad +things to creep into a happy house, these rubs and jars are the saddest. + +One day both the girls woke full of mischief. It was a bracing November +day, cool as an ice-cream and clear as a whistle. The air sparkled like +a fountain of golden sands, and was as full of oxygen as it could hold; +and oxygen, you must know, is at the bottom of a great deal of the +happiness and misery, goodness and badness, of this world. + +[Illustration] + +"I tell _you_ if I don't feel like cutting up!" said Gypsy, on the way +to school. Gypsy didn't look unlike "cutting up" either, walking along +there with her satchel swung over her left shoulder, her turban set all +askew on her bright, black hair, her cheeks flushed from the jumping of +fences and running of races that had been going on since she left the +house, and that saucy twinkle in her eyes. Joy was always somewhat more +demure, but she looked, too, that morning, as if she were quite as ready +to have a good time as any other girl. + +"Do you know," said Gypsy, confidentially, as they went up the +schoolhouse steps, "I feel precisely as if I should make Miss Cardrew a +great deal of trouble to-day; don't you?" + +"What does she do to you if you do?" + +"Oh, sometimes she keeps you after school, and then again she tells Mr. +Guernsey, and then there are the bad marks. Miss Melville--she's my old +teacher that married Mr. Hallam, she was just silly enough!--well, she +used to just look at you, and never open her lips, and I guess you +wished you hadn't pretty quick." + +It was very early yet, but quite a crowd was gathered in the +schoolhouse, as was the fashion on cool mornings. The boys were stamping +noisily over the desks, and grouped about the stove in No. 1. No. 1. was +the large room where the whole school gathered for prayer. A few of the +girls were there--girls who laughed rudely and talked loudly, none of +them Gypsy's friends. Tom never liked to have Gypsy linger about in No. +1, before or after school hours; he said it was not the place for her, +and Tom was there that morning, knotting his handsome brows up into a +very decided frown, when he saw her in the doorway, with Joy peeping +over her shoulder. So Gypsy--somewhat reluctantly, it must be +confessed, for the boys seemed to be having a good time, and with boys' +good times she had a most unconquerable sympathy--went up with Joy into +Miss Cardrew's recitation room. Nobody was there. A great, empty +schoolroom, with its rows of silent seats and closed desks, with power +to roam whithersoever you will, and do whatsoever you choose, is a great +temptation. The girls ran over the desks, and looked into the desks, +jumped over the settees, and knocked down the settees, put out the fire +and built it up again, from the pure luxury of doing what they wanted +to, in a place where they usually had to do what they didn't want to. +They sat in Miss Cardrew's chair, and peeped into her desk; they ate +apples and snapped peanut shells on the very platform where sat the +spectacled and ogre-eyed committee on examination days; they drew all +manner of pictures of funny old women without any head, and old men +without any feet, on the awful blackboard, and played "tag" round the +globes. Then they stopped for want of breath. + +"I wish there were something to do," sighed Gypsy; "something real +splendid and funny." + +"I knew a girl once, and she drew a picture of the teacher on the board +in green chalk," suggested Joy; "only she lost her recess for a whole +week after it." + +"That wouldn't do. Besides, pictures are too common; everybody does +those. Boys put pins in the seats, and cut off the legs of the teacher's +chair, and all that. I don't know as I care to tumble Miss Cardrew +over--wouldn't she look funny, though!--'cause mother wouldn't like +it. Couldn't we make the stove smoke, or put pepper in the desks, +or--let me see." + +"Dress up something somehow," said Joy; "there's the poker." + +Gypsy shook her head. + +"Delia Guest did that last term, 'n' the old thing--I mean the poker, +not Delia--went flat down in the corner behind the stove--flat, just +as Miss Melville was coming in, and lay there in the wood-pile, and +nobody knew there was a single sign of a thing going on. I guess you +better believe Delia felt cheap!--hark! what's that?" + +It was a faint miaow down in the yard. The girls ran to the window and +looked out. + +"A kitten!" + +"The very thing!" + +"I'm going right down to get her." + +Down they ran, both of them, in a great hurry, and brought the creature +up. The poor thing was chilled, and hungry, and frightened. They took +her up to the stove, and Gypsy warmed her in her apron, and Joy fed her +with cookies from her lunch-basket, till she curled her head under her +paws with a merry purr, all ready for a nap, and evidently without the +slightest suspicion that Gypsy's lap was not foreordained, and created +for her especial habitation as long as she might choose to remain there. + +"Joy," said Gypsy, suddenly, "I've thought of something." + +"So have I." + +"To dress her----" + +"Up in a handkerchief." + +"And things." + +"I know it." + +"And put her----" + +"Yes! into Miss Cardrew's desk!" + +"Won't it be just----" + +"Splendid! Hurry up!" + +They "hurried up" in good earnest, choking down their laughter so that +nobody downstairs might hear it. Joy took her pretty, purple-bordered +handkerchief and tied it over the poor kitten's head like a nightcap, so +tight that, pull and scratch as she might, pussy could not get it off. +Gypsy's black silk apron was tied about her, like a long baby-dress, a +pair of mittens were fastened on her arms, and a pink silk scarf around +her throat. When all was done, Gypsy held her up, and trotted her on her +knee. Anybody who has ever dressed up a cat like a baby, knows how +indescribably funny a sight it is. It seemed as if the girls could never +stop laughing--it does not take much to make girls laugh. At last there +was a commotion in the entry below. + +"It's the girls!--quick, quick!" + +Gypsy, trying to get up, tripped on her dress and fell, and away flew +the kitten, all tangled in the apron, making for the door as fast as an +energetic kitten could go. + +"She'll be downstairs, and maybe Miss Cardrew's there! _Oh!_" + +Joy sprang after the creature, caught her by the very tip end of her +tail just as she was preparing to pounce down the stairs, and ran with +her to Miss Cardrew's desk. + +"Put her in--quick, quick!" + +"O-oh, she won't lie still!" + +"Where's the lunch-basket? Give me some biscuit--there! I hear them on +the stairs!" + +The kitten began to mew piteously, struggling to get out with all her +might. Down went the desk-cover on her paws. + +"There now, lie still! Oh, _hear_ her mew! What shall we do?" + +Quick footsteps were on the stairs--halfway up; merry laughter, and a +dozen voices. + +"Here's the biscuit. Here, kitty, kitty, _poor_ kit-ty, do _please_ to +lie still and eat it! Oh, Joy Breynton, did you ever?" + +"There, she's eating!" + +"Shut the desk--hurry!" + +When the girls came in, Joy and Gypsy were in their seats, looking over +the arithmetic lesson. Joy's book was upside down, and Gypsy was +intensely interested in the preface. + +Miss Cardrew came in shortly after, and stood warming her fingers at the +stove, nodding and smiling at the girls. All was still so far in the +desk. Miss Cardrew went up and laid down her gloves and pushed back her +chair. Joy coughed under her breath, and Gypsy looked up out of the +corners of her eyes. + +"Mr. Guernsey is not well to-day," began Miss Cardrew, standing by the +desk, "and we shall not be able to meet as usual in No. 1 for prayers. +It has been thought best that each department should attend devotions in +its own room. You can get out your Bibles." + +Gypsy looked at Joy, and Joy looked at Gypsy. + +Miss Cardrew sat down. It was very still. A muffled scratching sound +broke into the pause. Miss Cardrew looked up carelessly, as if to see +where it came from; it stopped. + +"She'll open her desk now," whispered Joy, stooping to pick up a book. + +"See here, Joy, I almost wish we hadn't----" + +"We will read the fourteenth chapter of John," spoke up Miss Cardrew, +with her Bible in her hand. No, she hadn't opened her desk. The Bible +lay upon the outside of it. + +"Oh, if that biscuit'll only last till she gets through praying!" + +"Hush-sh! She's looking this way." + +Miss Cardrew began to read. She had read just four verses, when-- + +"Miaow!" + +Gypsy and Joy were trying very hard to find the place. Miss Cardrew +looked up and around the room. It was quite still. She read two verses +more. + +"Mi-aow! mi-aow-aow!" + +Miss Cardrew looked up again, round the room, over the platform, under +the desk, everywhere but _in_ it. + +"Girls, did any of you make that sound?" + +Nobody had. Miss Cardrew began to read again. All at once Joy pulled +Gypsy's sleeve. + +"Just look there!" + +"Where?" + +"Trickling down the outside of the desk!" + +"You don't suppose she's upset the----" + +"Ink-bottle--yes." + +Miss Cardrew was in the tenth verse, and the room was very still. Right +into the stillness there broke again a distinct, prolonged, dolorous-- + +"Mi-aow-_aow_!" + +And this time Miss Cardrew laid down her Bible and lifted the +desk-cover. + +It is reported in school to this day that Miss Cardrew jumped. + +Out flew the kitten, like popped corn from a shovel, glared over the +desk in the nightcap and black apron, leaped down, and flew, all +dripping with ink, down the aisle, out of the door, and bouncing +downstairs like an India-rubber ball. + +Delia Guest and one or two of the other girls screamed. Miss Cardrew +flung out some books and papers from the desk. It was too late; they +were dripping, and drenched, and black. The teacher quietly wiped some +spots of ink from her pretty blue merino, and there was an awful +silence. + +"Girls," said Miss Cardrew then, in her grave, stern way, "who did +this?" + +Nobody answered. + +"Who put that cat in my desk?" repeated Miss Cardrew. + +It was perfectly still. Gypsy's cheeks were scarlet. Joy was looking +carelessly about the room, scanning the faces of the girls, as if she +were trying to find out who was the guilty one. + +"It is highly probable that the cat tied herself into an apron, opened +the desk and shut the cover down on herself," said Miss Cardrew; "we +will look into this matter. Delia Guest, did you put her in?" + +"No'm--he, he! I guess I--ha, ha!--didn't," said Delia. + +"Next!"--and down the first row went Miss Cardrew, asking the same +question of every girl, and the second row, and the third. Gypsy sat on +the end of the fourth settee. + +"Gypsy Breynton, did you put the kitten in my desk?" + +"No'm, I didn't," said Gypsy; which was true enough. It was Joy who did +that part of it. + +"Did you have anything to do with the matter, Gypsy?" Perhaps Miss +Cardrew remembered that Gypsy had had something to do with a few other +similar matters since she had been in school. + +"Yes'm," said honest Gypsy, with crimson face and hanging head, "I did." + +"What did you do?" + +"I put on the apron and the tippet, and--I gave her the biscuit. +I--thought she'd keep still till prayers were over," said Gypsy, +faintly. + +"But you did not put her in the desk?" + +"No'm." + +"And you know who did?" + +"Yes'm." + +Miss Cardrew never asked her scholars to tell of each other's +wrong-doings. If she had, it would have made no difference to Gypsy. She +had shut up her lips tight and not another word would she have said for +anybody. She had told the truth about herself, but she was under no +obligations to bring Joy into trouble. Joy might do as she liked. + +"Gypsy Breynton will lose her recesses for a week and stay an hour after +school tonight," said Miss Cardrew. "Joy, did you put the kitten in my +desk?" + +"No, ma'am," said Joy, boldly. + +"Nor have anything to do with it?" + +"No, ma'am," said Joy, without the slightest change of color. + +"Next!--Sarah Rowe." + +Of course Sarah had not, nor anybody else. Miss Cardrew let the matter +drop there and went on with her reading. + +Gypsy sat silent and sorry, her eyes on her Testament. Joy tried to +whisper something to her once, but Gypsy turned away with a gesture of +impatience and disgust. This thing Joy had done had shocked her so that +she felt as if she could not bear the sight of her face or touch of her +hand. Never since she was a very little child had Gypsy been known to +say what was not true. All her words were like her eyes--clear as +sunbeams. + +At dinner Joy did all the talking. Mrs. Breynton asked Gypsy what was +the matter, but Gypsy said "Nothing." If Joy did not choose to tell of +the matter, she would not. + +"What makes you so cross?" said Joy in the afternoon; "nobody can get a +word out of you, and you don't look at me any more than if I weren't +here." + +"I don't see how you can _ask_ such a question!" exploded Gypsy, with +flashing eyes. "You know what you've done as well as I do." + +"No, I don't," grumbled Joy; "just 'cause I didn't tell Miss Cardrew +about that horrid old cat--I wish we'd let the ugly thing alone!--I +don't see why you need treat me as if I'd been murdering somebody and +were going to be hung for it. Besides, I said 'Over the left' to myself +just after I'd told her, and _I_ didn't want to lose my recess if you +did." + +Gypsy shut up her pink lips tight, and made no answer. + +Joy went out to play at recess, and Gypsy stayed in alone and studied. +Joy went home with the girls in a great frolic after school, and Gypsy +stayed shut up in the lonely schoolroom for an hour, disgraced and +miserable. But I have the very best of reasons for thinking that she +wasn't nearly as miserable as Joy. + +Just before supper the two girls were sitting drearily together in the +dining-room, when the door-bell rang. + +"It's Miss Cardrew!" said Joy, looking out of the window; "what do you +suppose she wants?" + +Gypsy looked up carelessly; she didn't very much care. She had told Miss +Cardrew all she had to tell and received her punishment. + +As for her mother, she would have gone to her with the whole story that +noon, if it hadn't been for Joy's part in it. + +"What is that she has in her hand, I wonder?" said Joy uneasily, peeping +through a crack in the door as Miss Cardrew passed through the entry; +"why, I declare! if it isn't a handkerchief, as true as you +live--all--inky!" + +When Miss Cardrew had gone, Mrs. Breynton came out of the parlor with a +very grave face, a purple-bordered handkerchief in her hand; it was all +spotted with ink, and the initials J. M. B. were embroidered on it. + +"Joy." + +Joy came out of the corner slowly. + +"Come here a minute." + +Joy went and the door was shut. Just what happened that next half hour +Gypsy never knew. Joy came upstairs at the end of it, red-eyed and +crying, and gentle. + +Gypsy was standing by the window. + +"Gypsy." + +"Well." + +"I love auntie dearly, now I guess I do." + +"Of course," said Gypsy; "everybody does." + +"I hadn't the least idea it was so wicked--not the least _idea_. Mother +used to----" + +But Joy broke off suddenly, with quivering, crimson lips. + +What that mother used to do Gypsy never asked; Joy never told +her--either then, or at any other time. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +PEACE MAYTHORNE'S ROOM + + +"Tis, too." + +"It isn't, either." + +"I know just as well as you." + +"No you don't any such a thing. You've lived up here in this old country +place all your life, and you don't know any more about the fashions than +Mrs. Surly." + +"But I know it's perfectly ridiculous to rig up in white chenille and +silver pins, when anybody's in such deep mourning as you. _I_ wouldn't +do it for anything." + +"I'll take care of myself, if you please, miss." + +"And _I_ know another thing, too." + +"You do? A whole thing?" + +"Yes, I do. I know you're just as proud as you can be, and I've heard +more'n one person say so. All the girls think you're dreadfully stuck up +about your dresses and things--so there!" + +"I don't care what the girls think, or you either. I guess I'll be glad +when father comes home and I get out of this house!" + +Joy fastened the gaudy silver pins with a jerk into the heavy white +chenille that she was tying about her throat and hair, turned herself +about before the glass with a last complacent look, and walked, in her +deliberate, cool, provoking way, from the room. Gypsy got up, +and--slammed the door on her. + +Very dignified proceedings, certainly, for girls twelve and thirteen +years old. An unspeakably important matter to quarrel about--a piece of +white chenille! Angry people, be it remembered, are not given to +over-much dignity, and how many quarrels are of the slightest +importance? + +Yet the things these two girls found to dispute, and get angry, and get +miserable, and make the whole family miserable over, were so +ridiculously petty that I hardly expect to be believed in telling of +them. The front side of the bed, the upper drawer in the bureau, a +hair-ribbon, who should be helped first at the table, who was the best +scholar, which was the more stylish color, drab or green, and whether +Vermont wasn't a better State than Massachusetts--such matters might +very appropriately be the subjects of the dissensions of young ladies in +pinafores and pantalettes. + +Yet I think you will bear me witness, girls, some of you--ah, I know +you by the sudden pink in your cheeks--who have gone to live with a +cousin, or had a cousin live with you, or whose mother has adopted an +orphan, or taken charge of a missionary's daughter, or in some way or +other have been brought for the first time in your life into daily and +hourly collision with another young will just as strong and unbending as +yours--can't you bear me witness that, in these little contests between +Joy and Gypsy, I am telling no "made-up stories," but sad, simple fact? + +If you can't, I am very glad of it. + +No, as I said before, matters were not going on at all comfortably; and +every week seemed to make them worse. Wherein lay the trouble, and how +to prevent it, neither of the girls had as yet exerted themselves to +think. + +A week or two after the adventures that befell that unfortunate kitten, +something happened which threatened to make the breach between Gypsy and +Joy of a very serious nature. It began, as a great many other serious +things begin, in a very small and rather funny affair. + +[Illustration] + +Mrs. Surly, who has been spoken of as Gypsy's particular aversion, was a +queer old lady with green glasses, who lived opposite Mr. Breynton's, +who felt herself particularly responsible for Gypsy's training, and gave +her good advice, double measure, pressed down and running over. One +morning it chanced that Gypsy was playing "stick-knife" with Tom out in +the front yard, and that Mrs. Surly beheld her from her parlor window, +and that Mrs. Surly was shocked. She threw up her window and called in +an awful voice-- + +"Jemima Breynton!" + +Now you might about as well challenge Gypsy to a duel as call her +Jemima; so-- + +"What do you want?" she said, none too respectfully. + +"I have something to say to you, Jemima Breynton." + +"Say ahead," said Gypsy, under her breath, and did not stir an inch. +Distance certainly lent enchantment to the view when Mrs. Surly was in +the case. + +"_Does_ your ma allow you to be so bold as to play boys' games _with_ +boys, right out in sight of folks?" vociferated Mrs. Surly. + +"Certainly," nodded Gypsy. "It's your turn, Tom." + +"Well, it's my opinion, Gypsy Breynton, you're a romp. You're nothing +but a romp, and if _I_ was your ma----" + +Tom dropped his knife just then, stood up and looked at Mrs. Surly. For +reasons best known to herself, Mrs. Surly shut the window and contented +herself with glaring through the glass. + +Now, Joy had stood in the doorway and been witness to the scene, and +moreover, having been reproved by her aunt for something or other that +morning, she felt ill-humored, and very ready to find fault in her turn. + +"I think it's just so, anyway," she said. "_I_ wouldn't be seen playing +stick-knife for a good deal." + +"And I wouldn't be seen telling lies!" retorted Gypsy, sorry for it the +minute she had said it. Then there followed a highly interesting +dialogue of about five minutes' length, and of such a character that Tom +speedily took his departure. + +Now it came about that Gypsy, as usual, was the first ready to "make +up," and she turned over plan after plan in her mind, to find something +pleasant she could do for Joy. At last, as the greatest treat she could +think of to offer her, she said: + +"I'll tell you what! Let's go down to Peace Maythorne's. I do believe I +haven't taken you there since you've been in Yorkbury." + +"Who's Peace Maythorne?" asked Joy, sulkily. + +"Well, she's the person I love just about best of anybody." + +"Best of anybody!" + +"Oh, mother, of course, and Tom, and Winnie, and father, and all those. +Relations don't count. But I do love her as well as anybody but +mother--and Tom, and--well, anyway, I love her dreadfully." + +"What is she, a woman, or a girl, or what?" + +"She's an angel," said Gypsy. + +"What a goose you are!" + +"Very likely; but whether I'm a goose or not, she's an angel. I look for +the wings every time I see her. She has the sweetest little way of +keeping 'em folded up, and you're always on the jump, thinking you see +'em." + +"How you talk! I've a good mind to go and see her." + +"All right." + +So away they went, as pleasant as a summer's day, merrily chatting. + +"But I don't think angels are very nice, generally," said Joy, +doubtingly. "They preach. Does Peace Maythorne preach? I shan't like her +if she does." + +"Peace preach! Not like her! You'd better know what you're talking +about, if you're going to talk," said Gypsy, with heightened color. + +"Dear me, you take a body's head off. Well, if she _should_ preach, I +shall come right home." + +They had come now to the village, where were the stores and the +post-office, the bank, and some handsome dwelling-houses. Also the one +paved sidewalk of Yorkbury, whereon the young people did their +promenading after school in the afternoon. Joy always fancied coming +here, gay in her white chenille and white ribbons, and dainty parasol +lined with white silk. There is nothing so showy as showy mourning, and +Joy made the most of it. + +"Why, where are you going?" she exclaimed at last. Gypsy had turned away +from the fashionable street, and the handsome houses, and the paved +sidewalk. + +"To Peace Maythorne's." + +"_This_ way?" + +"This way." + +The street into which Gypsy had turned was narrow and not over clean; +the houses unpainted and low. As they walked on it grew narrower and +dirtier, and the houses became tenement houses only. + +"Do, for pity's sake, hurry and get out of here," said Joy, daintily +holding up her dress. Gypsy walked on and said nothing. Red-faced women +in ragged dresses began to cluster on the steps; muddy-faced children +screamed and quarreled in the road. At the door of a large tenement +building, somewhat neater than the rest, but miserable enough, Gypsy +stopped. + +"What are you stopping for?" said Joy. + +"This is where she lives." + +_"Here?"_ + +"I just guess she does," put in a voice from behind; it was Winnie, who +had followed them on tiptoe, unknown to them, all the way. "She's got a +funny quirk in her back, 'n' she lies down pretty much. That's her room +up there to the top of the house. It's a real nice place, I tell _you_. +They have onions mos' every day. Besides, I saw a little boy here one +time when I was comin' 'long with mother, 'n' he was smokin' some +tobaccer. He said he'd give it to me for two napples, and mother just +wouldn't let me." + +"_Here_--a cripple!" exclaimed Joy. + +"Here, and a cripple," said Gypsy, in a queer tone, looking very +straight at Joy. + +"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" broke out Joy, "playing such a +trick on me. Do you suppose _I'm_ going into such a place as this, to +see an old beggar--a hunch-backed beggar?" + +Gypsy turned perfectly white. When she was very angry, too angry to +speak, she always turned white. It was some seconds before she could +find her voice. + +"_A hunch-backed beggar!_ Peace? How _dare_ you say such things of Peace +Maythorne? Joy Breynton, I'll never forgive you for this as long as I +live--never!" + +The two girls looked at each other. Just at that moment I am afraid +there was something in their hearts answering to that forbidden word, +that terrible word--hate. Ah, we feel so safe from it in our gentle, +happy, untempted lives, just as safe as they felt once. Remember this, +girls: _when Love goes out_, Hate comes in. In your heart there stands +an angel, watching, silent, on whose lips are kindly words, in whose +hands are patient, kindly deeds, whose eyes see "good in everything," +something to love where love is hardest, some generous, gentle way to +show that love when ways seem closed. In your heart, too, away down in +its darkest corner, all forgotten, perhaps, by you, crouches something +with face too black to look upon, something that likewise watches and +waits with horrible patience, if perhaps the angel, with folded wing and +drooping head, may be driven out. It is never empty, this curious, +fickle heart. One or the other must stand there, king of it. One or the +other--and in the twinkling of an eye the change is made, from angel to +fiend, from fiend to angel; just which you choose. + +Joy broke away from her cousin in a passion. Gypsy flew into the door of +the miserable house, up the stairs two steps at a time, to the door of a +low room in the second story, and rushed in without knocking. + +"Oh, Peace Maythorne!" + +The cripple lying on the bed turned her pale face to the door, her +large, quiet eyes blue with wonder. + +"Why, Gypsy! What is the matter?" + +Gypsy's face was white still, very white. She shut the door loudly, and +sat down on the bed with a jar that shook it all over. A faint +expression of pain crossed the face of Peace. + +"Oh, I didn't mean to--it was cruel in me! How _could_ I? Have I hurt +you _very_ badly, Peace?" Gypsy slipped down upon the floor, the color +coming into her face now, from shame and sorrow. Peace gently motioned +her back to her place upon the bed, smiling. + +"Oh, no. It was nothing. Sit up here; I like to have you. Now, what is +it, Gypsy?" + +The tone of this "What is it, Gypsy?" told a great deal. It told that it +was no new thing for Gypsy to come there just so, with her troubles and +her joys, her sins and her well-doings, her plans and hopes and fears, +all the little stories of the fresh, young life from which the cripple +was forever shut out. It told, too, what Gypsy found in this quiet room, +and took away from it--all the help and the comfort, and the sweet, sad +lessons. It told, besides, much of what Peace and Gypsy were to each +other, that only they two should ever exactly understand. It was a tone +that always softened Gypsy, in her gayest frolics, in her wildest moods. +For the first time since she had known Peace, it failed to soften her +now. + +She began in her impetuous way, her face angry and flushed, her voice +trembling yet:-- + +"I can't tell you what it is, and that's the thing of it! It's about +that horrid old Joy." + +"Gypsy!" + +"I can't help it--I hate her!" + +"Gypsy." + +Gypsy's eyes fell at the gentle word. + +"Well, I felt just as if I did, down there on the steps, anyway. You +don't know what Joy said. It's something about you, and that's what +makes me so mad. If she ever says it again!" + +"About me?" interrupted Peace. + +"Yes," said Gypsy, with great, flashing eyes. "I wouldn't tell it to you +for all the world; it's so bad as that, Peace. How she _dared_ to call +you a beg----" + +Gypsy stopped short. But she had let the cat out of the bag. Peace +smiled again. + +"A beggar! Well, it doesn't hurt me any, does it? Joy has never seen me, +doesn't know me, you must remember, Gypsy. Besides, nobody else thinks +as much of me as you do." + +"I didn't mean to say that; I'm always saying the wrong thing! Anyway, +that isn't all of it, and I did think I should strike her when she said +it. I can't bear Joy. You don't know what she is, Peace. She grows worse +and worse. She does things I wouldn't do for anything, and I wish she'd +never come here!" + +"Is Joy _always_ wrong?" asked Peace, gently. Peace rarely gave to any +one as much of a reproof as that. Gypsy felt it. + +"No," said she, honestly, "she isn't. I'm real horrid and wicked, and do +ugly things. But I can't help it; Joy makes me--she acts so." + +"I know what's the matter with you and Joy, I guess," said Peace. + +"The matter? Well, I don't; I wish I did. We're always fight--fighting, +day in and day out, and I'm tired to death of it. I'm just crazy for the +time for Joy to go home, and I'm dreadfully unhappy having her round, +now I am, Peace." + +Gypsy drew down her merry, red lips, and looked very serious. To tell +the truth, however, do the best she would, she could not look altogether +as if her heart were breaking from the amount of "unhappiness" that fell +to her lot. A little smile quivered around the lips of Peace. + +"Well," said Gypsy, laughing in spite of herself, "I am. I never _can_ +make anybody believe it, though. What is the matter with Joy and me? You +didn't say." + +"You've forgotten something, I think." + +"Forgotten something?" + +"Yes--something you read me once out of an old Book." + +"Book? Oh!" said Gypsy, beginning to understand. + +"In honor preferring one another," said Peace, softly. Gypsy did not say +anything. Peace took up her Bible that lay on the bed beside her--it +always lay on the bed--and turned the leaves, and laid her finger on +the verse. Gypsy read it through before she spoke. Then she said slowly: + +"Why, Peace Maythorne. I--never could--in this world--never." + +Just then there came a knock at the door. Gypsy went to open it, and +stood struck dumb for amazement. It was Joy. + +"Auntie said it was supper-time, and you were to come home," began Joy, +somewhat embarrassed. "She was going to send Winnie, but I thought I'd +come." + +"Why, I never!" said Gypsy, still standing with the door-knob in her +hand. + +"Is this your cousin?" spoke up Peace. + +"Oh, yes, I forgot. This is Peace Maythorne, Joy." + +"I am glad to see you," said Peace in her pleasant way; "won't you come +in?" + +"Well, perhaps I will, a minute," said Joy, awkwardly, taking a chair by +the window, and wondering if Gypsy had told Peace what she said. But +Peace was so cordial, her voice so quiet, and her eyes so kind, that she +concluded she knew nothing about it, and soon felt quite at her ease. +Everybody was at ease with Peace Maythorne. + +"How pleasant it is here!" said Joy, looking about the room in unfeigned +astonishment. And indeed it was. The furniture was poor enough, but +everything was as neat as fresh wax, and the sunlight, that somehow or +other always sought that room the earliest, and left it the latest--the +warm, shimmering sunlight that Peace so loved--was yellow on the old, +faded carpet, on the paperless, pictureless wall, on the bed where the +hands of Peace lay, patient and folded. + +"It _is_ pleasant," said Peace, heartily. "You don't know how thankful +it makes me. Aunt came very near taking a room on the north side. +Sometimes I really don't know what I should have done. But then I guess +I should have found something else to like." + +_I should have found something else._ A sudden thought came to the two +girls then, in a dim, childish way--a thought they could by no means +have explained; they wondered if in those few words did not lie the key +to Peace Maythorne's beautiful, sorrowful life. They would not have +expressed it so, but that was what they meant. + +"See here," broke out Gypsy all at once, "Peace Maythorne wants you and +me to make up, Joy." + +"Your cousin will think I'm interfering with what's none of my +business," said Peace, laughing. "I didn't say exactly that, you know; I +was only talking to you." + +"Oh, I'd just as lief make up now, but I wouldn't this morning," +wondering for the second time if Peace _could_ know what she said, and +be so gentle and good to her; "I will if Gypsy will." + +"And I will if Joy will," said Gypsy, "so it's a bargain." + +"Do you have a great deal of pain?" asked Joy, as they rose to go, with +real sympathy in her puzzled eyes. + +"Oh, yes; but then I get along." + +"Peace Maythorne!" put in Gypsy just then, "is _that_ all the dinner you +ate?" Gypsy was standing by the table on which was a plate containing a +cold potato, a broken piece of bread, and a bit of beefsteak. Evidently +from the looks of the food, only a few mouthfuls had been eaten. + +"I didn't feel hungry," said Peace, evasively. + +"But you like meat, for you told me so." + +"I didn't care about this," said Peace, looking somewhat restless. + +Gypsy looked at her sharply, then stooped and whispered a few words in +her ear. + +"No," said Peace, her white cheek flushing crimson. "Oh, no, she never +told me not to. She means to be very kind. I cost her a great deal." + +"But you know she'd be glad if you didn't eat much, and that was the +reason you didn't," exclaimed Gypsy, angrily. "I think it's abominable!" + +"Hush! _please_ Gypsy." + +Gypsy hushed. Just then the door opened and Miss Jane Maythorne, Peace's +aunt, came in. She was a tall, thin, sallow-faced woman, with angular +shoulders and a sharp chin. She looked like a New England woman who had +worked hard all her life and had much trouble, so much that she thought +of little else now but work and trouble; who had a heart somewhere, but +was apt to forget all about it except on great occasions. + +"I've been talking to Peace about not eating more," said Gypsy, when she +had introduced Joy, and said good-afternoon. "She'll die if she doesn't +eat more than that," pointing to the plate. + +"She can eat all she wants, as far as I know," said Aunt Jane, rather +shortly. "Nobody ever told her not to. It's nothing very fine in the way +of victuals I can get her, working as I work for two, and most beat out +every night. La! Peace, you haven't eaten your meat, have you? Well, +I'll warm it over to-morrow, and it'll be as good as new." + +[Illustration] + +"The old dragon!" exclaimed Gypsy, under her breath, as the girls went +out. "She is a dragon, nothing more nor less--a dragon that doesn't +scold particularly, but a dragon that _looks_. I'd rather be scolded to +death than looked at and looked at every mouthful I eat. I don't wonder +Peace doesn't eat. She'll starve to death some day." + +"But why don't you send her down things?" asked Joy. Gypsy shook her +head. + +"You don't understand Peace. She wouldn't like it. Mother does send her +a quantity of books and flowers and things, and dinner just as often as +she can without making Peace feel badly. But Peace wouldn't like 'em +every day." + +"She's real different from what I thought," said Joy--"real. What +pretty eyes she has. I didn't seem to remember she was poor, a bit." + +"What made you come down?" + +"'Cause," said Joy. + +This excellent reason was all that was ever to be had out of her. But +that first time was by no means the last she went to Peace Maythorne's +room. + +The girls were in good spirits that night, well pleased with each other, +themselves, and everybody else, as is usually the case when one is just +over a fit of ill-temper. When they were alone in bed, Gypsy told Joy +about the verse of which Peace spoke. Joy listened in silence. + +Awhile after, Gypsy woke from a dream, and saw a light burning on the +table. Joy was sitting up in her white night-dress, turning the leaves +of a book as if she were hunting for something. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE STORY OF A NIGHT + + +November, with its bright, bleak skies, sere leaves tossing, sad winds +sobbing, and rains that wept for days and nights together, on dead +flowers and dying grasses, moaned itself away at last, and December +swept into its place with a good rousing snow-storm, merry sleigh-bells, +and bright promises of coming Christmas. The girls coasted and skated, +and made snow-men and snowballs and snow-forts. Joy learned to slide +down a moderate hill at a mild rate without screaming, and to get along +somehow on her skates alone--for the very good reason that Tom wouldn't +help her. Gypsy initiated her into the mysteries of "cannon-firing" from +the great icy forts, and taught her how to roll the huge balls of snow. +Altogether they had a very good time. Not as good as they might have +had, by any means; the old rubs and jars were there still, though of +late they had been somewhat softened. Partly on account of their talk +with Peace; partly because of a certain uncomfortable acquaintance +called conscience; partly because of their own good sense, the girls had +tacitly made up their minds at least to make an effort to live together +more happily. In some degree they succeeded, but they were like people +walking over a volcano; the trouble was not _quenched_; it lay always +smoldering out of sight, ready at a moment's notice to flare up into +angry flame. The fault lay perhaps no more with one than another. Gypsy +had never had a sister, and her brothers were neither of them near +enough to her own age to interfere very much with her wishes and +privileges. Moreover, a brother, though he may be the greatest tease in +existence, is apt to be easier to get along with than a sister about +one's own age. His pleasures and ambitions run in different directions +from the girls; there is less clashing of interests. Besides this, +Gypsy's playmates in Yorkbury, as has been said, had not chanced to be +girls of very strong wills. Quite to her surprise, since Joy had been +her roommate and constant companion, had she found out that +she--Gypsy--had been pretty well used to having her own way, and that +other people sometimes liked to have theirs. + +As for Joy, she had always been an only child, and that tells a history. +Of the two perhaps she had the more to learn. The simple fact that she +was brought wisely and kindly, but _thoroughly_, under Mrs. Breynton's +control, was decidedly a revelation to her. At her own home, it had +always been said, from the time she was a baby, that her mother could +not manage her, and her father would not. She rebelled a little at first +against her aunt's authority, but she was fast learning to love her, and +when we love, obedience ceases to be obedience, and becomes an offering +freely given. + +A little thing happened one day, showing that sadder and better side of +Joy's heart that always seemed to touch Gypsy. + +They had been having some little trouble about the lessons at school; it +just verged on a quarrel, and slided off, and they had treated each +other pleasantly after it. At night Joy was sitting upstairs writing a +letter to her father, when a gust of wind took the sheet and blew it to +Gypsy's feet. Gypsy picked it up to carry it to her, and in doing so, +her eyes fell accidentally on some large, legible words at the bottom of +the page. She had not the slightest intention of reading them, but their +meaning came to her against her will, in that curious way we see things +in a flash sometimes. This was what she saw: + +"I like auntie ever so much, and Tom. Gypsy was cross this morning. +She----" and then followed Joy's own version of the morning's dispute. +Gypsy was vexed. She liked her uncle, and she did not like to have him +hear such one-sided stories of her, and judge her as he would. + +She walked over to Joy with very red cheeks. + +"Here's your letter. I tried not to read it, but I couldn't help seeing +that about me. I don't think you've any business to tell him about me +unless you can tell the truth." + +Of course Joy resented such a remark as this, and high words followed. +They went down to supper sulkily, and said nothing to one another for an +hour. After tea, Joy crept up moodily into the corner, and Gypsy sat +down on the cricket for one of her merry talks with her mother. After +she had told her how many times she missed at school that day, what a +funny tumble Sarah Rowe had on the ice, and laughed over "Winnie's +latest" till she was laughed out and talked out too, she sprang into her +lap, in one of Gypsy's sudden outbursts of affection, throwing her arms +around her neck, and kissing her on cheeks, forehead, lips and chin. + +"O-oh, what a blessed little mother you are! What _should_ I do without +you?" + +"Mother's darling daughter! What should she do without you?" said Mrs. +Breynton, softly. + +But not softly enough. Gypsy looked up suddenly and saw a pale face +peering out at them from behind the curtain, its great eyes swimming in +tears, its lips quivering. The next minute Joy left the room. + +There was something dim in Gypsy's eyes as she hurried after her. She +found her crouched upstairs in the dark and cold, sobbing as if her +heart would break. Gypsy put her arm around her. + +[Illustration] + +"Kiss me, Joy." + +Joy kissed her, and that was all that was said. But it ended in Gypsy's +bringing her triumphantly downstairs, where were the lights and the +fire, and the pleasant room, and another cricket waiting at Mrs. +Breynton's feet. + +They were very busy after this with the coming Christmas. Joy +confidently expected a five-dollar bill from her father, and Gypsy +cherished faint aspirations after a portfolio with purple roses on it. +But most of their thoughts, and all their energies, were occupied with +the little gifts they intended to make themselves; and herein lay a +difficulty. Joy's father always supplied her bountifully with spending +money; Gypsy's stock was small. When Joy wanted to make a present, she +had only to ask for a few extra dollars, and she had them. Gypsy always +felt as if a present given in that way were no present; unless a thing +cost her some self-denial, or some labor, she reasoned, it had nothing +to do with her. If given directly out of her father's pocket, it was his +gift, not hers. + +But then, how much handsomer Joy's things would be. + +Thus Gypsy was thinking in her secret heart, over and over. How could +she help it? And Joy, perhaps--possibly--Joy was thinking the same +thing, with a spice of pleasure in the thought. + +It was about her mother that Gypsy was chiefly troubled. Tom had +condescendingly informed her, about six months ago, that he'd just as +lief she would make him a watch-case if she wanted to very much. Girls +always would jump at the chance to get up any such nonsense. Be sure she +did it up in style, with gold and silver tape, and some of your blue +alpaca. (Tom's conceptions of the feminine race, their apparel, +occupations and implements, were bounded by tape and alpaca.) So Tom was +provided for; the watch-case was nearly made, and bade fair to be quite +as pretty as anything Joy could buy. Winnie was easily suited, and her +father would be as contented with a shaving-case as with a velvet +dressing-gown; indeed he'd hardly know the difference. Joy should have a +pretty white velvet hair-ribbon. But what for mother? She lay awake a +whole half hour one night, perplexing herself over the question, and at +last decided rather falteringly on a photograph frame of shell-work. +Gypsy's shell-work was always pretty, and her mother had a peculiar +fancy for it. + +"_I_ shall give her Whittier's poems," said Joy, in--perhaps +unconsciously, perhaps not--a rather triumphant tone. "I heard her say +the other day she wanted them ever so much. I'm going to get the best +copy I can find, with gold edges. If uncle hasn't a nice one in his +store, I'll send to Boston. Mr. Ticknor'll pick me out the best one he +has, I know, 'cause he knows father real well, and we buy lots of things +there." + +Gypsy said nothing. She was rather abashed to hear Joy talk in such +familiar terms of Mr. Ticknor. She was more uneasy that Joy should give +so handsome a present. She sat looking at her silently, and while she +looked, a curious, dull, sickening pain crept into her heart. It +frightened her, and she ran away downstairs to get rid of it. + +[Illustration] + +A few days after, she was sitting alone working on the photograph case. +It was rather pretty work, though not over-clean. She had cut a +well-shaped frame out of pasteboard, with a long, narrow piece bent back +to serve as support. The frame was covered with putty, and into the +putty she fastened her shells. They were of different sizes, shapes, and +colors, and she was laying them on in a pretty pattern of stars and +crescents. She had just stopped to look at her work, her red lips shut +together with the air of a connoisseur, and her head on one side, like a +canary, when Joy came in. + +"Just look here!" and she held up before her astonished eyes a handsome +volume of blue and gold--Whittier's poems, and written on the fly-leaf, +in Joy's very best copy-book hand, "For Auntie, with a Merry Christmas, +from Joy." + +"Uncle sent to Boston for me, and got it, and he promised on his word +'n' honor, certain true, black and blue, he wouldn't let Auntie know a +single sign of a thing about it. Isn't it splendid?" + +"Ye-es," said Gypsy, slowly. + +"Well! I don't think you seem to care much." + +Gypsy looked at her shell-work, and said nothing. For the second time +that dull, curious pain had crept into her heart. What did it mean? Was +it possible that she was _envious_ of Joy? Was it _possible_? + +The hot crimson rushed to Gypsy's cheeks for shame at the thought. But +the thought was there. + +She chanced to be in Peace Maythorne's room one day when the bustle of +preparation for the holidays was busiest. Peace hid something under the +counterpane as she came in, flushing a little. Gypsy sat down in her +favorite place on the bed, just where she could see the cripple's great +quiet eyes--she always liked to watch Peace Maythorne's eyes--and in +doing so disturbed the bedclothes. A piece of work fell out: plain, fine +sewing, in which the needle lay with a stitch partially taken. + +"Peace Maythorne!" said Gypsy, "you've been doing it again!" + +"A little, just to help aunt, you know. A little doesn't hurt me, +Gypsy." + +"Doesn't hurt you? Peace, you know better. You know you never sew a +stitch but you lie awake half the night after it with the pain." + +Peace did not contradict her. She could not. + +"Help your aunt!" Gypsy went on vehemently; "she oughtn't to let you +touch it. She hasn't any more feeling than a stone wall, nor half as +much, I say!" + +"Hush, Gypsy! Don't say that. Indeed I'd rather have the pain, and help +her a little, once in a while, when my best days come and I can; I had, +really, Gypsy. You don't know how it hurts me--a great deal more than +this other hurt in my back--to lie here and let her support me, and I +not do a thing. O Gypsy, you don't know!" + +Something in Peace Maythorne's tone just then made Gypsy feel worse than +she felt to see her sew. She was silent a minute, turning away her face. + +"Well, I suppose I don't. But I say I'd as lief have a stone wall for an +aunt; no, I will say it, Peace, and you needn't look at me." Peace +looked, notwithstanding, and Gypsy stopped saying it. + +"Sometimes I've thought," said Peace, after a pause, "I might earn a +little crocheting. Once, long ago, I made a mat out of ends of worsted I +found, and it didn't hurt me hardly any; on my good days it wouldn't +honestly hurt me at all. It's pretty work, crocheting, isn't it?" + +"Why don't you crochet, then," said Gypsy, "if you must do anything? +It's ten thousand times easier than this sewing you're killing yourself +over." + +"I've no worsteds, you know," said Peace, coloring; and changed the +subject at once. + +Gypsy looked thoughtful. Very soon after she bade Peace good-bye, and +went home. + +That night she called her mother away alone, and told her what Peace had +said. + +"Now, mother, I've thought out an idea." + +"Well?" + +"You mustn't say no, if I tell you." + +"I'll try not to; if it is a sensible idea." + +"Do I _ever_ have an idea that isn't sensible?" said Gypsy, demurely. "I +prefer not to be slandered, if you please, Mrs. Breynton." + +"Well, but what's the idea?" + +"It's just this. Miss Jane Maythorne is a heathen." + +"Is that all?" + +"No. But Miss Jane Maythorne _is_ a heathen, and ought to cut off her +head before she lets Peace sew. But you see she doesn't know she's a +heathen, and Peace will sew." + +"Well, what then?" + +"If she will do something, and won't be happy without, then I can't help +it, you see. But I can give her some worsteds for a Christmas present, +and she can make little mats and things, and you can buy them. Now, +mother, isn't that nice?" + +"Yes," said Mrs. Breynton, after a moment's thought. "It is a very good +plan. I think Joy would like to join you. Together, you can make quite a +handsome present out of it." + +"I don't want Joy to know a thing about it," said Gypsy, with a decision +in her voice that amounted almost to anger. + +"Why, Gypsy!" + +"No, not a thing. She just takes her father's money, and gives lots of +splendid presents, and makes me ashamed of all mine, and she's glad of +it, too. If I'm going to give anything to Peace, I don't want her to." + +"I think Joy has taken a great fancy to Peace. She would enjoy giving +her something very much," said Mrs. Breynton, gravely. + +"I can't help it. Peace Maythorne belongs to me. It would spoil it all +to have Joy have anything to do with it." + +"Worsted are very expensive now," said her mother; "you alone cannot +give Peace enough to amount to much." + +"I don't care," said Gypsy, resolutely, "I want to do one thing Joy +doesn't." + +Mrs. Breynton said nothing, and Gypsy went slowly from the room. + +"I wish we could give Peace Maythorne something," said Joy, an hour +after, when they were all sitting together. Mrs. Breynton raised her +eyes from her work, but Gypsy was looking out of the window. + +When the girls went up to bed, Gypsy was very silent. Joy tried to laugh +and plague and scold her into talking, but it was of no use. Just before +they went to sleep, she spoke up suddenly: + +"Joy, do you want to give something to Peace Maythorne?" + +"Splendid!" cried Joy, jumping up in bed to clap her hands, "what?" + +Gypsy told her then all the plan, a little slowly; it was rather hard. + +Perhaps Joy detected the hesitation in her tone. Joy was not given to +detecting things with remarkable quickness, but it was so plain that she +could not very well help it. + +"I don't believe you want me to give any of it." + +"Oh, yes," said Gypsy, trying to speak cordially, "yes, it will be +better." + +It certainly was better she felt. She went to sleep, glad it was settled +so. + +When the girls came to make their purchases, they found that Gypsy's +contribution of money would just about buy the crochet-needles and +patterns. The worsteds cost about treble what she could give. So it was +settled that they should be Joy's gift. + +Gypsy was very pleasant about it, but Joy could not help seeing that she +was disappointed. So then there came a little generous impulse to Joy +too, and she came one day and said: + +"Gypsy, don't let's divide the things off so, for Peace. It makes my +part the largest. Besides, the worsteds look the prettiest. Let's just +give them together and have it all one." + +There is a rare pleasure in making a gift one's self, without being +hampered by this "all-together" notion, isn't there?--especially if the +gift be a handsome one, and is going where it is very much needed. So as +Joy sat fingering the pile of elegant worsteds, twining the brilliant, +soft folds of orange, and crimson, and royal purple, and soft, +wood-browns about her hands, it cost her a bit of a struggle to say +this. It seems rather a small thing to write about? Ah, they are these +_bits of_ struggles in which we learn to fight the great ones; perhaps +these bits of struggles, more than the great ones, make up life. + +"You're real good," said Gypsy, surprised; "I think I'd rather not. It +isn't really half of it mine, and I don't want to say so. But it's just +as good in you." + +At that moment, though neither of them knew it was so, one thought was +in the heart of both. It was a sudden thought that came and went, and +left a great happiness in its place (for great happiness springs out of +very little battles and victories),--a memory of Peace Maythorne's +verse. The good Christmas time would have been a golden time to them, if +it taught them in ever so small, imperfect ways, to prefer one another +"in honor." + +One day before it came a sudden notion seemed to strike Gypsy, and she +rushed out of the house in her characteristic style, as if she were +running for her life, and down to Peace Maythorne's, and flew into the +quiet room like a tempest. + +"Peace Maythorne, what's your favorite verse?" + +"Why, what a hurry you're in! Sit down and rest a minute." + +"No, I can't stop. I just want to know what your favorite verse is, as +quick as ever you can be." + +"Did you come down just for that? How queer! Well, let me see." + +Peace stopped a minute, her quiet eyes looking off through the window, +but seeming to see nothing--away somewhere, Gypsy, even in her hurry +stopped to wonder where. + +"I think--it isn't one you'd care much about, perhaps--I think I like +this. Yes, I think I _can't help_ liking it best of all." + +Peace touched her finger to a page of her Bible that lay open. Gypsy, +bending over, read: + +"And the inhabitants shall not say I am sick." + +When she had read, she stooped and kissed Peace with a sudden kiss. + +From that time until Christmas Gypsy was very busy in her own room with +her paint box, all the spare time she could find. On Christmas Eve she +went down just after dusk to Peace Maythorne's room, and called Miss +Jane out into the entry. + +"This is for Peace, and I made it. I don't want her to see a thing about +it till she wakes up in the morning. Could you please to fasten it up on +the wall just opposite the bed where the sun shines in? sometime after +she's gone to sleep, you know." + +Miss Jane, somewhat bewildered, took the thing that Gypsy held out to +her, and held it up in the light that fell from a neighbor's half-open +door. + +It was a large illuminated text, painted on Bristol board of a soft gray +shade, and very well done for a non-professional artist. The letters +were of that exquisite shade known by the artists as _smalt_ blue, edged +heavily with gold, and round them a border of yellow, delicate sprays of +wheat. Miss Jane spelled out in German text: + +"And the Inhabitants shall not say I am Sick." + +"Well, thank you. I'll put it up. Peace never gets asleep till terrible +late, and I'm rather worn out with work to lie awake waitin' till she +is. But then, if you want to surprise her--I s'pose she _will_ be +dreadful tickled--I guess I'll manage it someways." + +Perhaps Miss Jane was softened into being obliging by her coming +holiday; or perhaps the mournful, longing words touched something in her +that nothing touched very often. + +Gypsy and Joy were not so old but that Christmas Eve with its little +plans for the morrow held yet a certain shade of that delightful +suspense and mystery which perhaps never hangs about the greater and +graver joys of life. I fancy we drink it to the full, in the hanging up +of stockings, the peering out into the dark to see Santa Claus come down +the chimney (perfectly conscious that that gentleman is the most +transparent of hoaxes, but with a sort of faith in him all the while; we +_may_ see him if we can lie awake long enough--who knows?) the falling +asleep before we know it, and much against our will, the waking in the +cold, gray, mysterious dawn, and pattering about barefoot to "catch" the +dreaming and defenseless family. + +"I'm going to lie awake all night," Gypsy announced, as she stood +brushing out her bright, black hair; "then I'll catch you, you see if I +don't." + +"But I'm going to lie awake, too," said Joy. "I was going to last +Christmas, only--I didn't." + +"Sit up and see the sun dance, like Patty." + +"Well, let's. I never was awake all night in my whole life." + +"Nor I," said Gypsy. "I came pretty near it once, but I somehow went to +sleep along at the end." + +"When was that?" + +"Why, one time I had a dream, and went clear over to the Kleiner Berg +Basin, in my sleep, and got into the boat." + +"You did!" + +"I guess I did. The boat was unlocked and the oars were up at the barn, +and so I floated off, and there I had to stay till Tom came in the +morning." + +"Why, I should have been scared out of my seventeen senses," said Joy, +creeping into bed. "Didn't you scream?" + +"No. That wouldn't have done any good. See here, Joy, if you find me +going to sleep, pinch me, will you?" + +"Oh, yes," said Joy, with alacrity. "I shall be awake, I know." + +There was a silence. Gypsy broke it by turning her head over on the +pillow with a whisk, and opening her eyes savagely, quite indignant to +find them shut. + +"Joy." + +No answer. + +"Joy, you're going----" + +Joy's head turned over with another whisk. + +"No, I'm not. I'm just as wide awake as ever I was." + +Another silence. + +"Gypsy!" + +Gypsy jumped. + +"_You're_ going to sleep." + +"It isn't any such thing," said Gypsy, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. + +"I wonder if it isn't most morning," said Joy, in a tone of cheerful +indifference. + +"Most morning! Mother'd say we'd been in bed just ten minutes, I +suppose." + +Joy stifled a groan, and by dint of great exertions turned it into a +laugh. + +"All the longer to lie awake. It's nice, isn't it?" + +"Ye-es. Let's talk. People that sit up all night talk, I guess." + +"Well, I guess it would be a good plan. You begin." + +"I don't know anything to say." + +"Well, I'm sure I don't." + +Silence again. + +"Joy Breynton." + +"We-ell?" + +"I guess I'll keep awake just as well if I--shut up--my eyes. Don't +you--" + +That was the end of Gypsy's sentence, and Joy never asked for the rest +of it. Just about an hour and a half after, Gypsy heard a noise, and was +somewhat surprised to see Joy standing up with her head in the washbowl. + +"What _are_ you doing?" + +"Oh, just dipping my head into the water. They say it helps keep people +awake." + +"Oh--well. See here; we haven't talked much lately, have we?" + +"No. I thought I wouldn't disturb you." + +Gypsy made a ghastly attempt to answer, but couldn't quite do it. + +At the end of another indefinite period Joy opened her eyes under the +remarkable impression that Oliver Cromwell was carrying her to the +guillotine in a cocoa-nut shell; it was really a very remarkable +impression, considering that she had been broad awake ever since she +came to bed. As soon as her eyes were opened she opened her mouth +likewise--to gasp out a little scream. For something very tall and +white was sitting on the bedpost with folded arms. + +"Why, Gypsy Breynton!" + +"What?" + +"What are you up there for?" + +"Got up so's to keep awake. It's real fun." + +"Why, how your teeth chatter. Isn't it cold up there?" + +"Ra-ther. I don't know but I _might_ as well come down." + +"I wonder," muttered Gypsy, drowsily, just as Joy had begun in very +thrilling words to request Oliver Cromwell to have mercy on her, and was +about preparing to jump out of the cocoa-nut shell into Niagara Falls, +"I wonder what makes people think it's a joke to lie awake." + +"I don't believe they do," said Joy, with a tinge in her voice of +something that, to say the least, was not hilarious. + +"Yes they do," persisted Gypsy; "all the girls in novels lie awake all +night and cry when their lovers go to Europe, and they have a real nice +time. Only it's most always moonlight, and they talk out loud. I always +thought when I got large enough to have a lover, I'd try it." + +Joy dropped into another dream, and, though not of interest to the +public, it was a very charming dream, and she felt decidedly cross, +when, at the end of another unknown period Gypsy woke her up with a +pinch. + +"Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!" + +"What are you merry Christmassing for? That's no fair. It isn't morning +yet. Let me alone." + +"Yes, it is morning too. I heard the clock strike six ever so long ago. +Get up and build the fire." + +"I don't believe it's morning. You can build it yourself." + +"No, it's your week. Besides, you made me do it twice for you your last +turn, and I shan't touch it. Besides, it _is_ morning." + +Joy rose with a groan, and began to fumble for the matches. All at once +Gypsy heard a very fervent exclamation. + +"What's the matter?" + +"The old thing's tipped over--every single, solitary match!" + +Gypsy began to laugh. + +"It's nothing to laugh at," chattered Joy; "I'm frozen almost to death, +and this horrid old fire won't do a thing but smoke." + +Gypsy, curled up in the warm bed, smothered her laugh as best she could, +to see Joy crouched shivering before the stove-door, blowing away +frantically at the fire, her cheeks puffed out, her hands blue as +indigo. + +"There!" said Joy, at last; "I shan't work any more over it. It may go +out if it wants to, and if it don't it needn't." + +She came back to bed, and the fire muttered and sputtered a while, and +died out, and shot up again, and at last made up its mind to burn, and +burned like a small volcano. + +"What a noise that fire makes! I hope it won't wake up mother. Joy, +don't it strike you as rather funny it doesn't grow light faster?" + +"I don't know." + +"Get up and look at the entry clock; you're on the front side." + +Poor Joy jumped out shivering into the cold again, opened the door +softly, and ran out. She came back in somewhat of a hurry, and shut the +door with a bang. + +"Gypsy Breynton!" + +"What?" + +"If I _ever_ forgive you!" + +"What is the matter?" + +"It's _just twenty-five minutes past eleven_!" + +[Illustration] + +Gypsy broke into a ringing laugh. Joy could never bear to be laughed at. + +"_I_ don't see anything so terrible funny, and I guess you wouldn't if +you'd made that old--" + +"Fire; I know it. Just to think!--and you shivering and blowing away at +it. I never heard anything so funny!" + +"I think it was real mean in you to wake me up, any way." + +"Why, I thought I heard it strike six as much as could be. Oh, dear, oh, +dear!" + +Joy couldn't see the joke. But the story of that memorable night was not +yet finished. + +The faint, gray morning really came at last, and the girls awoke in good +earnest, ready and glad to get up. + +"I feel as if I'd been pulled through a knothole," said Joy. + +"I slept with one eye open all the time I did sleep," said Gypsy, +drearily. "I know one thing. I'll never try to lie awake as long as I +live." + +"Not when you have a lover go to Europe?" + +"Not if I have a dozen lovers go to Europe. How is that fire going to be +built, I'd like to know?--every stick of wood burned out last night." + +There was no way but to go down into the wood-shed and get some. It was +yet early, and quite dark. + +"Go the back stairs," said Gypsy, "so's not to wake people up." + +Joy opened the door, and jumped, with a scream that echoed through the +silent entry. + +"Hush-sh! What is the matter?" + +"A--a--it's a _ghost_!" + +"A ghost! Nonsense!" + +Gypsy pushed by trembling Joy and ran out. She, too, came back with a +jump, and, though she did not scream, she did not say nonsense. + +"What _can_ it be?" + +It certainly did look amazingly like a ghost. Something tall and white +and ghastly, with awful arm extended. The entry was very dark. + +Joy sprang into bed and covered up her face in the clothes. Gypsy stood +still and winked fast for about a minute. Then Joy heard a fall and a +bubbling laugh. + +"That old Tom! It's nothing but a broom-handle and a sheet. Oh, Joy, +just come and see!" + +After that, Joy declared she wouldn't go to the wood-shed alone, if she +dressed without a fire the rest of her life. So Gypsy started with her, +and they crept downstairs on tiptoe, holding their very breath in their +efforts to be still, the stairs creeking at every step. Did you ever +_particularly_ want stairs to keep still, that they didn't creak like +thunder-claps? + +The girls managed to get into the wood-shed, fill their basket, and +steal back into the kitchen without mishap. Then came the somewhat +dubious undertaking of crawling upstairs in darkness that might be felt, +with a heavy and decidedly uncertain load of wood. + +"I'll go first and carry the basket," said Gypsy. "One can do it easier +than two." + +So she began to feel her way slowly up. + +"It's black as Egypt! Joy, why don't you come?" + +"I'm caught on something--oh!" Down fell something with an awful crash +that echoed and reechoed, and resounded through the sleeping house. It +was succeeded by an utter silence. + +"What is it?" breathed Gypsy, faintly. + +"The clothes-horse, and _every one of Patty's clean clothes_!" + +Scarcely were the words off from Joy's lips, when Gypsy, sitting down on +the stairs to laugh, tipped over her basket, and every solitary stick of +that wood clattered down the uncarpeted stairs, thumped through the +banisters, bounced on the floor, rolled into the corners, thundered +against the cellar door. I don't believe you ever heard such a noise in +all your life. + +Mr. and Mrs. Breynton ran from one direction, Tom from another, Winnie +from a third, and Patty, screaming, in fearful _dishabille_, from the +attic, and the congress that assembled in that entry where sat Gypsy +speechless on one stair, and Joy on another, the power fails me to +describe. + +But this was the end of that Christmas night. + +It should be recorded that the five-dollar bill and the portfolio with +purple roses on it were both forthcoming that day, and that Gypsy +entirely forgot any difference between her own little gifts and Joy's. +This was partly because she had somehow learned to be glad in the +difference, if it pleased Joy; partly because of a certain look in her +mother's eyes when she saw the picture-frame. Such a look made Gypsy +happy for days together. + +That Christmas was as merry as Christmas can be, but the best part of it +all was the sight of Peace Maythorne's face as she lay twining the +gorgeous worsteds over her thin fingers, the happy sunlight touching +their colors of crimson, and royal purple, and orange, and woodland +brown, just as kindly as it was touching the new Christmas jewels over +which many another young girl in many another home sat laughing that +morning. + +But Gypsy long remembered--she remembers now with dim eyes and +quivering smile--how Peace drew her face down softly on the pillow, +pointing to the blue and golden words upon the wall, and said in a +whisper that nobody else heard: + +"That is best of all. Oh, Gypsy, when I woke up in the morning and found +it!" + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +UP RATTLESNAKE + + +"I should think we might, I'm sure," said Joy pausing, with a crisp bit +of halibut on her fork, just midway between her plate and her lips. + +"You needn't shake your head so, Mother Breynton," said Gypsy, her great +brown eyes pleading over her teacup with their very most irresistible +twinkle. "Now it isn't the slightest trouble to say yes, and you can +just as well say it now as any other time, you know." + +"But it really seems to me a little dangerous, Gypsy,--up over those +mountain roads on livery-stable horses." + +"But Tom says it isn't a bit dangerous, and Tom's been up it forty +times. Rattlesnake has the best roads of any of the mountains round +here, and there are fences by all the precipices, Tom said, didn't you, +Tom?" + +"No," said Tom, coolly. "There isn't a fence. There are logs in some +places, and in some there aren't." + +"Oh, what a bother you are! Well, any way it's all the same, and I'm not +a bit afraid of stable horses. I can manage any of them, from Mr. Burt's +iron-gray colt down," which was true enough. Gypsy was used to riding, +and perfectly fearless. + +"But Joy hasn't ridden much, and I should never forgive myself if any +accident happened to her while her father is gone." + +"Joy can ride Billy. There isn't a cow in Yorkbury safer." + +Mrs. Breynton sipped her tea and thought about it. + +"I want to go horsebacking, too," put in Winnie, glaring savagely at +Gypsy over his bread and milk. "I'm five years old." + +"And jerked six whole buttons off your jacket this very day," said +Gypsy, eyeing certain gaps of which there were always more or less to be +seen in Winnie's attire in spite of his mother's care. "A boy who jerks +buttons like that couldn't go 'horsebacking.' You wouldn't have one left +by the time you came home,--look out, you'll have your milk over. You +tipped it over times enough this morning for one day." + +"You _will_ have your milk over; don't stand the mug up on the +napkin-ring,--no, nor on that crust of bread, either," repeated his +mother, and everybody looked up anxiously, and edged away a little from +Winnie's immediate vicinity. This young gentleman had a pleasing little +custom of deluging the united family at meal-time, at least once +regularly every day, with milk and bread-crumbs; maternal and paternal +injunctions, threats, and punishments notwithstanding, he contrived +every day some perfectly novel, ingenious, and totally unexpected method +of accomplishing the same; uniting, in his efforts, the strategy of a +Napoleon, with the unruffled composure of a Grant. + +"I don't know but what I'll see what father thinks about it," Mrs. +Breynton went on, thoughtfully. "If he should be willing--" + +"Good, good!" cried Gypsy, clapping her hands. "Father's in the library. +Winnie, you run up and ask him if we can't go up Rattlesnake." + +"Well," said Winnie, "when I just get through eatin'. I'm goin' to make +him let me horseback as much as you or anybody else." + +Winnie finished his toast with imperturbable deliberation, pushed back +his chair, and jumped up. + +[Illustration] + +Splash! went a shower of milk all over him, his mother, the table, and +the carpet. Everybody jumped. Winnie gasped and stood dripping. + +"Oh-oh! how did he do it? Why, Winnie _Breynton_!" + +For there hung the mug from his waist, empty, upside down, _tied to his +bib_. + +"In a hard knot, if you'll believe it! I never saw such a child in all +my life! Why, _Winnie_!" + +The utter blankness of astonishment that crept over Winnie's face when +he looked down and saw the mug hanging, Mr. Darley might have made a +small fortune out of; but the pen of a Cicero could not attempt it. It +appeared to be one of those cases when "the heart feels most though the +lips move not." + +"What _did_ you do such a thing for? What could possess you?" + +"Oh," said Winnie, very red in the face, "it's there, is it? I was a +steamboat, and the mug was my stove-pipe, 'n' then I forgot. I want a +clean apron. I don't want any milk to-morrer." + +This was in the early summer. The holidays had come and gone, and the +winter and the spring. Coasting, skating, and snowballing had given +place to driving hoop, picking flowers, boating, and dignified +promenades on the fashionable pavement down town; furs and bright woolen +hoods, tippets, mittens, and rubber-boots were exchanged for calico +dresses, comfortable, brown, bare hands, and jaunty straw hats with +feathers on them. On the whole, it had been a pleasant winter: times +there had been when Gypsy heartily wished Joy had never come, when Joy +heartily wished she were at home; certain little jealousies there had +been, selfish thoughts, unkind acts, angry words; but many penitent +hours as well, some confessions, the one to the other, that nobody else +heard, and a certain faint, growing interest in each other. Strictly +speaking, they did not very much _love_ each other yet, but they were +not far from it. "I am getting used to Joy," said Gypsy. "I like Gypsy +ever so much better than I did once," Joy wrote to her father. One thing +they had learned that winter. Every generous deed, every thoughtful +word, narrowed the distance between them; each one wiped out the ugly +memory of some past impatience, some past unkindness. And now something +was about to happen that should bring them nearer to each other than +anything had done yet. + +That June night on which they sat at the tea-table discussing the +excursion up Rattlesnake was the beginning of it. When Winnie was +sufficiently mopped up to admit of his locomotion about the house with +any safety to the carpets, he was dispatched to the library on the +errand to his father. What with various wire-pullings of Gypsy's, and +arguments from Tom, the result was that Mr. Breynton gave his consent to +the plan, on condition that the young people would submit to his +accompanying them. + +"That's perfectly splend," cried Gypsy; "all the better for having you. +Only, my best beloved of fathers, you mustn't keep saying, 'Gypsy, +Gypsy, be careful,' you know, every time my horse jumps, because if you +should, I'm very much afraid." + +[Illustration] + +"Afraid of what?" + +"That Gypsy wouldn't be careful," said the young lady, folding her hands +demurely. Her father attempted to call her a sauce-box but Gypsy jumped +upon his knee, and pulled his whiskers till he cried out for mercy, and +gave her a kiss instead. + +There was an undercurrent of reality in the fun, however. Mr. Breynton's +over-anxiety--fussiness, some people would have called it--his +children were perfectly conscious of; children are apt to be the first +to discover their parents' faults and weaknesses. Gypsy loved her father +dearly, but she somehow always felt as if he must be _managed_. + +So it came about that on a certain royal June day, a merry party started +for a horseback ride up Rattlesnake mountain. + +"I've a good mind to take my waterproof," said Joy, as they were +starting; "we may not be back till late, and you know how cold it grows +by the river after dark." + +"Nonsense!" laughed Gypsy; "why, the thermometer's 80 deg. already." + +Nevertheless, Joy went back and got the waterproof. She afterwards had +occasion to be very glad of it. + +The party consisted of Mr. Breynton, Tom, Joy, Gypsy, Mr. and Mrs. +Hallam (this was the Mrs. Hallam who had once been Gypsy's teacher), +Sarah Rowe, and her brother Francis, who was home from college on +account of ill health, he said. Tom always coughed and arched his +eyebrows in a very peculiar way when this was mentioned, but Gypsy could +never find out what he did it for. + +The day, as I said, was royal. The sky, the river, the delicate golden +green of the young leaves and grass, the lights and shadows on the +distant mountains, all were mellowed in together like one of Church's +pictures, and there was one of those spicy winds that Gypsy always +described by saying that "the angels had been showering great bottles of +fresh cologne-water into them." + +The young people felt these things in a sort of dreamy, unconscious way, +but they were too busy and too merry to notice them in detail. + +Joy was mounted safely on demure Billy, and Gypsy rode--not Mr. Burt's +iron-gray, for Tom claimed that--but a free, though manageable pony, +with just the arch of the neck, toss of the mane, and coquettish lifting +of the feet that she particularly fancied. The rest were variously +mounted: Francis Rowe rode a fiery colt that his father had just bought, +and the like of which was not to be seen in Yorkbury. + +Up--up, winding on and away, through odors of fragrant pines and unseen +flowers, under the soft, green shadows, through the yellow lights. How +beautiful--how beautiful it was! + +"Who'll race with me?" inquired Mr. Francis Rowe suddenly. "I call it an +uncommon bore, this doing nothing but looking at the trees. I say, +Breynton, the slope's easy here for a quarter of a mile; come ahead." + +"No, thank you; I don't approve of racing up mountains." + +Tom might have said he didn't approve of being beaten; the iron-gray was +no match for the colt, and he knew it. + +"Who'll race?" persisted Mr. Francis, impatiently; "isn't there +anybody?" + +"I will," said Gypsy, seriously enough. + +"You!" said Tom; "why, the colt would leave that bay mare out of sight +before you could say Jack Robinson." + +"Oh, I don't expect to beat. Of course that's out of the question. But I +should like the run; where's the goal, Francis?" + +"That turn in the road where the tall fir-tree is, with those dead +limbs; you see?" + +"Yes. We'll trot, of course. All ready." + +"Be very careful, Gypsy," called her father, nervously; "I'm really +almost afraid to have you go. You might come to the precipice sooner, +than you expect, and then the horse may shy." + +"I'll be careful father; come, Nelly, gently--whe-ee!" + +Suddenly reflecting that it was not supposed to be lady-like to whistle, +Gypsy drew her lips into a demure pucker, touched Nelly with the tassel +of her whip, and flew away up the hill on a brisk trot. Mr. Francis +condescendingly checked the full speed of the colt, and they rode on +pretty nearly side by side. + +"I'm afraid, in justice to my horse, I must really come in first," began +Mr. Francis, loosening his rein as they neared the fir-tree. + +"Oh, of course," said Gypsy, with a twinkle in her eyes; "I didn't +undertake to beat." + +Now Nelly had a trick with which Gypsy was perfectly familiar, of +breaking into a run at an instant's notice, if she were pinched in a +certain spot on her neck. Suddenly, while the colt was springing on in +his fleet trot, and Mr. Francis supposed Gypsy was a full eight feet +behind, he was utterly confounded to see her flying past him on a +bounding gallop, her hair tossing in the wind, her cheeks scarlet, her +eyes triumphant. + +But right in the middle of the road, between them and the fir-tree, was +something neither of them had seen;--a huge tree just fallen, with its +high, prickly branches on. + +"Jerusalem!" said Mr. Francis, under his breath as the colt pricked up +his ears ominously. + +"Oh, good! here's a jump," cried Gypsy, and over it she went at a bound. +The colt reared and shied, and planting his dainty forefeet firmly on +the ground, refused to stir an inch. Gypsy whirled around and stood +triumphant under the fir-tree, her eyes snapping merrily. + +"Why, how did this ever happen?" cried the rest, as they came laughing +up. + +"I say, there's some witchcraft about this business," remarked Mr. +Francis, quite bewildered; "wait till I've cleared off these branches, +and we'll try that over again." + +"Very well," said Gypsy, in a perfect whirl of excitement and delight, +as she always was, with anything in the shape of reins in her hand. But +just then she looked back and saw Joy toiling on slowly behind the +others; Billy with his head hanging and his spirits quite gone. Gypsy +stopped a moment as if in thought, and then rode slowly down the hill. + +"I'm having a horrid time," said Joy disconsolately, as she came up; +"Billy is as stupid as a mule, and won't go." + +"I'm real sorry," said Gypsy, slowly; "you might have Nelly. We'll +change awhile." + +"No," said Joy, "I'm afraid of Nelly. Besides, you wouldn't like Billy +any better than I do. It's dreadfully stupid back here alone, though. I +wish I hadn't come." + +"Francis," called Gypsy, "I guess I won't race, I'm going to ride with +Joy awhile." + +"Why, you needn't do that!" said Joy, rather ashamed of her complaining. +But Gypsy did do it; and though her face had clouded for the moment, a +sunbeam broke over it then that lasted the rest of the day. + +The day passed very much like other picnics. They stopped in a broad, +level place on the summit of the mountain, tied the horses where they +could graze on the long, tufted wood-grass, unpacked the dinner baskets, +and devoted themselves to biscuit and cold tongue, tarts, lemonade and +current wine, through the lazy, golden nooning. + +It was voted that they should not attempt the long, hot ride down the +mountain-side until the blaze of the afternoon sun should be somewhat +cooled. So, after dinner they went their several ways, finding amusement +for the sultry hours. Mr. Breynton and Tom went off on a hunt after a +good place to water the horses; Francis Rowe betook himself to a cigar; +Sarah curled herself up on the soft moss with her sack for a pillow, and +went to sleep; Mr. and Mrs. Hallam sat under the trees and read Tennyson +to each other. + +"How terribly stupid that must be," said Gypsy, looking on in supreme +disgust; "let's you and I go off. I know a place where there used to be +some splendid foxberry blossoms, lot's of 'em, real pretty; they looked +just as if they were snipped out of pearls with a pair of sharp +scissors." + +"I wouldn't go out of sight of us all," called Mr. Breynton, as the two +girls roamed away together among the trees. + +"But you are most out of sight now," said Joy, presently. + +"Oh, he didn't say we _mustn't_," answered Gypsy. "He didn't mean we +mustn't, either. Father always worries so." + +It would have been well for Gypsy if her father's _wish_ had been to her +what her mother's was--as binding as a command. "Just think," observed +Gypsy, as they strolled on through the fallen leaves and redcup mosses, +"just think of their sitting still and reading poetry on a picnic! I +can't get over it. Miss Melville didn't used to do such stupid things. +It's just 'cause she's married." + +"How do you know but you'll do just the same some day?" + +"Catch me! I'm not going to be married at all." + +"Not going to be married! Why, I am, and I'm going to have a white +velvet dress too." + +"Well, you may. But I wouldn't for a whole trunkful of white velvet +dresses--no, I wouldn't for two dozen trunkfuls. I'm not going to stay +home and keep house, and look sober, with my hair done up behind. I'd +rather be an old maid, and have a pony and run round in the woods." + +"Why, I never saw such a girl!" exclaimed Joy, opening her small eyes +wide; "I wouldn't be an old maid for anything. I'm going to be married +in St. Paul's, and I'm going to have my dress all caught up with orange +buds, and spangles on my veil. Therese and I, we planned it all out one +night--Therese used to be my French nurse, you know." + +For answer, Gypsy threw herself down suddenly on the velvet moss, her +eyes turned up to the far, hazy sky, showing in patches through a lace +work of thousands of leaves. + +"Joy," she said, breaking a silence, and speaking in a curious, earnest +tone Gypsy seldom used, "I do really, though, sometimes go off alone +where there are some trees, and wonder." + +"Wonder what?" + +"What in this world I was ever made for. I suppose there's got to be a +reason." + +"A reason!" said Joy, blankly. + +"There's got to be something _done_, for all I see. God doesn't make +people live on and on and die, for nothing. One can't be a little girl +all one's life, climbing trees and making snowballs," said Gypsy, half +dreamily, half impatiently, jumping up and walking on. + +[Illustration] + +So they wandered away and away, deeper into the heart of the forest, +through moss and tufted grasses, and tangles of mountain flowers, +chatting as girls will, in their silly, merry way, with now and then a +flash of graver thought like this of Gypsy's. + +"You're sure you know the way back," said Joy, presently. + +"Oh, yes; I've been over it forty times. We've turned about a good many +times, but I don't think we've gone very far from the top of the +mountain." + +So, deeper, and further, and on, where the breath of the pines was +sweet; where hidden blossoms were folding their cups for the night, and +the shadows in the thickets were growing gray. + +"Gypsy!" said Joy, suddenly, "we're certainly going _down hill_!" + +"So we are," said Gypsy, thoughtfully; "it's getting dark, too. They'll +be ready to start for home. I guess we'll go back now." + +They turned then, and began rapidly to retrace their steps, over +brambles and stones and fallen trees; through thickets, and up +projecting rocks--very rapidly. + +"It is growing dark," said Gypsy, half under her breath; "why didn't we +find it out before?" + +"Gypsy," said Joy, after a silence, "do you remember that knot of white +birches? I don't." + +Gypsy stopped and looked around. + +"N-no, I don't know as I do. But I dare say we saw them and forgot. +Let's walk a little faster." + +They walked a little faster. They walked quite as fast as they could go. + +"See that great pile of rock," said Joy, presently, her voice trembling +a little; "I know we didn't come by that before. It looks as if there +were a precipice off there." + +Gypsy made no answer. She was looking keenly around, her eyes falling on +every rock, stump, tree, and flower, in search of the tiny, trodden path +by which they had left the summit of the mountain. But there was no +path. Only the bramble, and the grass, and the tangled thickets. + +It was now very dark. + +"I guess this is the way," spoke up Gypsy, cheerfully--"here. Take hold +of my hand, Joy, and we'll run. I think I know where the path is. We had +turned off from it a little bit." + +Joy took her hand, and they ran on together. It grew darker, and grew +darker. They could scarcely see the sky now, and the brambles grew high +and thick and strange. + +Suddenly Gypsy stopped, knee-deep in a jungle of blackberry bushes. + +"Joy, I'm--afraid I don't--know the--way." + + + + +CHAPTER X + +WE ARE LOST + + +The two girls, still clasping hands, looked into each other's eyes. +Gypsy was very pale. + +_"Then we are lost!"_ + +"Yes." + +Joy broke into a sort of sobbing cry. Gypsy squeezed her hand very +tightly, with quivering lips. + +"It's all my fault. I thought I knew. Oh, Joy, I'm so sorry!" + +She expected Joy to burst forth in a torrent of reproaches; once it +would have been so; but for some reason, Joy did not say an angry word. +She only sobbed away quietly, clutching at Gypsy's hand as if she were +very much frightened. She was frightened thoroughly. The scene was +enough to terrify a far less timid child than Joy. + +It was now quite dark. Over in the west a faint, ghostly gleam of light +still lingered, seen dimly through the trees; but it only made the utter +blackness of the great forest-shadows more horrible. The huge trunks of +the pines and maples towered up, up--they could scarcely see how far, +grim, and gloomy and silent; here and there a dead branch thrust itself +out against the sky, in that hideous likeness to a fleshless hand which +night and darkness always lend to them. Even Gypsy, though she had been +in the woods many times at night before, shuddered as she stood looking +up. A queer thought came to her, of an old fable she had sometime read +in Tom's mythology; a fable of some huge Titans, angry and fierce, who +tried to climb into heaven; there was just that look about the trees. It +was very still. The birds were in their nests, their singing done. From +far away in some distant swamp came the monotonous, mournful chant of +the frogs--a dreary sound enough, heard in a safe and warm and lighted +home; unspeakably ugly if one is lost in a desolate forest. + +Now and then a startled squirrel dropped from bough to bough; or there +was the stealthy, sickening rustle of an unseen snake among the fallen +leaves. From somewhere, too, where precipices that they could not find +dashed downwards into damp gullies, cold, clinging mists were rising. + +"To stay here all night!" sobbed Joy, "Oh Gypsy, Gypsy!" + +Gypsy was a brave, sensible girl, and after that first moment of horror +when she stood looking up at the trees, her courage and her wits came +back to her. + +"I don't believe we shall have to stay here all night," speaking in a +decided, womanly way, a little of the way her mother had in a +difficulty. + +"They are all over the mountain hunting for us now. They'll find us +before long, I know. Besides, if they didn't, we could sit down in a dry +place somewhere, and wait till morning; there wouldn't anything hurt us. +Oh, you brought your waterproof--good! Put it on and button it up +tight." + +Joy had the cloak folded over her arm. She did passively as Gypsy told +her. When it was all buttoned, she suddenly remembered that Gypsy wore +only her thin, nankeen sack, and she offered to share it with her. + +"No," said Gypsy, "I don't want it. Wrap it around your throat as warm +as you can. I got you into this scrape, and now I'm going to take care +of you. Now let's halloa." + +And halloa they did, to the best of their ability; Joy in her feeble, +frightened way, Gypsy in loud shouts, and strong, like a boy's. But +there was no answer. They called again and again; they stopped after +each cry, with breath held in, and head bent to listen. Nothing was to +be heard but the frogs and the squirrels and the gliding snakes. + +Joy broke out into fresh sobs. + +"Well, it's no use to stand here any longer," said Gypsy; "let's run +on." + +"Run where? You don't know which way. What shall we do, what _shall_ we +do?" + +"We'll go this way--we haven't tried it at all. I shouldn't wonder a +bit if the path were right over there where it looks so black. Besides, +we shall hear them calling for us." + +Ah, if there had been anybody to tell them! In precisely the other +direction, the picnic party, roused and frightened, were searching every +thicket, and shouting their names at every ravine. Each step the girls +took now sent them so much further away from help. + +While they were running on, still hand in hand, Joy heard the most +remarkable sound. It was a laugh from Gypsy--actually a soft, merry +laugh, breaking out like music on the night air, in the dreary place. + +"Why, Gypsy Breynton! What can you find to laugh at, I should like to +know?" said Joy, provoked enough to stop crying at very short notice. + +"Oh, dear, I really can't help it," apologized Gypsy, choking down the +offending mirth; "but I was thinking--I couldn't help it, Joy, now, +possibly--how mad Francis Rowe will be to think he's got to stop and +help hunt us up!" + +"I wonder what that black thing is ahead of us," said Joy, presently. +They were still running on together, but their hands were not joined +just at that moment. Joy was a little in advance. + +"I'm sure I don't know," said Gypsy, eyeing it intently. The words were +scarcely off from her lips before she cried out with a loud cry, and +sprang forward, clutching at Joy's dress. + +She was too late. + +Joy tripped over a mass of briars, fell, rolled heavily--not over upon +the ground, but _off_. Off into horrible, utter darkness. Down, with +outstretched hands and one long shriek. + +Gypsy stood as if someone had charmed her into a marble statue, her +hands thrown above her head, her eyes peering into the blank darkness +below. + +She stood so for one instant only; then she did what only wild, +impulsive Gypsy would have done. She went directly down after Joy, +clinging with her hands and feet to the side of the cliff; slipping, +rolling, getting to her feet again, tearing her clothes, her hands, her +arms--down like a ball, bounding, bouncing, blinded, bewildered. + +If it had been four hundred feet, there is no doubt she would have gone +just the same. It proved to be only ten, and she landed somewhere on a +patch of soft grass, except for her scratches and a bruise or two, quite +unhurt. + +Something lay here beside her, flat upon the ground. It was Joy. She lay +perfectly still. + +A horrible fear came over Gypsy. She crept up on her hands and knees, +trying to see her lace through the dark, and just then Joy moaned +faintly. Gypsy's heart gave a great thump. In that moment, in the moment +of that horrible fear and that great relief, Gypsy knew for the first +time that she loved Joy, and how much. + +"It's my ankle," moaned Joy; "it must be broken--I know it's broken." + +It was not broken, but very badly sprained. + +"Can you stand on it?" asked Gypsy, her face almost as pale as Joy's. + +Joy tried to get to her feet, but fell heavily, with a cry of pain. + +Gypsy looked around her with dismay. Above, the ten feet of rock shot +steeply; across the gully towered a high, dark wall; at each end, +shelving stones were piled upon each other. They had fallen into a sort +of unroofed cave,--a hollow, shut in completely and impassably. +Impassably to Joy; there could be no doubt about that. To leave her +there alone was out of the question. There was but one thing to be done; +there was no alternative. + +"We must stay here all night," said Gypsy, slowly. She had scarcely +finished her sentence when she sprang up, her lips parted and white. + +"Joy, see, see! what is that?" + +"What? Where?" asked Joy between her sobs. + +"There! _isn't that smoke_?" + +A distinct, crackling sound answered her, as of something fiercely +licking up the dead leaves and twigs,--a fearful sound to hear in a +great forest. At the same instant a white cloud of smoke puffed down +almost into their faces. Before they had time to stir or cry out, a +great jet of yellow flame shot up on the edge of the cliff, glared far +into the shadow of the forest, lighted up the ravine with an awful +brightness. + +_The mountain was on fire._ + +Gypsy sat for the instant without speaking or moving. She seemed to +herself to have no words to say, no power of motion. She knew far better +than Joy what those five words meant. A dim remembrance came to +her--and it was horrible that it should come to her just then--of +something she had seen when she was a very little girl, and never +forgotten, and never would forget. A mountain burning for weeks, and a +woman lost on it; all the town turned out in an agony of search; the +fires out one day, and a slow procession winding down the blank, charred +slope, bearing something closely covered, that no one looked upon. + +She sprang up in an agony of terror. + +"Oh, Joy, _can't_ you walk? We shall die here! We shall be burned to +death!" + +At that moment a flaming branch fell hissing into a little pool at the +bottom of the gully. It passed so near them that it singed a lock of +Gypsy's hair. + +Joy crawled to her feet, fell, crawled up again, fell again. + +Gypsy seized her in both arms, and dragged her across the gully. Joy was +taller than herself, and nearly as heavy. How she did it she never knew. +Terror gave her a flash of that sort of strength which we sometimes find +among the insane. + +She laid Joy down in a corner of the ravine the furthest removed from +the fire; she could not have carried her another inch. Above and all +around towered and frowned the rocks; there was not so much as a crevice +opening between them; there was not a spot that Joy could climb. Across, +the great tongues of flame tossed themselves into the air, and glared +awfully against the sky, which was dark with hurrying clouds. The +underbrush was all on fire; two huge pine trees were ablaze, their +branches shooting off hotly now and then like rockets. + +_When those trees fell they would fall into the ravine._ + +Gypsy sat down and covered her face. + +Little did Mr. Francis Rowe think what he had done, when, strolling +along by the ravine at twilight, he threw down his half-burnt cigar: +threw it down and walked away whistling, and has probably never thought +of it from that day to this. + +Gypsy sat there with her hands before her face, and she sat very still. +She understood in that moment what was coming to her and to Joy. Yes, to +her as well as to Joy; for she would not leave Joy to die alone. It +would be an easy thing for her to climb the cliffs; she was agile, +fearless, as used to the mountains as a young chamois, and the ascent, +as I said, though steep, was not high. Once out of that gully where +death was certain, she would have at least a chance of life. The fire if +not checked would spread rapidly, would chase her down the mountain. But +that she could escape it she thought was probable, if not sure. And life +was so sweet, so dear. And her mother--poor mother, waiting at home, +and looking and longing for her! + +Gypsy gave a great gulp; there was such a pain in her throat it seemed +as if it would strangle her. But should she leave Joy, crippled and +helpless, to die alone in this horrible place? Should she do it? No, it +was through her careless fault that they had been brought into it. She +would stay with Joy. + +"I don't see as we can do anything," she said, raising her head. + +"Shall we be burned to death?" shrieked Joy. "Gypsy, Gypsy, shall we be +burned to death?" + +A huge, hot branch flew into the gully while she spoke, hissing as the +other had done, into the pool. The glare shot deeper and redder into the +forest, and the great trees writhed in the flames like human things. + +The two girls caught each other's hands. To die--to die so horribly! +One moment to be sitting there, well and strong, so full of warm, young +life; the next to lie buried in a hideous tangle of fallen, flaming +trunks, their bodies consuming to a little heap of ashes that the wind +would blow away to-morrow morning; their souls--where? + +"I wish I'd said my prayers every day," sobbed Joy, weakly. "I wish I'd +been a good girl!" + +"Let's say them now, Joy. Let's ask Him to stop the fire. If He can't, +maybe He'll let us go to heaven anyway." + +So Gypsy knelt down on the rocks that were becoming hot now to the +touch, and began the first words that came to her:--"Our Father which +art in Heaven," and faltered in them, sobbing, and began again, and went +through somehow to the end. + +After that, they were still a moment. + +"Joy," said Gypsy then, faintly, "I've been real ugly to you since +you've been at our house." + +"I've scolded you, too, a lot, and made fun of your things. I wish I +hadn't." + +"If we could only get out of here, I'd never be cross to you as long as +ever I live, and I wish you'd please to forgive me." + +"I will if--if you'll forgive me, you know. Oh, Gypsy, it's growing so +hot over here!" + +"Kiss me, Joy." + +They kissed each other through their sobs. + +"Mother's in the parlor now, watching for us, and Tom and--" + +Gypsy's sentence was never finished. There was a great blazing and +crackling, and one of the trees fell, swooping down with a crash. It +fell _across_ the ravine, lying there, a bridge of flame, and lighting +the underbrush upon the opposite side. One tree stood yet. That would +fall, when it fell, directly into the corner of the gully where the +girls were crouched up against the rocks. And then Joy remembered what +in her terror she had not thought of before. + +"Gypsy, _you_ can climb! don't stay here with me. What are you staying +for?" + +"You needn't talk about that," said Gypsy, with faltering voice; "if it +hadn't been for me you wouldn't be here. I'm not going to sneak off and +leave you,--not any such thing!" + +Whether Gypsy would have kept this resolve--and very like Gypsy it was, +to make it--when the flames were actually upon her; whether, indeed, +she ought to have kept it, are questions open to discussion. Something +happened just then that saved the trouble of deciding. It was nothing +but a clap of thunder, to be sure, but I wonder if you have any idea how +it sounded to those two girls. + +It was a tremendous peal, and it was followed by a fierce +lightning-flash and a second peal, and then by something that the girls +stretched out their arms to with a great cry, as if it had been an angel +from heaven. A shower almost like the bursting of a cloud,--great, +pelting drops, hissing down upon the flaming tree; it seemed like a +solid sheet of water; as if the very flood-gates of heaven were open. + +The cruel fire hissed and sputtered, and shot up in angry jets, and died +in puffs of sullen smoke; the glaring bridge blackened slowly; the +pine-tree, swayed by the sudden winds, fell _into_ the forest, and the +ravine was safe. The flames, though not quenched,--it might take hours +to do that,--were thoroughly checked. + +And who was that with white, set face, and outstretched hands, springing +over the smoking logs, leaping down into the ravine? + +"Oh, Tom, Tom! Oh, father, here we are!" + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +GRAND TIMES + + +"To go to Washington?" + +"Go to Washington!" + +"Did you ever?" + +"Never!" + +"See the President." + +"And the White House and the soldiers." + +"And the donkeys and all." + +"I know it." + +"Father Breynton, if you're not just magnificent!" + +This classical conversation took place on a certain Wednesday morning in +that golden June which the picnic ushered in. And such a hurrying and +scampering, and mending and making of dresses, such a trimming of summer +hats and packing of trunks and valises, as there was the rest of that +week! + +"You'd better believe we're busy," Gypsy observed, with a very superior +air, to Mrs. Surly, who had "just dropped in to find out what that +flyaway Gypsy had been screechin' round the house so for, these two days +past." + +"You'd better believe we have enough to do. Joy's got two white skirts +to have tucked in little bits of tucks, and she's sent to Boston for a +new veil. Mother's made me a whole new dress to wear in the cars, and +I've got a _beau_tiful brown feather for my turban. Besides, we're going +to see the President, and what do you think? Father says there are ever +so many mules in Washington. Won't I sit at the windows and see 'em go +by!" + +Thursday, Friday, Saturday passed; Sunday began and ended in a +rain-storm; Monday came like a dream, with warm, sweet winds, and +dewdrops quivering in a blaze of unclouded light. Like a dream it seemed +to the girls to be hurrying away at five o'clock, from an unfinished +breakfast, from Mrs. Breynton's gentle good-bye, Tom's valuable +patronage and advice, and Winnie's reminder that he was five years old, +and that to the candid mind it was perfectly clear that he ought "to go +too-o-oo." + +Very much like a dream was it, to be walking on the platform at the +station, in the tucked skirts and new brown feather; to watch the +checking of the trunks and buying of the tickets, quite certain that +they were different from all other checks and tickets; to find how +interesting the framed railway and steamboat guide for the Continent, on +the walls of the little dingy ladies' room, suddenly became,--at least +until the pleasing discovery that it was printed in 1849, and gave +minute directions for reaching the _Territory_ of California. + +More like a dream was it, to watch the people that lounged or worked +about the depot; the ticket-master, who had stood shut up there just +so behind the little window for twenty years; the baggage-master, who +tossed about their trunks without ever _thinking_ of the jewelry-boxes +inside, and that cologne-bottle with the shaky cork; the cross-eyed +woman with her knitting-work, who sold sponge-cake and candy behind a +very small counter; the small boys in singularly airy jackets, who were +putting pins and marbles on the track for the train to run over; the old +woman across the street, who was hanging out her clothes to dry in the +back yard, just as if it had been nothing but a common Monday, and +nobody had been going to Washington;--how strange it seemed that they +could all be living on and on just as they did every day! + +"Oh, just think!" said Gypsy, with wide open eyes. "Did you ever? Isn't +it funny? Oh, I wish they could go off and have a good time too." + +Still like a dream did it seem, when the train shrieked up and shrieked +them away, over and down the mountains, through sunlight and shadow, by +forest and river, past village and town and city, away like an arrow, +with Yorkbury out of sight, and out of mind, and only the wonderful, +untried days that were coming, to think about,--ah, who would think of +anything else, that could have such days? + +Gypsy made her entrance into Boston in a very _distingue_ style. It +chanced that just after they left Fitchburg, she espied the stone pier +of an unfinished bridge, surmounted by a remarkable boy standing on his +head. Up went the car-window, and out went her own head and one +shoulder, the better to obtain a view of the phenomenon. + +"Look out, Gypsy," said her father uneasily. "If another train should +come along, that is very dangerous." + +"Yes, sir," said Gypsy, with a twinkle in her eye, "I am looking out." + +Now, as Mr. Breynton had been on the continual worry about her ever +since they left Yorkbury, afraid she would catch cold in the draft, lose +her glove out of the window, go out on the platform, or fall in stepping +from car to car, Gypsy did not pay the immediate heed to his warning +that she ought to have done. Before he had time to speak again, puff! +came a sharp gust of wind and away went her pretty turban with its new +brown feather,--over the bridge and down into the river. + +"There!" said Joy. + +"Gypsy, my _dear_!" said her father. + +"Well, anyway," said Gypsy, drawing in her head in the utmost +astonishment, "I can wear a handkerchief." + +[Illustration] + +So into Boston she came with nothing but a handkerchief tied over her +bright, tossing hair. You ought to have seen the hackmen laugh! + +The girls made an agreement with Mrs. Breynton to keep a journal while +they were gone; send her what they could, and read the rest of it to her +when they came home. She thought in this way they would remember what +they saw more easily, and with much less confusion and mistake. These +journals will give you a better account of their journey than I can do. + +They wrote first from New York. This is what Joy had to say:-- + +New York, June 17,--Tuesday Night. + +"Oh, I'm so tired! We've been 'on the go' all day. You see, we got into +Boston last night, and took the boat, you know, just as we expected to. +I've been on so forty times with father; he used to take me ever so +often when he went on business; so I was just as used to it, and went +right to sleep; but Gypsy, you know, she's never been to New York any +way, and never was on a steamer, and you ought to have seen her keep +hopping up in her berth to look at things and listen to things! I +expected as much as could be she'd fall down on me--I had the under +berth--and I don't believe she slept very much. I don't care so much +about New York as she does, either, because I've seen it all. Uncle +thought we'd stay here a day so as to look about. He wanted Gypsy to see +some pictures and things. To-morrow morning real early we go to +Philadelphia. You don't know what a lovely bonnet I saw up Fifth Avenue +to-day. It was white crape, with the dearest little loves of +forget-me-nots outside and in, and then a white veil. I'm going to make +father buy me one just like it as soon as I go out of mourning. + +"I expect this isn't very much like a journal, but I'm terribly sleepy, +and I guess I must go to bed." + +GYPSY'S JOURNAL. + +"Brevoort House, Tuesday Night. + +"Mother, Mother Breynton! I never had such a good time in all my life! +Oh, I forgot to say I haven't any more idea how to write a journal than +the man in the moon. I meant to put that at the beginning so you'd know. + +"Well, we came on by boat, and you've no idea how that machinery +squeaked. I laughed and laughed, and I kept waking up and laughing. + +"Then--oh, did Joy tell you about my hat? I suppose you'll be sorry, +but I don't believe you can help laughing possibly. I just lost it out +of the car window, looking at a boy out in the river standing on its +head. I mean the boy was on his head, not the river, and I had to come +into Boston tied up in a handkerchief. Father hurried off to get me a +new hat, 'cause there wasn't any time for me to go with him, and what +_do_ you suppose he bought? I don't think you'd ever get over it, if you +were to see it. It was a white turban with a black edge rolled up, and a +great fringe of _blue beads_ and a _green feather_! He said he bought it +at the first milliner's he came to, and I should think he did. I guess +you'd better believe I felt nice going all the way to New York in it. +This morning I ripped off the blue fringe the very first thing, and went +into Broadway (isn't it a big street? and I never saw such tall +policemen with so many whiskers and such a lot of ladies to be helped +across) and bought some black velvet ribbon with a white edge to match +the straw; the green feather wasn't nice enough to wear. I knew I +oughtn't to have lost the other, and father paid five dollars for this +horrid old thing, so I thought I wouldn't take it to a milliner. I just +trimmed it up myself in a rosette, and it doesn't look so badly after +all. But oh, my pretty brown feather! Isn't it a shame? + +"Father took us to the Aspinwall picture-gallery to-day. Joy didn't care +about it, but I liked it ever so much, only there were ever so many +Virgin Marys up in the clouds, that looked as if they'd been washed out +and hung up to dry. Besides, I didn't understand what all the little +angels were kicking at. Father said they were from the old masters, and +there was a lady with a pink parasol, that screamed right out, and said +they were sweet pretty. I suppose when I'm grown up I shall have to +think so too. I saw a picture of a little boy out in the woods, asleep, +that I liked ever so much better. + +"We've seen ever so many other things, but I haven't half time to tell +you about them all. + +"We're at the Brevoort House, and I tell you I was frightened when I +first came in, it's so handsome. We take our rooms, and then just go +down into the most splendid dining-hall, and sit down at little tables +and order what we want, and don't pay for anything but that. Father says +it's the European plan. Our rooms are beautiful. Don't you tell anybody, +but I'm almost afraid of the waiters and chambermaids; they look as if +they felt so grand. But Joy, she just rings the bell and makes them +bring her up some water, and orders them around like anything. Joy +wanted to go to the Fifth Avenue Hotel, but father said it was too +noisy. He says this is noisy enough, but he wanted us to see what a +handsome hotel is like, and--and--why! I'm almost asleep. + +JOY'S JOURNAL. + +"Philadelphia, Wednesday, June 18. + +"We came to Philadelphia this morning, and we almost choked with the +dust, riding through New Jersey. We're at a boarding-house,--a new one +just opened. They call it the Markoe House. (I haven't the least idea +whether I've spelled it right.) Uncle didn't sleep very well last night, +so he wanted a quiet place, and thought the hotels were noisy. He +thought once of going to La Pierre, but gave it up. Father used to go to +the Continental, I know, because I've heard him say so. I'm too tired to +write any more." + +GYPSY'S JOURNAL. + +"Thursday, June something or other. + +"We stayed over a day here,--oh, 'here' is Philadelphia,--because +father wanted us to see the city. It's real funny. People have white +wooden shutters outside their windows, and when anybody dies they keep a +black ribbon hanging out on them. Then the streets are so broad. I saw +four Quakers this morning. We've been out to see Girard College, where +they take care of orphans, and the man that built it, Mr. Stephen +Girard, he wouldn't ever let any minister step inside it. Wasn't it +funny in him? + +"Then we went over to Fairmount, besides. Fairmount is where they bring +up the water from the Schuylkill river, to supply the city. There is +machinery to force it up--great wheels and things. Then it makes a sort +of pond on top of a hill, and there are statues and trees, and it's real +beautiful. + +"Father wanted to take us out to Laurel Hill:--that's the cemetery, he +says, very much like Mount Auburn, near Boston, where Aunt Miranda is +buried. But we shan't have time." + +GYPSY'S JOURNAL. + +"Friday Night. + +"In Washington! in Washington! and I'm too sleepy to write a thing about +it." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +A TELEGRAM + + +JOY'S JOURNAL. + +"Saturday, June 21st. + +"Well, we are here at last, and it is really very nice. I didn't suppose +I should like it so much; but there is a great deal to be seen. We +stopped over one train at Baltimore. It rained like everything, but +uncle wanted us to see the city. So we took a hack and drove about, and +saw Washington's monument. I suppose I ought to describe it, but it was +so rainy I didn't notice it very much. I think monuments look like big +ghosts, and then I'm always afraid they'll tumble over on me. + +"Gypsy said she wondered whether George Washington ever looked down out +of heaven to see the monuments, and cities, and towns, and all the +things that are named after him, and what he thought about it. Wasn't it +queer in her? + +"We stopped at a great cathedral there is in Baltimore, too. It was very +handsome, only so dark. I saw some Irish women saying their prayers +round in the pews, and there was a dish of holy water by the door, and +they all dipped their fingers in it and crossed themselves as they went +in and out. + +"We saw ever so many negroes in Baltimore, too. From the time you get to +Philadelphia, on to Washington, there are ever so many; it's so +different from New England. I never saw so many there in all my life as +we have seen these few days. Gypsy doubled up her fist and looked real +angry when she saw them sometimes, and said, 'Just to think! perhaps +that man is a slave, or that little girl!' But I never thought about it +somehow. To-morrow I will write about Washington. Baltimore has taken up +all my room." + +GYPSY'S JOURNAL. + +Willard's Hotel, Saturday Night. + +"You ought to have seen the yellow omnibus we came up from the depot +in! Such a _looking_ thing! It was ever so long, something like a square +stove-pipe, pulled out; and it was real crowded, and the way it jolted! +There were several of them there waiting for the passengers. I should +think they might have some decent, comfortable horse-cars, the way they +do in other cities. I think it's very nice at Philadelphia. They come to +the depots at every train, and go down at every train. Father says the +horse-car arrangements are better in Philadelphia than they are in +Boston or New York. + +"It seems very funny here, to be in a city that is under military rule. +There are a great many soldiers, and barracks where they sleep; and a +great many tents, too. There are forts, father says, all around the +city, and Monday we can see some of them. While we were riding up from +the depot I saw six soldiers marching along with a Rebel prisoner. +Father says they found him hanging around the Capitol, and that he was a +Rebel spy. He had on a ragged coat, and a great many black whiskers, and +he was swearing terribly. I didn't feel sorry for him a bit, and I hope +they'll hang him, or something; but father says he doesn't know. + +"We are at Willard's Hotel. Father came here for the same reason he went +to the Brevoort--so we might see what it was like. It is very large, +and so many stairs! and such long dining-tables, and so many men eating +at them. We didn't have as nice a supper as we did in New York. + +"It is late now, and the lamps are lighted in the streets. I can see +from the window the people hurrying by, and some soldiers, and one funny +little tired mule drawing a great wagon of something. + +"There! he's stopped and won't move an inch, and the man is whipping him +awfully. The wicked old thing.... + +"I was just going to open the window and tell him to stop, but father +says I mustn't. + +"As we rode up from the depot, I saw a great round dim thing away in +the dark. Father says it is the dome of the Capitol." + +GYPSY'S JOURNAL. + +"After Sundown, Sunday Night. + +"Father says it isn't any harm to write a little about what we saw +to-day, because we haven't been anywhere except to church. + +"The horrid old gong woke me up real early this morning. I should have +thought it very late at home, but they don't have breakfast in hotels +till eight o'clock hardly ever, and you can get up all along till +eleven, just as you like. This morning we were so tired that we didn't +want to get up a bit. + +"There was a waiter at the table that tipped over a great plateful of +beefsteak and gravy right on to a lady's blue silk morning-dress. She +was a Senator's wife, and she jumped like anything. Joy said, 'What a +shame!' but I think it's real silly in people to wear blue silk +morning-dresses, because then you can't wear anything any nicer, and you +won't feel dressed up in the afternoon a bit.--Oh, I forgot! this isn't +Sunday! + +"Well, we all went to church this morning to Dr. Gurley's church. Dr. +Gurley is a Presbyterian, father says. I don't care anything about that, +but I thought you might. That is the church President Lincoln goes to, +and we went there so as to see him. + +"He sat clear up in front, and I couldn't see anything all through the +sermon but the back of his head. We sat 'most down by the door. Besides, +there was a little boy in the pew next ours that kept his father's +umbrella right over the top of the pew, and made me laugh. He was just +about as big as Winnie. Oh, they say _slip_ here instead of pew, just as +they do in Boston. I don't see what's the use. Joy doesn't like it +because I keep saying pew. She says it's countrified. I think one is +just as good as another. + +"Well, you see, we just waited, and father looked at the minister, and +Joy and I kept watching the President's kid gloves. They were black +because he's in mourning for his little boy, and he kept putting his +hand to his face a great deal. He moved round too, ever so much. I kept +thinking how tired he was, working away all the week, taking care of +those great armies, and being scolded when we got beaten, just as if it +were all his fault. I think it is real good in him to come to church +anyway. If I were President and had so much to do, and got so tired, I'd +stay at home Sundays and go to sleep,--if you'd let me. I think +President Lincoln must be a very good man. I'm sure he is, and I'll tell +you why. + +"After church we waited so as to see him. There were ever so many +strangers sitting there together,--about fifty I should say, but father +laughed and said twenty. Well, we all stood up, and he began to walk +down the aisle with his wife, and I saw his face, and he isn't homely, +but he looks real kind, and oh, mother! so sober and sad! and I _know_ +he's a good man, and that's why. + +"Mrs. Lincoln was dressed all in black, with a long crape veil. She kind +of peeked out under it, but I couldn't see her very well, and I didn't +think much about her because I was looking at him. + +"Well, then, you see there were some people in front of me, and I +couldn't see very well, so I just stepped up on a cricket so's to be +tall, and what do you think? When the President was opposite, just +opposite, and looked round at us, that old cricket had to tip over, and +down I went, flat, in the bottom of the pew! + +"I guess my cheeks were as red as two beets when I got up; and the +President saw me, and he looked right at me,--right into my eyes and +laughed. He did now, really, and he looked as if he couldn't help it, +possibly. + +"When he laughs it looks like a little sunbeam or something, running all +over his face. + +"Father says we shan't probably see him again. They don't have any +receptions now at the White House, because they are in mourning. + +"We went to a Quaker meeting this afternoon, but there isn't any time to +tell about it." + +JOY'S JOURNAL. + +"Monday, June 23. + +"Oh dear me! We've seen so much to-day I can't remember half of it. I +shall write what I can, and Gypsy may write the rest. + +"In the first place, we went to the Capitol. It's built of white marble, +and it's very large. There are quantities of long steps on different +sides of it, and so many doors, and passages, and rooms, and pillars. I +never could find my way out, in the world, alone. I wonder the Senators +don't get lost sometimes. + +"About the first place you come into is a round room, called the +rotunda. Uncle says rotunda means round. There are some pictures there. +One of them is Washington crossing the Delaware, with great cakes of ice +beating up against the boat. One of the men has a flag in his hand. +Gypsy and I liked it ever so much. + +"Oh!--the dome of the Capitol isn't quite finished. There is +scaffolding up there, and it doesn't look very pretty. + +"Well, then we went upstairs, and I never saw such handsome stairs! They +are marble, and so wide! and the banisters are the most elegant +variegated marble,--a sort of dark brown, and they are _so_ broad! Why, +I should think they were a foot and a half broad, but then I don't know +exactly how much a foot is. + +"We went into two rooms that Gypsy and I both liked best of anything. +One is called the Marble Room, and the other the Fresco Room. The Marble +Room is all made of marble,--walls, floor, window-sills, everything but +the furniture. The marble is of different colors and patterns, and +_just_ as beautiful! The furniture is covered with drab damask. + +"The Fresco Room is all made of pictures. Frescoes are pictures painted +on the ceilings, Uncle says. He says Michael Angelo, the great sculptor +and artist, used to paint a great many, and that they are very +beautiful. He says he had to lie flat on scaffoldings while he was +painting the domes of great churches, and that, by looking up so, in +that position, he hurt his eyes very much. This room I started to tell +about is real pretty. I've almost forgotten what the furniture is +covered with. Seems to me it is yellow damask, or else it's the Marble +Room that's yellow, and this is drab,--or else--I declare! We've seen +so much to-day, I've got everything mixed up! + +"Uncle has just been correcting our journals, and he says it isn't +proper to say 'I've got,' but I ought to say 'I have.' + +"Oh, I forgot to say that the Senators' wives and daughters who are +boarding here are very stylish people. When I grow up I mean to marry a +Senator, and come to Washington, and give great parties. + +"I don't see why I don't hear from father. You know it's nearly three +weeks now since I had a letter. I thought I should have one last week, +just as much as could be." + +GYPSY'S JOURNAL. + +"Eight o'clock, Monday Night. + +"Joy has told ever so much about the Capitol, and I don't want to tell +it all over again. If I forget it, I can look at her journal, you know. + +"But she didn't tell about Congress. Well, you see if we'd come a little +later we shouldn't have seen them at all; and if it didn't happen to be +a long session we shouldn't see them so late in the season. But then we +did. I'm very glad, only I thought it was rather stupid. + +"I liked the halls, anyway. They're splendid, only there's a great deal +of yellow about them; and then there are some places for pictures, and +the pictures aren't put up yet. + +"There's a gallery runs round, where visitors sit. The Senators and +Representatives are down on the floor. We went into the Senate first. +They sat in seats that curved round, and the President of the +Senate--that's Vice-President Hamlin--he sits in a sort of little +pulpit, and looks after things. If anybody wants to speak, they have to +ask him, and he says, 'The Senator from so-and-so has the floor.' Then +when they get into a fight, he has to settle it. Isn't it funny in such +great grown-up men to quarrel? But they do, like everything. There was +one man got real mad at Mr. Sumner to-day. + +"I didn't care about what they were talking about, but it was fun to +look down and see all the desks and papers, and some of them were just +as sleepy as could be. Then they kept whispering to each other while a +man was speaking, and sometimes they talked right out loud. If I should +do that at school, I guess Miss Cardrew would give it to me. But what I +thought was queerest of all, they all talked right _at_ the +Vice-President, and kept saying, 'Mr. President,' and 'Sir,' just as if +there weren't anybody else in the room. + +"Some of the Senators are handsome, and a good many more aren't. Joy +stood up for Mr. Sumner because he came from Massachusetts. He _is_ a +nice-looking man, and I had to say so. He has a high forehead, and he +looks exactly like a gentleman. Besides, father says he has done a noble +work for the country and the slaves, and the rest of New England ought +to be just as proud of him as Massachusetts. + +"We went into the House of Representatives, too, and it was a great deal +noisier there than it was in the Senate, there were so many more of +them. I saw one man eating peanuts. Most all of them looked hungry. The +man that sits up behind the desk and takes care of the House, is called +the Speaker. I think it's real funny, because he never makes a speech. +As we came out of the Capitol, father turned round and looked back and +said: 'Just think! All the laws that govern this great country come out +from there.' He said some more about it, too, but there was the funniest +little negro boy peeking through the fence, and I didn't hear. + +"We went to the White House next. Father says it's something like a +palace, only some palaces are handsomer. It's white marble like the +Capitol. We went up the steps, and a man let us right in. We saw two +rooms. One is called the Red Room and one the Green Room. + +The Red Room is furnished in red damask and the Green is all green. They +were very handsome, only all the furniture was ranged along the walls, +and that made it seem so big and empty. Father says that's because these +rooms are used for receptions, and there is such a crowd. + +"There is a Blue Room, too, that visitors are sometimes let into. Father +asked the doorkeeper; but he said, 'The family were at breakfast in it.' +That was _eleven o'clock_! I guess I'd like to be a President's +daughter, and not have to get up. We didn't see anything more of +President Lincoln. + +"We've been going all day, and we've been to the Patent Office and the +Smithsonian Institute, but I'm too tired to say anything about them." + +GYPSY'S JOURNAL. + +"Tuesday. + +"We've been over to Alexandria--that's across the Potomac River--in +the funniest little steamboat you ever saw. When you went in or came out +of the cabin, you have to crawl under a stove-pipe. It wasn't high +enough to walk straight. I don't like Alexandria. It's all mud and +secessionists. People looked cross, and Joy was afraid they'd shoot us. +We saw the house where Col. Ellsworth was shot at the beginning of the +war. The man was very polite, and showed us round. The plastering around +the place where he fell, and _all the stairs_, had been cut away by +people as relics. We saw the church where Gen. Washington used to go, +too." + +JOY'S JOURNAL + +"Wednesday Night. + +"We are just home from Mount Vernon and we've had a splendid time. We +went in a steamboat; it's some way from Washington. You can go by land, +if you want to. It was real pleasant. Gen. Washington's house was +there,--a queer, low old place, and we went all over it. There was a +nice garden, and beautiful grounds, with woods clear down to the water. +He is buried on the place under a marble tomb, with a sort of brick shed +all around it. There is nothing on the tomb but the word Washington. His +wife is buried by him, and it says on hers, Martha, Consort of +Washington. All the gentlemen took off their hats while we stood there. +To-morrow we are going to Manassas, if there is a boat. Uncle is going +to see. I am having a splendid time. Won't it be nice telling father all +about it when he comes home?" + +[Illustration] + +Joy laid down her pen suddenly. She heard a strange noise in her uncle's +room where he and Gypsy were sitting. It was a sort of cry,--a low, +smothered cry, as of some one in grief or pain. She shut up her +portfolio and hurried in. Mr. Breynton held a paper in his hand. Gypsy +was looking over his shoulder, and her face was very pale. + +"What is it? What's the matter?" + +Nobody answered. + +Mr. Breynton turned away his face. Gypsy broke out crying. + +"Why, what _is_ the matter?" said Joy, looking alarmed. + +"Joy, my poor child--" began her uncle. But Gypsy sprang forward +suddenly, and threw her arms around Joy's neck. + +"Oh, Joy, Joy,--your father!" + +"Let me see that paper!" Joy caught it before they could stop her, +opened it, read it,--dropped it slowly. It was a telegram from +Yorkbury:-- + +"_Boston papers say Joy's father died in France two weeks ago._" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +A SUNDAY NIGHT + + +They were all together in the parlor at Yorkbury--Joy very still, with +her head in her auntie's lap. It was two weeks now since that night when +she sat writing in her journal at Washington, and planning so happily +for the trip to Manassas that had never been taken. + +They had been able to learn little about her father's death as yet. A +Paris paper reported, and Boston papers copied, the statement that an +American of his name, stopping at an obscure French town, was missing +for two days, and found on the third, murdered, robbed, horribly +disfigured. Mr. George Breynton had been traveling alone in the interior +of the country, and had written home that he should be in this +town--St. Pierre--at precisely the time given as the date of the +American's death. So his long silence was awfully explained to Joy. The +fact that the branch of his firm with which he had frequent business +correspondence, had not received the least intelligence of him for +several weeks, left no doubt of the mournful truth. Something had gone +wrong in the shipping of certain goods, which had required his immediate +presence; they had therefore written and telegraphed to him repeatedly, +but there had been no reply. Day by day the ominous silence had shaded +into alarm, had deepened into suspense, had grown into certainty. + +Mr. Breynton had fought against conviction as long as he could, had +clung to all possibilities and impossibilities of doubt, but even he had +given up all hope. + +Dead--dead, without a sign; without one last word to the child waiting +for him across the seas; without one last kiss or blessing; dead by +ruffian hands, lying now in an unknown, lonely grave. It seemed to Joy +as if her heart must break. She tried to fly from the horrible, haunting +thought, to forget it in her dreams, to drown it in her books and play. +But she could not leave it; it would not leave her. It must be taken +down into her heart and kept there; she and it must be always alone +together; no one could come between them; no one could help her. + +And so there was nothing to do but take that dreary journey home from +Washington, come quietly back to Yorkbury, come back without father or +mother, into the home that must be hers now, the only one left her in +all the wide world; nothing to do but to live on, and never to see him +any more, never to kiss him, never to creep up into his arms, or hear +his brave, merry voice calling, "Joyce, Joyce," as it used to call about +the old home. No one called her Joyce but her father. No one should ever +call her so again. + +Tom called her so one day, never thinking. + +"I don't want to hear that--not that name," said Joy, flushing +suddenly; then paling and turning away. + +She was very still now. Since the first few days she seldom cried; or if +she did, it was when she was away alone in the dark, with no one to see +her. She had grown strangely silent, strangely gentle and thoughtful for +Joy. Sorrow was doing for her what it does for so many older and better; +and in her frightened, childish way, Joy was suffering all that she +could suffer. + +Perhaps only Gypsy knew just how much it was. The two girls had been +drawn very near to each other these past few weeks. It seemed to Gypsy +as if the grief were almost her own, she felt so sorry for Joy; she had +grown very gentle to her, very patient with her, very thoughtful for her +comfort. They were little ways in which she could show this, but these +little ways are better than any words. When she left her own merry play +with the girls to hunt up Joy sitting somewhere alone and miserable, and +coax her out into the sunlight, or sit beside her and tell funny stories +till the smiles came wandering back against their will to Joy's pale +face; when she slid her strawberry tarts into Joy's desk at recess, or +stole upstairs after her with a handful of peppermints bought with her +own little weekly allowance, or threw her arms around her so each night +with a single, silent kiss, or came up sometimes in the dark and cried +with her, without saying a word, Joy was not unmindful nor ungrateful. +She noticed it all, everything; out of her grief she thanked her with +all her heart, and treasured up in her memory to love for all her life +the Gypsy of these sad days. + +They were in the parlor together on this Sunday night, as I said,--all +except Mr. Breynton, who had been for several days in Boston, settling +his brother's affairs, and making arrangements to sell the house for +Joy; it was her house now, that handsome place in Beacon Street, and +that seemed so strange,--strange to Joy most of all. + +They were grouped around the room in the fading western light, Gypsy and +Tom together by the window, Winnie perched demurely on the piano-stool, +and Joy on the cricket at Mrs. Breynton's feet. The faint light was +touching her face, and her mournful dress with its heavy crape +trimmings,--there were no white chenille and silver brooches now; Joy +had laid these things aside of her own wish. It is a very small matter, +to be sure, this mourning; but in Joy's case it mirrored her real grief +very completely. The something which she had _not_ felt when her mother +died, she felt now, to the full. She had a sort of notion,--an +ignorant, childish notion, but very real to her,--that it was wicked to +wear bows and hair-ribbons now. + +She had been sitting so for some time, with her head in her aunt's lap, +quite silent, her eyes looking off through the window. + +"Why not have a little singing?" said Mrs. Breynton, in her pleasant, +hushed voice;--it was always a little different somehow, Sunday nights; +a little more quiet. + +Gypsy went to the piano, and usurped Winnie's throne on the stool, much +to that young gentleman's disgust. + +"What shall it be, mother?" + +"Joy's hymn, dear." + +Gypsy began, without further explanation, to play a low, sweet prelude, +and then they sang through the hymn that Joy had learned and loved in +these few desolate weeks: + + "There is an eye that never sleeps + Beneath the wing of night; + There is an ear that never shuts + When sink the beams of light. + + "There is an arm that never tires + When human strength gives way-- + There is a love that never fails + When earthly loves decay." + +Joy tried to sing, but just there she broke down. Gypsy's voice faltered +a little, and Mrs. Breynton sang very softly to the end. + +After that they were all still; Joy had hidden her face. Tom began to +hum over the tune uneasily, in his deep bass. A sudden sob broke into +it. + +[Illustration] + +"This is what makes it all so different." + +"What, dear?" + +"The singing, and the prayers, and the Sunday nights; it's been making +me think about being a good girl, ever since I've been here. We never +had any at home. Father--" + +But she did not finish. She rose and went over to the western window, +away from the rest, where no one could see her face. + +The light was dimming fast; it was nearly dark now, and the crickets +were chirping in the distant meadows. + +Tom coughed, and came very near trying to whistle. Gypsy screwed the +piano-stool round with a sudden motion, and went over to where Joy +stood. + +Tom and his mother began to talk in a low voice, and the two girls were +as if alone. + +The first thing Gypsy did, was to put her arms round Joy's neck and kiss +her. Joy hid her face on her shoulder and cried softly. Then Gypsy +choked a little, and for a while they cried together. + +"You see I _am_ so sorry," said Gypsy. + +"I know it,--I know it. Oh, Gypsy, if I could see him _just one +minute_!" + +Gypsy only gave her a little hug in answer. Then presently, as the best +thing she could think of to say: + +"We'll go strawberrying to-morrow, and I'll save you the very best +place. Besides, I've got a tart upstairs I've been saving for you, and +you can eat it when we go up to bed. I think things taste real nice in +bed. Don't you?" + +"Look here, Gypsy, do you know I love you ever so much?" + +"You do! Well, isn't that funny? I was just thinking how much I loved +you. Besides, I'm real glad you're going to live here always." + +"Why, I thought you'd be sorry." + +"I should have once," said Gypsy honestly. "But that's because I was +ugly. I don't think I could get along without you possibly--no, not +anyway in the world. Just think how long we've slept together, and what +'gales' we do get into when our lamp goes out and we can't find the +matches! You see I never had anybody to get into gales with before." + +Somebody rang the door-bell just then, and the conversation was broken +up. + +"Joy, have you a mind to go?" asked Mrs. Breynton. "Patty is out, this +evening." + +"Why! whoever it is, they've come right in," said Joy, opening the door. + +A man was there in the entry;--a man with heavy whiskers and a valise. + +The rest of them sitting back there in the dark waited, wondering a +little who it could be coming in Sunday night. And this is what they +heard: + +"Joyce, little Joyce!--why, don't be frightened, child; it's nobody but +father." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +GOOD BYE + + +They were alone together in the quiet room--Peace Maythorne and Joy. +The thick yellow sunlight fell in, touching the old places,--the wall +where Gypsy's blue and golden text was hanging,--a little patch of the +faded carpet, the bed, and the folded hands upon it, and the peaceful +face. + +Joy had crept up somewhat timidly into Gypsy's place close by the +pillow. She was talking, half sadly, half gladly, as if she hardly knew +whether to laugh or cry. + +"You see, we're going right off in this noon train, and I thought I +_must_ come over and say good-bye." + +"I'm real sorry to have you go--real." + +"Are you?" said Joy, looking pleased. "Well, I didn't suppose you'd +care. I do believe you care for everybody, Peace." + +"I try to," said Peace, smiling. "You go in rather a hurry, don't you +Joy?" + +"Yes. It's just a week since father came. He wants to stay a while +longer, dreadfully, but he says his business at home can't be put off, +and of course I'm going with him. Do you know, Peace, I can't bear to +have him out of the room five minutes, I'm so silly. It seems all the +time as if I were dreaming a real beautiful dream, and when I woke up, +the awful days would come back, and he'd be dead again. I keep wanting +to kiss him and feel of him all the time." + +"You poor child!" said Peace, her eyes dimming a little, "how strange it +all has been. How good He's been to you--God." + +"I know it. I know He has, Peace. Wasn't it queer how it all came about? +Gypsy says nobody but God could have managed it so, and Auntie says He +must have had some very good reason. + +"You see, father was sick all that time in a little out-of-the-way +French town with not a single soul he knew, and nobody to talk English, +and so sick he couldn't write a word--out of his head, he says, all the +time. That's why I didn't hear, nor the firm. Then wasn't it so strange +about that man who was murdered at St. Pierre?--the very same +name--George Breynton, only it was George W. instead of George M.; but +that they didn't find out till afterwards. Poor man! I wonder if _he_ +has anybody crying for him over here. Then you know, just as soon as +ever father got well enough to travel, he started straight home. He said +he'd had enough of Europe, and if he ever lived to get home, he wouldn't +go another time without somebody with him. It wasn't so very pleasant, +he said, to come so near dying with nobody round that you knew, and not +to hear a word of your own language. Then, you know, he got into Boston +Saturday, and he hurried straight up here; but the train only went as +far as Rutland, and stopped at midnight. Then, you see, he was so crazy +to see me and let me know he wasn't dead, he couldn't possibly wait; so +he hired a carriage and drove all the way over Sunday. And oh, Peace, +when I saw him out there in the entry!" + +"I guess you said your prayers that night," said Peace, smiling. + +"I rather guess I did! And Peace, that makes me think"--Joy grew +suddenly very grave; there was an earnest, thoughtful look in her eyes +that Joy's eyes did not have when she first came to Yorkbury; a look +that they had been slowly learning all this year; that they had been +very quickly learning these past few weeks--"When I get home it's going +to be hard--a good many things are going to be hard." + +"Yes, I see," said Peace, musingly. Peace always seemed to see just what +other people were living and hoping and fearing, without any words from +them to explain it. + +"It's all so different from what it is here. I don't want to forget what +you've told me and Auntie's told me. Almost everybody I know at home +doesn't care for what you do up here in Yorkbury. I used to think about +dancing-school, and birthday parties, and rigging up, and summer +fashions, and how many diamonds I'd have when I was married, and all +that, the whole of the time, Peace--the _whole_ of it; then I got mad +when my dresses didn't fit, and I used to strike Therese and Kate, if +you'll believe it--when I was real angry that was. Now, up here, +somehow I'm ashamed when I miss at school; then sometimes I help Auntie +a little, and sometimes I _do_ try not to be cross. Now, you see, I'm +going back, and father he thinks the world of me, and let's me do +everything I want to, and I'm afraid"--Joy stopped, puzzled to express +herself--"I'm afraid I _shall_ do everything I want to." + +Peace smiled, and seemed to be thinking. + +"Then, you see. I shall grow up a cross, old selfish woman," said Joy +dolefully; "Auntie says people grow selfish that have everything their +own way. You see, up here there's been Gypsy, and she wanted things just +as much as I, so there's been two ways, and that's the thing of it." + +"I don't think you need to grow up selfish," said Peace, slowly; "no, I +am sure you needn't." + +"Well, I wish you'd tell me how." + +"Ask Him not to let you," said Peace softly. + +Joy colored. + +"I know it; I've thought of that. But there's another trouble. You see, +father--well, he doesn't care about those things. He never has prayers +nor anything, and he used to bring me novels to read Sundays. I read +them then. I've got all out of the way of it up here. I don't think I +should want to, now." + +"Joy," said Peace after a silence, "I think--I guess, you must help +your father a little. If he sees you doing right, perhaps,--he loves +you so very much,--perhaps by-and-by he will feel differently." + +Joy made no answer. Her eyes looked off dreamily through the window; her +thoughts wandered away from Peace and the quiet room--away into her +future, which the young girl seemed to see just then, with grave, +prophetic glance; a future of difficulty, struggle, temptation; of old +habits and old teachings to be battled with; of new ones to be formed; +of much to learn and unlearn, and try, and try again; but perhaps--she +still seemed to see with the young girl's earnest eyes that for the +moment had quite outgrown the child--a future faithfully lived and +well; not frittered away in beautiful playing only, but _filled up with +something_; more than that, a future which should be a long +thank-offering to God for this great mercy He had shown her, this great +blessing He had given her back from the grave; a future in which, +perhaps, they two who were so dear to each other, should seek Him +together--a future that he could bless to them both. + +Peace quite understood the look with which she turned at last, half +sobbing, to kiss her good-bye. + +"I _must_ go,--it is very late. Thank you, Peace. Thank you as long as +I live." + +She looked back in closing the door, to see the quiet face that lay so +patiently on the pillow, to see the stillness of the folded hands, to +see the last, rare smile. + +She wondered, half guessing the truth, if she should ever see it again. +She never did. + +They were all wondering what had become of her, when she came into the +house. + +"We start in half an hour, Joyce, my dear," said her father, catching +her up in his arms for a kiss;--he almost always kissed her now when +she had been fifteen minutes out of his sight,--"We start in half an +hour, and you won't have any more than time to eat your lunch." + +Mrs. Breynton had spread one of her very very best lunches on the +dining-room table, and Joy's chair was ready and waiting for her, and +everybody stood around, in that way people will stand, when a guest is +going away, not knowing exactly what to do or what to say, but looking +very sober. And very sober they felt; they had all learned to love Joy +in this year she had spent among them, and it was dreary enough to see +her trunks packed and strapped in the entry, and her closet shelves +upstairs empty, and all little traces of her about the house vanishing +fast. + +"Come along," said Gypsy in a savage undertone, "Come and eat, and let +the rest stay out here. I've hardly set eyes on you all the morning. I +must have you all myself now." + +"Oh hum!" said Joy, attempting a currant tart, and throwing it down with +one little semi-circular bite in it. "So I'm really off, and this is the +very last time I shall sit at this table." + +"Hush up, if you please!" observed Gypsy, winking hard, "just eat your +tart." + +Joy cut off a delicate mouthful of the cold tongue, and then began to +look around the room. + +"The last time I shall see Winnie's blocks, and that little patch of +sunshine on the machine, and the big Bible on the book-case!--Oh, how I +shall think about them all nights, when I'm sitting down by the grate at +home." + +"Stop talking about your last times! It's bad enough to have you go +anyway. I don't know what I _shall_ do without you." + +"I don't know what I shall do without you, I'm sure," said Joy, shaking +her head mournfully, "but then, you know, we're going to write to each +other twice every single week." + +"I know it,--every week as long as we live, remember." + +"Oh, I shan't forget. I'm going to make father buy me some pink paper +and envelopes with Love stamped up in the corners, on purpose." + +"Anyway, it's a great deal worse for me," said Gypsy, forlornly. "You're +going to Boston, and to open the house again and all, and have ever so +much to think about. I'm just going on and on, and you won't be upstairs +when I go to bed, and your things won't ever be hanging out on the nails +in the entry, and I'll have to go to school alone, and--O dear me!" + +"Yes, I suppose you do have the worst of it," said Joy, feeling a great +spasm of magnanimity in bringing herself to say this; "but it's pretty +bad for me, and I don't believe you can feel worse than I do. Isn't it +funny in us to love each other so much?" + +"Real," said Gypsy, trying to laugh, with two bright tears rolling down +her cheeks. Both the girls were thinking just then of Joy's coming to +Yorkbury. How strange that it should have been so hard for Gypsy; that +it had cost her a _sacrifice_ to welcome her cousin; how strange that +they could ever have quarreled so; how strange all those ugly, dark +memories of the first few months they spent together--the jealousy, the +selfishness, the dislike of each other, the constant fretting and +jarring, the longing for the time that should separate them. And now it +had come, and here they sat looking at each other and crying--quite +sure their hearts were broken! + +The two tears rolled down into Gypsy's smile, and she swallowed them +before she spoke: + +"I do believe it's all owing to that verse!" + +"What verse?" + +"Why, Peace Maythorne's. I suppose she and mother would say we'd tried +somehow or other to prefer one another in honor, you know, and that's +the thing of it. Because you see I know if I'd always had everything my +own way, I shouldn't have liked you a bit, and I'd have been real glad +when you went off." + +"Joyce, Joyce!" called her father from the entry, "Here's the coach. +It's time to be getting ready to cry and kiss all around." + +"Oh--hum!" said Gypsy. + +"I know it," said Joy, not very clear as to what she was talking about. +"Where's my bag? Oh, yes. And my parasol? Oh there's Winnie riding +horseback on it. Well, Gypsy, go--od--" + +"Bye," finished Gypsy, with a great sob. And oh, such a hugging and +kissing as there was then! + +[Illustration] + +Then Joy was caught in her Auntie's arms, and Tom's and Winnie's all at +once, it seemed to her, for the coachman was in a very great hurry, and +by the time she was in the coach seated by her father, she found she had +quite spoiled her new kid gloves, rubbing her eyes. + +"Good-bye," called Gypsy, waving one of Winnie's old jackets, under the +impression that it was a handkerchief. + +"Twice every week!" + +"Yes--sure: on pink paper, remember." + +"Yes, and envelopes. Good-bye. Good-bye!" + +So the last nodding and smiling was over, and the coach rattled away, +and the house with the figures on the steps grew dim and faded from +sight, and the train whirled Joy on over the mountains--away into that +future of which she sat thinking in Peace Maythorne's room, of which she +sat thinking now, with earnest eyes, looking off through the car-window, +with many brave young hopes, and little fear. + +"You'd just better come into the dining-room," said Winnie to Gypsy, who +was standing out in the yard, remarkably interested in the lilac-bush, +and under the very curious impression that people thought she wasn't +crying. "I think it's real nice Joy's gone, 'cause she didn't eat up her +luncheon. There's a piece of pounded cake with sugar on top. There were +tarts with squince-jelly in 'em too, but they--well, they ain't there +now, someways or nuther." + +THE END. + +------------------------------------------------------------------------ + +TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES + +1. Punctuation has been normalized to contemporary standards. + +2. Frontispiece illustration relocated to after title page. + +3. Typographic errors corrected in original: + p. 46 "the the" to "the" ("the very beginning") + p. 52 "Gpysy" to "Gypsy" ("rushed over Gypsy's face") + p. 85 "Gpysy" to "Gypsy" ("Gypsy leaned back") + p. 99 "the the" to "the" ("the only school") + p. 127 "Jemina" to "Jemima" ("call her Jemima") + p. 203 "buscuit" to "biscuit" ("biscuit and cold tongue") + p. 289 "were were" to "were" ("There were tarts") + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Gypsy's Cousin Joy, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GYPSY'S COUSIN JOY *** + +***** This file should be named 18646.txt or 18646.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/6/4/18646/ + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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