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.



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."



"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.



"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.



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!"



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.



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."



"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.



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 beautiful 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."



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.