"We've seen ever so many other things, but I haven't half time to tell you about them all.

"We're at the Brevoort House, and I tell you I was frightened when I first came in, it's so handsome. We take our rooms, and then just go down into the most splendid dining-hall, and sit down at little tables and order what we want, and don't pay for anything but that. Father says it's the European plan. Our rooms are beautiful. Don't you tell anybody, but I'm almost afraid of the waiters and chambermaids; they look as if they felt so grand. But Joy, she just rings the bell and makes them bring her up some water, and orders them around like anything. Joy wanted to go to the Fifth Avenue Hotel, but father said it was too noisy. He says this is noisy enough, but he wanted us to see what a handsome hotel is like, and—and—why! I'm almost asleep.

JOY'S JOURNAL.

"Philadelphia, Wednesday, June 18.

"We came to Philadelphia this morning, and we almost choked with the dust, riding through New Jersey. We're at a boarding-house,—a new one just opened. They call it the Markoe House. (I haven't the least idea whether I've spelled it right.) Uncle didn't sleep very well last night, so he wanted a quiet place, and thought the hotels were noisy. He thought once of going to La Pierre, but gave it up. Father used to go to the Continental, I know, because I've heard him say so. I'm too tired to write any more."

GYPSY'S JOURNAL.

"Thursday, June something or other.

"We stayed over a day here,—oh, 'here' is Philadelphia,—because father wanted us to see the city. It's real funny. People have white wooden shutters outside their windows, and when anybody dies they keep a black ribbon hanging out on them. Then the streets are so broad. I saw four Quakers this morning. We've been out to see Girard College, where they take care of orphans, and the man that built it, Mr. Stephen Girard, he wouldn't ever let any minister step inside it. Wasn't it funny in him?

"Then we went over to Fairmount, besides. Fairmount is where they bring up the water from the Schuylkill river, to supply the city. There is machinery to force it up—great wheels and things. Then it makes a sort of pond on top of a hill, and there are statues and trees, and it's real beautiful.

"Father wanted to take us out to Laurel Hill:—that's the cemetery, he says, very much like Mount Auburn, near Boston, where Aunt Miranda is buried. But we shan't have time."

GYPSY'S JOURNAL.

"Friday Night.

"In Washington! in Washington! and I'm too sleepy to write a thing about it."



CHAPTER XII

A TELEGRAM

JOY'S JOURNAL.

"Saturday, June 21st.

"Well, we are here at last, and it is really very nice. I didn't suppose I should like it so much; but there is a great deal to be seen. We stopped over one train at Baltimore. It rained like everything, but uncle wanted us to see the city. So we took a hack and drove about, and saw Washington's monument. I suppose I ought to describe it, but it was so rainy I didn't notice it very much. I think monuments look like big ghosts, and then I'm always afraid they'll tumble over on me.

"Gypsy said she wondered whether George Washington ever looked down out of heaven to see the monuments, and cities, and towns, and all the things that are named after him, and what he thought about it. Wasn't it queer in her?

"We stopped at a great cathedral there is in Baltimore, too. It was very handsome, only so dark. I saw some Irish women saying their prayers round in the pews, and there was a dish of holy water by the door, and they all dipped their fingers in it and crossed themselves as they went in and out.

"We saw ever so many negroes in Baltimore, too. From the time you get to Philadelphia, on to Washington, there are ever so many; it's so different from New England. I never saw so many there in all my life as we have seen these few days. Gypsy doubled up her fist and looked real angry when she saw them sometimes, and said, 'Just to think! perhaps that man is a slave, or that little girl!' But I never thought about it somehow. To-morrow I will write about Washington. Baltimore has taken up all my room."

GYPSY'S JOURNAL.

Willard's Hotel, Saturday Night.

"You ought to have seen the yellow omnibus we came up from the depot in! Such a looking thing! It was ever so long, something like a square stove-pipe, pulled out; and it was real crowded, and the way it jolted! There were several of them there waiting for the passengers. I should think they might have some decent, comfortable horse-cars, the way they do in other cities. I think it's very nice at Philadelphia. They come to the depots at every train, and go down at every train. Father says the horse-car arrangements are better in Philadelphia than they are in Boston or New York.

"It seems very funny here, to be in a city that is under military rule. There are a great many soldiers, and barracks where they sleep; and a great many tents, too. There are forts, father says, all around the city, and Monday we can see some of them. While we were riding up from the depot I saw six soldiers marching along with a Rebel prisoner. Father says they found him hanging around the Capitol, and that he was a Rebel spy. He had on a ragged coat, and a great many black whiskers, and he was swearing terribly. I didn't feel sorry for him a bit, and I hope they'll hang him, or something; but father says he doesn't know.

"We are at Willard's Hotel. Father came here for the same reason he went to the Brevoort—so we might see what it was like. It is very large, and so many stairs! and such long dining-tables, and so many men eating at them. We didn't have as nice a supper as we did in New York.

"It is late now, and the lamps are lighted in the streets. I can see from the window the people hurrying by, and some soldiers, and one funny little tired mule drawing a great wagon of something.

"There! he's stopped and won't move an inch, and the man is whipping him awfully. The wicked old thing....

"I was just going to open the window and tell him to stop, but father says I mustn't.

"As we rode up from the depot, I saw a great round dim thing away in the dark. Father says it is the dome of the Capitol."

GYPSY'S JOURNAL.

"After Sundown, Sunday Night.

"Father says it isn't any harm to write a little about what we saw to-day, because we haven't been anywhere except to church.

"The horrid old gong woke me up real early this morning. I should have thought it very late at home, but they don't have breakfast in hotels till eight o'clock hardly ever, and you can get up all along till eleven, just as you like. This morning we were so tired that we didn't want to get up a bit.

"There was a waiter at the table that tipped over a great plateful of beefsteak and gravy right on to a lady's blue silk morning-dress. She was a Senator's wife, and she jumped like anything. Joy said, 'What a shame!' but I think it's real silly in people to wear blue silk morning-dresses, because then you can't wear anything any nicer, and you won't feel dressed up in the afternoon a bit.—Oh, I forgot! this isn't Sunday!

"Well, we all went to church this morning to Dr. Gurley's church. Dr. Gurley is a Presbyterian, father says. I don't care anything about that, but I thought you might. That is the church President Lincoln goes to, and we went there so as to see him.

"He sat clear up in front, and I couldn't see anything all through the sermon but the back of his head. We sat 'most down by the door. Besides, there was a little boy in the pew next ours that kept his father's umbrella right over the top of the pew, and made me laugh. He was just about as big as Winnie. Oh, they say slip here instead of pew, just as they do in Boston. I don't see what's the use. Joy doesn't like it because I keep saying pew. She says it's countrified. I think one is just as good as another.

"Well, you see, we just waited, and father looked at the minister, and Joy and I kept watching the President's kid gloves. They were black because he's in mourning for his little boy, and he kept putting his hand to his face a great deal. He moved round too, ever so much. I kept thinking how tired he was, working away all the week, taking care of those great armies, and being scolded when we got beaten, just as if it were all his fault. I think it is real good in him to come to church anyway. If I were President and had so much to do, and got so tired, I'd stay at home Sundays and go to sleep,—if you'd let me. I think President Lincoln must be a very good man. I'm sure he is, and I'll tell you why.

"After church we waited so as to see him. There were ever so many strangers sitting there together,—about fifty I should say, but father laughed and said twenty. Well, we all stood up, and he began to walk down the aisle with his wife, and I saw his face, and he isn't homely, but he looks real kind, and oh, mother! so sober and sad! and I know he's a good man, and that's why.

"Mrs. Lincoln was dressed all in black, with a long crape veil. She kind of peeked out under it, but I couldn't see her very well, and I didn't think much about her because I was looking at him.

"Well, then, you see there were some people in front of me, and I couldn't see very well, so I just stepped up on a cricket so's to be tall, and what do you think? When the President was opposite, just opposite, and looked round at us, that old cricket had to tip over, and down I went, flat, in the bottom of the pew!

"I guess my cheeks were as red as two beets when I got up; and the President saw me, and he looked right at me,—right into my eyes and laughed. He did now, really, and he looked as if he couldn't help it, possibly.

"When he laughs it looks like a little sunbeam or something, running all over his face.

"Father says we shan't probably see him again. They don't have any receptions now at the White House, because they are in mourning.

"We went to a Quaker meeting this afternoon, but there isn't any time to tell about it."

JOY'S JOURNAL.

"Monday, June 23.

"Oh dear me! We've seen so much to-day I can't remember half of it. I shall write what I can, and Gypsy may write the rest.

"In the first place, we went to the Capitol. It's built of white marble, and it's very large. There are quantities of long steps on different sides of it, and so many doors, and passages, and rooms, and pillars. I never could find my way out, in the world, alone. I wonder the Senators don't get lost sometimes.

"About the first place you come into is a round room, called the rotunda. Uncle says rotunda means round. There are some pictures there. One of them is Washington crossing the Delaware, with great cakes of ice beating up against the boat. One of the men has a flag in his hand. Gypsy and I liked it ever so much.

"Oh!—the dome of the Capitol isn't quite finished. There is scaffolding up there, and it doesn't look very pretty.

"Well, then we went upstairs, and I never saw such handsome stairs! They are marble, and so wide! and the banisters are the most elegant variegated marble,—a sort of dark brown, and they are so broad! Why, I should think they were a foot and a half broad, but then I don't know exactly how much a foot is.

"We went into two rooms that Gypsy and I both liked best of anything. One is called the Marble Room, and the other the Fresco Room. The Marble Room is all made of marble,—walls, floor, window-sills, everything but the furniture. The marble is of different colors and patterns, and just as beautiful! The furniture is covered with drab damask.

"The Fresco Room is all made of pictures. Frescoes are pictures painted on the ceilings, Uncle says. He says Michael Angelo, the great sculptor and artist, used to paint a great many, and that they are very beautiful. He says he had to lie flat on scaffoldings while he was painting the domes of great churches, and that, by looking up so, in that position, he hurt his eyes very much. This room I started to tell about is real pretty. I've almost forgotten what the furniture is covered with. Seems to me it is yellow damask, or else it's the Marble Room that's yellow, and this is drab,—or else—I declare! We've seen so much to-day, I've got everything mixed up!

"Uncle has just been correcting our journals, and he says it isn't proper to say 'I've got,' but I ought to say 'I have.'

"Oh, I forgot to say that the Senators' wives and daughters who are boarding here are very stylish people. When I grow up I mean to marry a Senator, and come to Washington, and give great parties.

"I don't see why I don't hear from father. You know it's nearly three weeks now since I had a letter. I thought I should have one last week, just as much as could be."

GYPSY'S JOURNAL.

"Eight o'clock, Monday Night.

"Joy has told ever so much about the Capitol, and I don't want to tell it all over again. If I forget it, I can look at her journal, you know.

"But she didn't tell about Congress. Well, you see if we'd come a little later we shouldn't have seen them at all; and if it didn't happen to be a long session we shouldn't see them so late in the season. But then we did. I'm very glad, only I thought it was rather stupid.

"I liked the halls, anyway. They're splendid, only there's a great deal of yellow about them; and then there are some places for pictures, and the pictures aren't put up yet.

"There's a gallery runs round, where visitors sit. The Senators and Representatives are down on the floor. We went into the Senate first. They sat in seats that curved round, and the President of the Senate—that's Vice-President Hamlin—he sits in a sort of little pulpit, and looks after things. If anybody wants to speak, they have to ask him, and he says, 'The Senator from so-and-so has the floor.' Then when they get into a fight, he has to settle it. Isn't it funny in such great grown-up men to quarrel? But they do, like everything. There was one man got real mad at Mr. Sumner to-day.

"I didn't care about what they were talking about, but it was fun to look down and see all the desks and papers, and some of them were just as sleepy as could be. Then they kept whispering to each other while a man was speaking, and sometimes they talked right out loud. If I should do that at school, I guess Miss Cardrew would give it to me. But what I thought was queerest of all, they all talked right at the Vice-President, and kept saying, 'Mr. President,' and 'Sir,' just as if there weren't anybody else in the room.

"Some of the Senators are handsome, and a good many more aren't. Joy stood up for Mr. Sumner because he came from Massachusetts. He is a nice-looking man, and I had to say so. He has a high forehead, and he looks exactly like a gentleman. Besides, father says he has done a noble work for the country and the slaves, and the rest of New England ought to be just as proud of him as Massachusetts.

"We went into the House of Representatives, too, and it was a great deal noisier there than it was in the Senate, there were so many more of them. I saw one man eating peanuts. Most all of them looked hungry. The man that sits up behind the desk and takes care of the House, is called the Speaker. I think it's real funny, because he never makes a speech. As we came out of the Capitol, father turned round and looked back and said: 'Just think! All the laws that govern this great country come out from there.' He said some more about it, too, but there was the funniest little negro boy peeking through the fence, and I didn't hear.

"We went to the White House next. Father says it's something like a palace, only some palaces are handsomer. It's white marble like the Capitol. We went up the steps, and a man let us right in. We saw two rooms. One is called the Red Room and one the Green Room.

The Red Room is furnished in red damask and the Green is all green. They were very handsome, only all the furniture was ranged along the walls, and that made it seem so big and empty. Father says that's because these rooms are used for receptions, and there is such a crowd.

"There is a Blue Room, too, that visitors are sometimes let into. Father asked the doorkeeper; but he said, 'The family were at breakfast in it.' That was eleven o'clock! I guess I'd like to be a President's daughter, and not have to get up. We didn't see anything more of President Lincoln.

"We've been going all day, and we've been to the Patent Office and the Smithsonian Institute, but I'm too tired to say anything about them."

GYPSY'S JOURNAL.

"Tuesday.

"We've been over to Alexandria—that's across the Potomac River—in the funniest little steamboat you ever saw. When you went in or came out of the cabin, you have to crawl under a stove-pipe. It wasn't high enough to walk straight. I don't like Alexandria. It's all mud and secessionists. People looked cross, and Joy was afraid they'd shoot us. We saw the house where Col. Ellsworth was shot at the beginning of the war. The man was very polite, and showed us round. The plastering around the place where he fell, and all the stairs, had been cut away by people as relics. We saw the church where Gen. Washington used to go, too."

JOY'S JOURNAL

"Wednesday Night.

"We are just home from Mount Vernon and we've had a splendid time. We went in a steamboat; it's some way from Washington. You can go by land, if you want to. It was real pleasant. Gen. Washington's house was there,—a queer, low old place, and we went all over it. There was a nice garden, and beautiful grounds, with woods clear down to the water. He is buried on the place under a marble tomb, with a sort of brick shed all around it. There is nothing on the tomb but the word Washington. His wife is buried by him, and it says on hers, Martha, Consort of Washington. All the gentlemen took off their hats while we stood there. To-morrow we are going to Manassas, if there is a boat. Uncle is going to see. I am having a splendid time. Won't it be nice telling father all about it when he comes home?"



Joy laid down her pen suddenly. She heard a strange noise in her uncle's room where he and Gypsy were sitting. It was a sort of cry,—a low, smothered cry, as of some one in grief or pain. She shut up her portfolio and hurried in. Mr. Breynton held a paper in his hand. Gypsy was looking over his shoulder, and her face was very pale.

"What is it? What's the matter?"

Nobody answered.

Mr. Breynton turned away his face. Gypsy broke out crying.

"Why, what is the matter?" said Joy, looking alarmed.

"Joy, my poor child—" began her uncle. But Gypsy sprang forward suddenly, and threw her arms around Joy's neck.

"Oh, Joy, Joy,—your father!"

"Let me see that paper!" Joy caught it before they could stop her, opened it, read it,—dropped it slowly. It was a telegram from Yorkbury:—

"Boston papers say Joy's father died in France two weeks ago."



CHAPTER XIII

A SUNDAY NIGHT

They were all together in the parlor at Yorkbury—Joy very still, with her head in her auntie's lap. It was two weeks now since that night when she sat writing in her journal at Washington, and planning so happily for the trip to Manassas that had never been taken.

They had been able to learn little about her father's death as yet. A Paris paper reported, and Boston papers copied, the statement that an American of his name, stopping at an obscure French town, was missing for two days, and found on the third, murdered, robbed, horribly disfigured. Mr. George Breynton had been traveling alone in the interior of the country, and had written home that he should be in this town—St. Pierre—at precisely the time given as the date of the American's death. So his long silence was awfully explained to Joy. The fact that the branch of his firm with which he had frequent business correspondence, had not received the least intelligence of him for several weeks, left no doubt of the mournful truth. Something had gone wrong in the shipping of certain goods, which had required his immediate presence; they had therefore written and telegraphed to him repeatedly, but there had been no reply. Day by day the ominous silence had shaded into alarm, had deepened into suspense, had grown into certainty.

Mr. Breynton had fought against conviction as long as he could, had clung to all possibilities and impossibilities of doubt, but even he had given up all hope.

Dead—dead, without a sign; without one last word to the child waiting for him across the seas; without one last kiss or blessing; dead by ruffian hands, lying now in an unknown, lonely grave. It seemed to Joy as if her heart must break. She tried to fly from the horrible, haunting thought, to forget it in her dreams, to drown it in her books and play. But she could not leave it; it would not leave her. It must be taken down into her heart and kept there; she and it must be always alone together; no one could come between them; no one could help her.

And so there was nothing to do but take that dreary journey home from Washington, come quietly back to Yorkbury, come back without father or mother, into the home that must be hers now, the only one left her in all the wide world; nothing to do but to live on, and never to see him any more, never to kiss him, never to creep up into his arms, or hear his brave, merry voice calling, "Joyce, Joyce," as it used to call about the old home. No one called her Joyce but her father. No one should ever call her so again.

Tom called her so one day, never thinking.

"I don't want to hear that—not that name," said Joy, flushing suddenly; then paling and turning away.

She was very still now. Since the first few days she seldom cried; or if she did, it was when she was away alone in the dark, with no one to see her. She had grown strangely silent, strangely gentle and thoughtful for Joy. Sorrow was doing for her what it does for so many older and better; and in her frightened, childish way, Joy was suffering all that she could suffer.

Perhaps only Gypsy knew just how much it was. The two girls had been drawn very near to each other these past few weeks. It seemed to Gypsy as if the grief were almost her own, she felt so sorry for Joy; she had grown very gentle to her, very patient with her, very thoughtful for her comfort. They were little ways in which she could show this, but these little ways are better than any words. When she left her own merry play with the girls to hunt up Joy sitting somewhere alone and miserable, and coax her out into the sunlight, or sit beside her and tell funny stories till the smiles came wandering back against their will to Joy's pale face; when she slid her strawberry tarts into Joy's desk at recess, or stole upstairs after her with a handful of peppermints bought with her own little weekly allowance, or threw her arms around her so each night with a single, silent kiss, or came up sometimes in the dark and cried with her, without saying a word, Joy was not unmindful nor ungrateful. She noticed it all, everything; out of her grief she thanked her with all her heart, and treasured up in her memory to love for all her life the Gypsy of these sad days.

They were in the parlor together on this Sunday night, as I said,—all except Mr. Breynton, who had been for several days in Boston, settling his brother's affairs, and making arrangements to sell the house for Joy; it was her house now, that handsome place in Beacon Street, and that seemed so strange,—strange to Joy most of all.

They were grouped around the room in the fading western light, Gypsy and Tom together by the window, Winnie perched demurely on the piano-stool, and Joy on the cricket at Mrs. Breynton's feet. The faint light was touching her face, and her mournful dress with its heavy crape trimmings,—there were no white chenille and silver brooches now; Joy had laid these things aside of her own wish. It is a very small matter, to be sure, this mourning; but in Joy's case it mirrored her real grief very completely. The something which she had not felt when her mother died, she felt now, to the full. She had a sort of notion,—an ignorant, childish notion, but very real to her,—that it was wicked to wear bows and hair-ribbons now.

She had been sitting so for some time, with her head in her aunt's lap, quite silent, her eyes looking off through the window.

"Why not have a little singing?" said Mrs. Breynton, in her pleasant, hushed voice;—it was always a little different somehow, Sunday nights; a little more quiet.

Gypsy went to the piano, and usurped Winnie's throne on the stool, much to that young gentleman's disgust.

"What shall it be, mother?"

"Joy's hymn, dear."

Gypsy began, without further explanation, to play a low, sweet prelude, and then they sang through the hymn that Joy had learned and loved in these few desolate weeks:

"There is an eye that never sleeps Beneath the wing of night; There is an ear that never shuts When sink the beams of light.

"There is an arm that never tires When human strength gives way— There is a love that never fails When earthly loves decay."

Joy tried to sing, but just there she broke down. Gypsy's voice faltered a little, and Mrs. Breynton sang very softly to the end.

After that they were all still; Joy had hidden her face. Tom began to hum over the tune uneasily, in his deep bass. A sudden sob broke into it.



"This is what makes it all so different."

"What, dear?"

"The singing, and the prayers, and the Sunday nights; it's been making me think about being a good girl, ever since I've been here. We never had any at home. Father—"

But she did not finish. She rose and went over to the western window, away from the rest, where no one could see her face.

The light was dimming fast; it was nearly dark now, and the crickets were chirping in the distant meadows.

Tom coughed, and came very near trying to whistle. Gypsy screwed the piano-stool round with a sudden motion, and went over to where Joy stood.

Tom and his mother began to talk in a low voice, and the two girls were as if alone.

The first thing Gypsy did, was to put her arms round Joy's neck and kiss her. Joy hid her face on her shoulder and cried softly. Then Gypsy choked a little, and for a while they cried together.

"You see I am so sorry," said Gypsy.

"I know it,—I know it. Oh, Gypsy, if I could see him just one minute!"

Gypsy only gave her a little hug in answer. Then presently, as the best thing she could think of to say:

"We'll go strawberrying to-morrow, and I'll save you the very best place. Besides, I've got a tart upstairs I've been saving for you, and you can eat it when we go up to bed. I think things taste real nice in bed. Don't you?"

"Look here, Gypsy, do you know I love you ever so much?"

"You do! Well, isn't that funny? I was just thinking how much I loved you. Besides, I'm real glad you're going to live here always."

"Why, I thought you'd be sorry."

"I should have once," said Gypsy honestly. "But that's because I was ugly. I don't think I could get along without you possibly—no, not anyway in the world. Just think how long we've slept together, and what 'gales' we do get into when our lamp goes out and we can't find the matches! You see I never had anybody to get into gales with before."

Somebody rang the door-bell just then, and the conversation was broken up.

"Joy, have you a mind to go?" asked Mrs. Breynton. "Patty is out, this evening."

"Why! whoever it is, they've come right in," said Joy, opening the door.

A man was there in the entry;—a man with heavy whiskers and a valise.

The rest of them sitting back there in the dark waited, wondering a little who it could be coming in Sunday night. And this is what they heard:

"Joyce, little Joyce!—why, don't be frightened, child; it's nobody but father."



CHAPTER XIV

GOOD BYE

They were alone together in the quiet room—Peace Maythorne and Joy. The thick yellow sunlight fell in, touching the old places,—the wall where Gypsy's blue and golden text was hanging,—a little patch of the faded carpet, the bed, and the folded hands upon it, and the peaceful face.

Joy had crept up somewhat timidly into Gypsy's place close by the pillow. She was talking, half sadly, half gladly, as if she hardly knew whether to laugh or cry.

"You see, we're going right off in this noon train, and I thought I must come over and say good-bye."

"I'm real sorry to have you go—real."

"Are you?" said Joy, looking pleased. "Well, I didn't suppose you'd care. I do believe you care for everybody, Peace."

"I try to," said Peace, smiling. "You go in rather a hurry, don't you Joy?"

"Yes. It's just a week since father came. He wants to stay a while longer, dreadfully, but he says his business at home can't be put off, and of course I'm going with him. Do you know, Peace, I can't bear to have him out of the room five minutes, I'm so silly. It seems all the time as if I were dreaming a real beautiful dream, and when I woke up, the awful days would come back, and he'd be dead again. I keep wanting to kiss him and feel of him all the time."

"You poor child!" said Peace, her eyes dimming a little, "how strange it all has been. How good He's been to you—God."

"I know it. I know He has, Peace. Wasn't it queer how it all came about? Gypsy says nobody but God could have managed it so, and Auntie says He must have had some very good reason.

"You see, father was sick all that time in a little out-of-the-way French town with not a single soul he knew, and nobody to talk English, and so sick he couldn't write a word—out of his head, he says, all the time. That's why I didn't hear, nor the firm. Then wasn't it so strange about that man who was murdered at St. Pierre?—the very same name—George Breynton, only it was George W. instead of George M.; but that they didn't find out till afterwards. Poor man! I wonder if he has anybody crying for him over here. Then you know, just as soon as ever father got well enough to travel, he started straight home. He said he'd had enough of Europe, and if he ever lived to get home, he wouldn't go another time without somebody with him. It wasn't so very pleasant, he said, to come so near dying with nobody round that you knew, and not to hear a word of your own language. Then, you know, he got into Boston Saturday, and he hurried straight up here; but the train only went as far as Rutland, and stopped at midnight. Then, you see, he was so crazy to see me and let me know he wasn't dead, he couldn't possibly wait; so he hired a carriage and drove all the way over Sunday. And oh, Peace, when I saw him out there in the entry!"

"I guess you said your prayers that night," said Peace, smiling.

"I rather guess I did! And Peace, that makes me think"—Joy grew suddenly very grave; there was an earnest, thoughtful look in her eyes that Joy's eyes did not have when she first came to Yorkbury; a look that they had been slowly learning all this year; that they had been very quickly learning these past few weeks—"When I get home it's going to be hard—a good many things are going to be hard."

"Yes, I see," said Peace, musingly. Peace always seemed to see just what other people were living and hoping and fearing, without any words from them to explain it.

"It's all so different from what it is here. I don't want to forget what you've told me and Auntie's told me. Almost everybody I know at home doesn't care for what you do up here in Yorkbury. I used to think about dancing-school, and birthday parties, and rigging up, and summer fashions, and how many diamonds I'd have when I was married, and all that, the whole of the time, Peace—the whole of it; then I got mad when my dresses didn't fit, and I used to strike Therese and Kate, if you'll believe it—when I was real angry that was. Now, up here, somehow I'm ashamed when I miss at school; then sometimes I help Auntie a little, and sometimes I do try not to be cross. Now, you see, I'm going back, and father he thinks the world of me, and let's me do everything I want to, and I'm afraid"—Joy stopped, puzzled to express herself—"I'm afraid I shall do everything I want to."

Peace smiled, and seemed to be thinking.

"Then, you see. I shall grow up a cross, old selfish woman," said Joy dolefully; "Auntie says people grow selfish that have everything their own way. You see, up here there's been Gypsy, and she wanted things just as much as I, so there's been two ways, and that's the thing of it."

"I don't think you need to grow up selfish," said Peace, slowly; "no, I am sure you needn't."

"Well, I wish you'd tell me how."

"Ask Him not to let you," said Peace softly.

Joy colored.

"I know it; I've thought of that. But there's another trouble. You see, father—well, he doesn't care about those things. He never has prayers nor anything, and he used to bring me novels to read Sundays. I read them then. I've got all out of the way of it up here. I don't think I should want to, now."

"Joy," said Peace after a silence, "I think—I guess, you must help your father a little. If he sees you doing right, perhaps,—he loves you so very much,—perhaps by-and-by he will feel differently."

Joy made no answer. Her eyes looked off dreamily through the window; her thoughts wandered away from Peace and the quiet room—away into her future, which the young girl seemed to see just then, with grave, prophetic glance; a future of difficulty, struggle, temptation; of old habits and old teachings to be battled with; of new ones to be formed; of much to learn and unlearn, and try, and try again; but perhaps—she still seemed to see with the young girl's earnest eyes that for the moment had quite outgrown the child—a future faithfully lived and well; not frittered away in beautiful playing only, but filled up with something; more than that, a future which should be a long thank-offering to God for this great mercy He had shown her, this great blessing He had given her back from the grave; a future in which, perhaps, they two who were so dear to each other, should seek Him together—a future that he could bless to them both.

Peace quite understood the look with which she turned at last, half sobbing, to kiss her good-bye.

"I must go,—it is very late. Thank you, Peace. Thank you as long as I live."

She looked back in closing the door, to see the quiet face that lay so patiently on the pillow, to see the stillness of the folded hands, to see the last, rare smile.

She wondered, half guessing the truth, if she should ever see it again. She never did.

They were all wondering what had become of her, when she came into the house.

"We start in half an hour, Joyce, my dear," said her father, catching her up in his arms for a kiss;—he almost always kissed her now when she had been fifteen minutes out of his sight,—"We start in half an hour, and you won't have any more than time to eat your lunch."

Mrs. Breynton had spread one of her very very best lunches on the dining-room table, and Joy's chair was ready and waiting for her, and everybody stood around, in that way people will stand, when a guest is going away, not knowing exactly what to do or what to say, but looking very sober. And very sober they felt; they had all learned to love Joy in this year she had spent among them, and it was dreary enough to see her trunks packed and strapped in the entry, and her closet shelves upstairs empty, and all little traces of her about the house vanishing fast.

"Come along," said Gypsy in a savage undertone, "Come and eat, and let the rest stay out here. I've hardly set eyes on you all the morning. I must have you all myself now."

"Oh hum!" said Joy, attempting a currant tart, and throwing it down with one little semi-circular bite in it. "So I'm really off, and this is the very last time I shall sit at this table."

"Hush up, if you please!" observed Gypsy, winking hard, "just eat your tart."

Joy cut off a delicate mouthful of the cold tongue, and then began to look around the room.

"The last time I shall see Winnie's blocks, and that little patch of sunshine on the machine, and the big Bible on the book-case!—Oh, how I shall think about them all nights, when I'm sitting down by the grate at home."

"Stop talking about your last times! It's bad enough to have you go anyway. I don't know what I shall do without you."

"I don't know what I shall do without you, I'm sure," said Joy, shaking her head mournfully, "but then, you know, we're going to write to each other twice every single week."

"I know it,—every week as long as we live, remember."

"Oh, I shan't forget. I'm going to make father buy me some pink paper and envelopes with Love stamped up in the corners, on purpose."

"Anyway, it's a great deal worse for me," said Gypsy, forlornly. "You're going to Boston, and to open the house again and all, and have ever so much to think about. I'm just going on and on, and you won't be upstairs when I go to bed, and your things won't ever be hanging out on the nails in the entry, and I'll have to go to school alone, and—O dear me!"

"Yes, I suppose you do have the worst of it," said Joy, feeling a great spasm of magnanimity in bringing herself to say this; "but it's pretty bad for me, and I don't believe you can feel worse than I do. Isn't it funny in us to love each other so much?"

"Real," said Gypsy, trying to laugh, with two bright tears rolling down her cheeks. Both the girls were thinking just then of Joy's coming to Yorkbury. How strange that it should have been so hard for Gypsy; that it had cost her a sacrifice to welcome her cousin; how strange that they could ever have quarreled so; how strange all those ugly, dark memories of the first few months they spent together—the jealousy, the selfishness, the dislike of each other, the constant fretting and jarring, the longing for the time that should separate them. And now it had come, and here they sat looking at each other and crying—quite sure their hearts were broken!

The two tears rolled down into Gypsy's smile, and she swallowed them before she spoke:

"I do believe it's all owing to that verse!"

"What verse?"

"Why, Peace Maythorne's. I suppose she and mother would say we'd tried somehow or other to prefer one another in honor, you know, and that's the thing of it. Because you see I know if I'd always had everything my own way, I shouldn't have liked you a bit, and I'd have been real glad when you went off."

"Joyce, Joyce!" called her father from the entry, "Here's the coach. It's time to be getting ready to cry and kiss all around."

"Oh—hum!" said Gypsy.

"I know it," said Joy, not very clear as to what she was talking about. "Where's my bag? Oh, yes. And my parasol? Oh there's Winnie riding horseback on it. Well, Gypsy, go—od—"

"Bye," finished Gypsy, with a great sob. And oh, such a hugging and kissing as there was then!



Then Joy was caught in her Auntie's arms, and Tom's and Winnie's all at once, it seemed to her, for the coachman was in a very great hurry, and by the time she was in the coach seated by her father, she found she had quite spoiled her new kid gloves, rubbing her eyes.

"Good-bye," called Gypsy, waving one of Winnie's old jackets, under the impression that it was a handkerchief.

"Twice every week!"

"Yes—sure: on pink paper, remember."

"Yes, and envelopes. Good-bye. Good-bye!"

So the last nodding and smiling was over, and the coach rattled away, and the house with the figures on the steps grew dim and faded from sight, and the train whirled Joy on over the mountains—away into that future of which she sat thinking in Peace Maythorne's room, of which she sat thinking now, with earnest eyes, looking off through the car-window, with many brave young hopes, and little fear.

"You'd just better come into the dining-room," said Winnie to Gypsy, who was standing out in the yard, remarkably interested in the lilac-bush, and under the very curious impression that people thought she wasn't crying. "I think it's real nice Joy's gone, 'cause she didn't eat up her luncheon. There's a piece of pounded cake with sugar on top. There were tarts with squince-jelly in 'em too, but they—well, they ain't there now, someways or nuther."

THE END.

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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

1. Punctuation has been normalized to contemporary standards.

2. Frontispiece illustration relocated to after title page.

3. Typographic errors corrected in original: p. 46 "the the" to "the" ("the very beginning") p. 52 "Gpysy" to "Gypsy" ("rushed over Gypsy's face") p. 85 "Gpysy" to "Gypsy" ("Gypsy leaned back") p. 99 "the the" to "the" ("the only school") p. 127 "Jemina" to "Jemima" ("call her Jemima") p. 203 "buscuit" to "biscuit" ("biscuit and cold tongue") p. 289 "were were" to "were" ("There were tarts")

THE END