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 GYPSY 
 
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 THE GYPSY SERIES 
 
 GYPSY S YEAR 
 
 AT 
 
 THE GOLDEN CRESCENT 
 
 BY 
 
 ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS 
 
 AUTHOR OF "GYPSY BREYNTON," "GYPSY S COUSIN JOY. 
 "GYPSY S SOWING AND REAPING," ETC. 
 
 ttf) Illustrations 
 BY MARY F AIRMAN CLARK 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS,
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, 
 
 BY GRAVES & YOUNG, 
 In the Clerk s Office for the District Court of Massachusetts 
 
 Copyright, 181)4, 
 BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY. 
 
 Copyright, i8()7, 
 BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY. 
 
 PRINTED IN THE U. S. A,
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. MOM 
 
 How IT LOOKED ON MONDAY I 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 How IT LOOKED ON TUESDAY ao 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS . . 39 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE EVERGREEN SISTERS 50 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 GYPSY UNDER PECULIAR CIRCUMSTANCES , . 80 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Is SHE A LADY? . 106 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 HOME AND BACK AGAIN I3S
 
 fV CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. PAGE 
 
 COMPOSITIONS ............ 141 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 INTO MISCHIEF ............ 1 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 A MASQUERADE ........ . . 169 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 " BOUNCING-UP " ........... 197 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 HUSH! ............... I4 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 BORDERLAND .......... ... JW5 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 NUMBER ONE ....... ... tji
 
 
 r iT LOOKED- 
 ON- MONDAY..*! 
 
 ATS, feathers, shoes, ribbons, 
 bonnets, slippers, dresses, 
 boots, aprons, collars, cuffs, 
 laces, nets, cloaks, sacks, 
 shawls, cassocks, bracelets, 
 brooches, rings, rubbers, 
 
 rubber-boots, stockings, veils, gloves, mittens, 
 furs, fans, pictures, slates, books, paper, pencils, 
 ink, needles, thread, thimbles, chalk, boxes, 
 bags, baskets, a big trunk and a little trunk, 
 Gypsy down in the middle of the whole. 
 
 Her mother came slowly upstairs with a bal- 
 moral and two dresses over one arm, and a
 
 bandbox In the other, opened the door, 
 stood transfixed. 
 
 "Oh, walk in, Mrs. Breynton, walk in! 
 Don t be bashful. I m quite ready to receive 
 calls, not, as you may say, exactly in full 
 dress; but then * 
 
 She was, by the way, in her white petticoat 
 and little red flannel dressing-sack, with her 
 hair all down on her shoulders ; but velvet and 
 Valenciennes could not have made her look so 
 pretty. 
 
 " Well, Gypsy, this is confusion worse con 
 founded ! What in the world are you doing? " 
 
 " Packing, to be sure." 
 
 Mrs. Breynton put the dresses on the bed 
 and the bandbox under it, and sat down to 
 laugh. 
 
 "Why! what s the joke?" said Gypsy, 
 pushing her hair out of her eyes, and putting 
 her chin into both her hands. " If ever any- 
 body packed hard I that same s myself, in the 
 words of Miss Maloney ! Did n t I empty 
 every solitary drawer right out, look in the
 
 bureau and see, and have n t I cleared the 
 nails in the closet, and then did n t I take a 
 whisk broom and brush off every individual 
 thing from those horrid old wardrobe shelves, 
 and keep standing on tiptoe and falling down 
 and just rasping the tip end of my nose on the 
 edges., and aren t they all here promiscuous ? 
 I thought it was such a convenient way! You 
 see, you won t have to keep running around to 
 look for things Why, what are you doing?" 
 
 Mrs. Breynton had busied herself during this 
 long sentence in rapidly sorting the mette, 
 putting cotton and linen in piles, hanging 
 dresses across the foot of the bed, and laying 
 laces and ribbons together carefully upon the 
 pillows. 
 
 " Oh ! " said Gypsy, with an accent. 
 
 " You see, my dear, that was the proper 
 way." 
 
 "I see, I see, said the blind man; I see 
 clearly. Now, mother, don t you tell, will you ? 
 but after it was all poured out, I didrit know 
 exactly how I ever was going to pick out
 
 one thing without picking out another thing, 
 you know. Now, if that is n t charming I 
 Why, they ll pack themselves." 
 
 That they did not, however, exactly pack 
 themselves, the gathering twilight testified, 
 which, falling, found the two still hard at work. 
 
 " They won t begin to go into the large 
 trunk," said Mrs. Breynton, pausing, with a 
 folded cloak upon her arm. " I did hope they 
 might." 
 
 "Oh, it s just as well. Joy wrote me last 
 week that boarding-school girls always had 
 two trunks. You know she s been at Miss 
 Haine s, and she ought to know. Besides, she 
 said she had a splendid time. Where s my 
 blue merino?" 
 
 " Here, in the left-hand corner. I hope that 
 cologne is n t too near it; here, I 11 move it a 
 little; you see? * 
 
 "Now, where s my spotted veil? Oh, here; 
 and my kid gloves? Now I wonder if it isn t 
 time to put in the bonnet, mother. I wish * 
 
 "Well?"
 
 "What if that crown should look countrified? 
 Miss Jones has such a talent for discovering the 
 latest antediluvian fashion." 
 
 " Help me fold this skirt, Gypsy." 
 
 Gypsy, looking up sidewise through her hair, 
 saw that her mother had something to say, but 
 not just then. 
 
 "Where is that pair of merino stockings? 
 Why, Gypsy!" 
 
 " I know it I did mean to. I thought they 
 were mended as much as could be." 
 
 "Hand me my work-basket on the table. 
 Now thread me a needle, please, as fast as you 
 know how; it is growing dark." 
 
 " And you re all tired out ! " said Gypsy, in 
 a little spasm of compunction. 
 
 " What is going to become of your stockings 
 at school, Gypsy?" asked Mrs. Breynton, sew 
 ing away with her quiet smile. 
 
 " Mother Breynton, that is a solemn ques 
 tion 1 " 
 
 Mrs. Breynton folded the stockings and 
 stuffed them tightly into a corner of the trunk, 
 i
 
 and Gypsy shook back her hair, and put her 
 chin into her hands once more. 
 
 "Come, mother, give me a little lecture, 
 please. It will be so long before I can have 
 another." 
 
 "I believe you know my lecture by heart, 
 Gypsy ; you Ve heard it ever since you were a 
 baby, and there is only one word to it" 
 
 " Hum-m ! " said Gypsy, slowly, and put on 
 the cover to her collar-box in silence. She 
 knew what the word was. If you do not, you 
 must guess. 
 
 "About the bonnet," Gypsy dropped the 
 collar-box, and came and sat down on the floor 
 just below her mother s knee, " I Ve done the 
 best I could for you, in the way of clothing, 
 but I think it more than probable that the 
 majority of the girls will be more fashionably 
 dressed. It is best to look at the matter just 
 as it is." 
 
 Gypsy nodded. 
 
 " Anything which a little altering can bring 
 into style, why, you know I shall have all youi
 
 vacation in which to do. As for the rest, 
 dear " 
 
 "As for the rest," interrupted Gypsy, with 
 another nod, " if I minded it, I should deserve 
 to be toted off to Siberia in a bandbox! If I 
 jump on the little trunk, would you lock it, 
 please?" 
 
 " Besides," she observed in a comfortable 
 sort of undertone, as she tugged at the straps, 
 " if they do wear high crowns, I could get 
 some little pieces of velvet and poke it up 
 myself." 
 
 Gypsy, like most girls, seldom swallowed 
 undiluted morsels without a little secret sugar 
 of her own. 
 
 " You don t suppose it is possible that we 
 have everything in! Where s the circular? 
 Let me see. Young ladies are expected to 
 bring a counterpane, four towels marked, three 
 pillow-cases marked t a napkin ring marked^ an 
 umbrella, rubbers, waterproof all right I 
 do believe we ve come to the end." 
 
 "Yes; one or two things drying by the 
 - t
 
 kitchen fire, and then the dressing-case in the 
 morning; that is all, I believe," said Mrs. 
 Breynton, thinking. Gypsy jumped on the 
 large trunk to see if it would lock easily, 
 gathered the pieces of newspaper and old box 
 covers and old gloves with which the floor was 
 strewn, into a heap for Patty to sweep away, 
 and then came and sat down again by her 
 mother s knee. 
 
 Mrs. Breynton began to twist about her 
 finger a lock of the bright hair that fell about 
 the child s face ; it fell so low as nearly to hide 
 it; besides, it was now quite dark. 
 
 " Sober, Gypsy?" 
 
 " No, ma am ! " 
 
 " Then you expect to have a nice time? " 
 
 " I guess I do ! I Ve been just crazy to 
 go to college ever since we packed Tom off 
 Freshman; and if the horrid old men won t 
 let girls have colleges, you see / don t call a 
 place where they learn how to dance and play 
 and sew and talk French a college, why, 
 then, boarding-school is the next best thing, and
 
 I m in for it, thorough , as who was it? 
 Henry the First? used to say in that funny 
 little English History with the magenta cover." 
 
 " Gypsy ! It is high time for your education 
 to be looked after; that is evident. I would 
 suggest, by the way, that you write a composi 
 tion on Strafford, my dear." 
 
 " Oh, well ! why is n t one name as gooef as 
 another? It s all the same in Dutch, as Tom 
 says to me. Well, anyway, I am going tG 
 have a good time." 
 
 " And not be homesick a bit ? " 
 
 " No, ma am ! that is to say n-no-oo." 
 
 Gypsy was particularly engaged at that mo 
 ment in wondering why she had never noticed 
 what a soft hand her mother had, and in 
 thinking that it must be time to light the 
 lamps. 
 
 Mrs. Breynton s touch rested a moment still 
 upon the bright falling hair, and it fell lower 
 down about Gypsy s face. 
 
 " Gypsy, I Ve been thinking I could tell 
 you much about this new school life, but if it 
 
 9
 
 looks so bright, I don t know, I never could 
 even bear to wake you up in the morning if 
 you were having a pretty dream." 
 
 " But if you did n t, I should lose my 
 breakfast, you know, said Gypsy, sittii.g up 
 straight. 
 
 " Yet if you could learn to wake yourself up, 
 it would be better for you." 
 
 " Then you don t think I am going to have a 
 nice time? " 
 
 "The best -of times, and the most dan 
 gerous-" 
 
 Gypsy sat up straighter, and looked intensely 
 incredulous. 
 
 44 It is a little hard to let you go out of my 
 arms," said Mrs. Breynton, slowly, " right out 
 all at once; yet, letting you go, I must give 
 you a wide sweep. In a certain sense you 
 must live without me." 
 
 Gypsy gave her a squeeze, and said she d 
 see about that. 
 
 " I think, after all," said her mother, after a 
 moment s thought, " that I have but one piece
 
 of advice to give ; it rests with you to tit par- 
 ticulars to it." 
 
 " But what is the advice? " 
 
 " That you sit down every night a few 
 minutes, and tell me, in your heart, just as if we 
 were sitting together as we are now " 
 
 " You stroking my hair," interrupted Gypsy. 
 
 " I stroking your hair, if you like, and tell 
 me what has happened since morning, and what 
 you suppose will happen to-morrow." 
 
 "Want me to promise?" asked Gypsy, after 
 some thinking. 
 
 " Just as you like." 
 
 " Well, I 11 promise ; it will be a sort of 
 string, you know; a little piece of sewing-silk. 
 I never tried to break sewing-silk in my life 
 without cutting my fingers. Mother, you have 
 something else to say; it s so dark I can t see 
 much of you but just your eyes, and I know by 
 the way they re looking out of the window." 
 
 " One thing more, yes. I want you to have 
 a little talk every night with Somebody else 
 besides me, dear."
 
 Just at that moment Winnie began to rin^ 
 the tea-bell, and he made such a noise about it 
 that Gypsy did not try to answer, but her 
 mother felt in the dark two soft pats on her 
 
 hand which she 
 seemed to think were 
 as good as words. 
 V" At least she caught 
 her up in her 
 arms and gave her 
 a very long kiss. 
 
 " Oo-oo-ooh ! What a 
 racket that little scamp is 
 making! I m going to write 
 the very first night I get 
 there, and here I am in my 
 sack with every solitary hair 
 flying, and you 11 be all 
 through supper, and I m not going to be 
 homesick a bit, you know, and would you 
 mind wringing Winnie s neck when you go 
 downstairs? " said Gypsy, a little incoherently. 
 It was unaccountable, to be sure; but as she
 
 flew about in the dark, whisking her hair into 
 her net, tossing on her dress, losing all her 
 combs behind the bureau, and dropping the 
 soap into the water-pitcher, she certainly did 
 wonder if Joy could possibly have made a mis 
 take about boarding-school. But that was only 
 for a minute. 
 
 It is a great thing to have a pleasant tea- 
 table; and I believe that was what Mrs. 
 Breynton s tea-table always was. Everything 
 about it seemed to fit, like the notes of a 
 beautiful tune. In the first place there seemed 
 to be a tacit understanding that people should 
 say something pleasant, or not talk at alL 
 No cross words ever came from behind the 
 teacups, and, as a consequence, a cross word 
 from anywhere else made such a jar that it 
 was as much as one s peace of mind was worth 
 for an evening. Then the silver was always 
 bright, and the warm colours of the plaided 
 supper-cloth, and Mrs. Breynton used to wear 
 a bit of ribbon or fine lace with her " afternoon 
 dress," and the room was flooded with the
 
 soft light of porcelain-shaded lamps. Besides^ 
 all the work and worry and lessons of the day 
 were over, and there was nothing but reading 
 and play and chatter to come. 
 
 It was very pleasant, that night, and so 
 Gypsy thought, when she had exchanged the 
 red flannel sack for her pretty gray travelling- 
 dress with the blue trimmings, the only dress 
 now outside of the trunks, and coming in 
 just as her father was asking the blessing, 
 stopped a moment in the doorway and looked 
 around, very pleasant. But then, she was so 
 happy that night that almost anything would 
 have looked pleasant. Her eyes were dancing 
 behind their long lashes, her cheeks were afire 
 with excitement, and as for her dimple, it 
 seemed to twinkle all over her face. 
 
 " Well, my dear," said her father, laying 
 down his fork, " you don t look as if your 
 heart were breaking." 
 
 " Not so much as a crack, sir. Why, griddle- 
 cakes ! Mother, you blessed little woman J 
 If that is n t just like you ! " 
 14
 
 I thought they would taste good, your last 
 night, dear; here, Patty has just brought these 
 in hot. Sugar, or maple? Winnie, pass her 
 the butter. See, they are done brown just as 
 you like them." 
 
 She does not say that she has been out her 
 self to cook them just as Gypsy liked them, 
 nor what the kitchen fire had done to the 
 headache left by the hard day s packing; but 
 Gypsy knows. Ah, yes, Gypsy knows. 
 
 There is a queer, quick droop of her eyes, 
 and for three whole minutes she has not a 
 word to say. That little promise made up 
 stairs in the dark is riveted into its place by 
 who would have thought it? a griddle-cake. 
 " My mother is all wound up together," Gypsy 
 writes sometimes to her cousin Joy. " All 
 the big things and all the little things are 
 tangled into each other, and I don t believe she 
 knows the difference." 
 
 After the three minutes are over, Gypsy 
 begins to talk again, and Gypsy always has 
 plenty to say, and the silver flashes, and the 
 >f
 
 light deepens and glows through the soft white 
 shades, and her mother s face smiles in it be 
 hind the tea-things ; everybody talks a great 
 deal, but nobody says much about to-morrow. 
 Gypsy misses Tom, and wishes he were there 
 to say good-bye with the rest, and Winnie s 
 kitty curls up into her arms and tries to put 
 her cold nose down her neck, and there 
 is a scarlet maple which she notices, flut 
 tering softly in the wind against the window- 
 glass. 
 
 She feels these things and remembers them 
 with very much such a sensation as if she 
 were going to heaven to find something sub 
 limely superior to them all, yet with a wistful 
 tenderness clinging to the tried and proved. 
 Snapberry griddle-cakes may be as melting 
 and brown as these, to be sure. Supper at the 
 Golden Crescent will doubtless have something 
 to take the place of her father s stories and 
 Winnie s escapades with his mug of milk, if 
 one only knew what. Mrs. McMunn s eyes 
 may be as well worth looking at as her
 
 mother s, but she should like to have * the 
 evidence on t." 
 
 When she has thought as far as this, over 
 goes Winnie s milk, splash ! all down his neck 
 and up his jacket sleeve, and out goes the big 
 book which helped him to fill out his chair, 
 and up jumps Winnie, strangling, gasping, red 
 in the face. 
 
 " Oh I never hum ! look here ! I can t 
 swallow either way ! I Ve got a crumb in my 
 breath-pipe ! " 
 
 Gypsy laughs at this, laughs more than 
 usual, and supper ends merrily. 
 
 " The middle of March," her father says, as 
 they stand there all together in the lamplight; 
 " what a long time to wait ! " 
 
 But Gypsy does not think it long. Besides, 
 Mrs. McMunn may give them a day or two at 
 the holidays when Tom is at home. 
 
 She listens to her father s evening prayer, 
 but wonders a little between the sentences who 
 her room-mate will be. She goes up herself to 
 put Winnie to bed, because it is her last night,
 
 and she has promised him a story. She had 
 expected to begin to feel sober and wonder 
 what girls did at school without any little 
 brother to tease; but Winnie is very sleepy, 
 
 and when he tries to say his prayers, goes all 
 the way through " Baa, baa, black sheep," and 
 does n t know the difference. 
 Bedtime comes early for her, too, for waking
 
 time must be early to-morrow; so she kisses 
 her mother good-night with an extra squeeze, 
 and steals away to bed to dream till morning 
 of this beautiful new future which is coming. 
 
 Of what it will be like, she has a few ideas. 
 There will be no dishes to wash, no errands ta 
 do. Somebody will dust her room for her. 
 The dinners will be very much like the dinners 
 at a large hotel, probably, and there will always 
 be hot biscuit for supper. She will wear long 
 dresses, and go to the bank and draw her own 
 checks. 
 
 There will always be a girl at hand to talk 
 all night with, if she wants to. There will be 
 a great many "scrapes" to keep out of or 
 fall into. There will be a few books, and a 
 composition class, and she expects to study - 
 some.
 
 N the first place it rained. 
 
 Gypsy woke at half-past five 
 to find her room filled with 
 gray gloom, and to hear an 
 ominous, pattering sound upon the leaden 
 piazza roof. 
 
 Her mother, coming in to call her, found her 
 shivering in her night-dress at the window, her 
 face pressed up against the glass, down which 
 sluggish streams of rain were rolling and col 
 lecting in little puddles on the sill. Outside, 
 huge clouds of mist were drifting about and
 
 settling to the ground, and the leaves of the 
 maples hung dull and drenched. 
 
 " Ugh ! " said Gypsy, shrugging her shoul 
 ders. That really seemed to be the only thing 
 there was to say. She liked a journey in an 
 easterly storm no better than most people, and 
 had certainly made up her mind to have the 
 sun shine. Moreover, she had cherished secret 
 expectations of looping her dress over a cer 
 tain pretty white skirt that hung in the closet; 
 white always is and always must be so much 
 more ladylike-looking than anything else. 
 Now there was nothing to look forward to 
 but a balmoral. 
 
 It was not over-pleasant to hear the driving 
 of the rain as she locked the last trunk, 
 fastened the last pin, and turned, cape and hat 
 and little bag over her arm, to take the last 
 look around her deserted room before she shut 
 the door. She wished that the wind would not 
 blow so while she sat eating her breakfast ; and 
 her mother, softly busy about her luncheon, 
 stopped to stroke her cheek a little.
 
 She felt very sure that the driver had come 
 too early when his long sharp ring pealed 
 through the house, and he ran clattering up 
 stairs and clattering downstairs with the trunks, 
 
 and Patty came from the kitchen wiping her 
 hands on her apron to say good-bye ; and when 
 the last words came upon the steps, and sleepy 
 Winnie, who had to pry both fists into his eyes
 
 to keep them open, insisted that he was " cry 
 ing because Gypsy s gone off to a Boarded 
 School ; " when her mother, with wet eyelashes 
 and face a little pale, caught her up into her 
 arms once, twice, and once again, and her 
 father, looking straight ahead, went down the 
 path holding the umbrella carefully over her. 
 She stopped a moment on the carriage steps, 
 half in and half out, the rain whisking against 
 the pretty gray travelling-dress, where her 
 waterproof blew aside, her face turned back 
 towards the house, a rather forlorn-looking 
 little Gypsy. The first they knew, she had 
 jumped right out into the rain, and was up 
 the path and the steps, her arms about her 
 mother s neck. 
 
 " Oh, mother, mother, mother ! I love you 
 hard!" 
 
 And the year at the Golden Crescent began 
 to look a little misty. 
 
 It was a day s journey to the little Massachu 
 setts town of Snapberry. You did not know 
 that there was such a town? Very well; find
 
 ft on the map if you can. It is there, 
 whether you find it or not ; only it happens to 
 be a little differently spelled. 
 
 Nothing of any importance happened on the 
 way, except that Gypsy could not get her bag 
 gage checked, and lost her luncheon out of the 
 car-window, and once walked straight into the 
 smoking-car. Though a very courageous, she 
 was not a very old traveller. 
 
 It poured all day. Gypsy patronised the 
 " popcorn boy " till she could eat no more, 
 bought a Harper s Weekly and looked at the 
 pictures, read a remarkable story by Cousin 
 Somebody of a young lady who climbed into a 
 burning house to save her lover, watched the 
 people in the car till she knew them by heart 
 and had made up a story for every one of 
 them, counted the telegraph poles till she was 
 dizzy, and at last, as the twilight began to fail, 
 leaned her forehead against the side of the 
 window and idly watched the storm, the driv 
 ing rain, the gusts of wind tossing the leaves 
 about, the muddy pools collected by the
 
 tracks, the clenched figures loitering at the 
 stations, the soaked meadows, soaked feru.es, 
 soaked grass trying to grow in the shade of 
 brick walls and bridges, dripping umbrellas, 
 dripping roofs, dripping trees, her face catch 
 ing a bit of dreariness from it as she looked. 
 There was a bright fire in the parlor now at 
 home ; Winnie was picking up his blocks to be 
 ready for father s coming home early from the 
 store ; mother had gone out to the kitchen to 
 see Patty about supper; she would take her 
 knitting when she came back, and the little 
 hair-cloth rocking-chair; down at her feet there 
 would be a cricket with nobody on it. 
 
 The year at the Golden Crescent looked 
 decidedly gray. 
 
 The train was due at Snapberry at six o clock. 
 A young lady came in about half-past five 
 from one of the junctions where she had been 
 waiting, and took a seat a little in front of 
 Gypsy. She had on a very pretty bonnet, and 
 Gypsy, glad to have something else than that 
 cricket at home to think of, sat up straight and
 
 looked at it. It was a brown travelling straw 
 with a brown feather, neither very simple nor 
 very showy, but with that indescribable some 
 thing about it which girls call " so stylish," and 
 which means more than conformity of shape 
 and trimming to the prevailing mode. There 
 was a spray of pink heather inside, which fell 
 against a mass of black hair, black as onyx, 
 Gypsy could see from the side glimpses which 
 she had when the light struck it. 
 
 The young lady s dress, a brown mozam- 
 bique, softly shaded off around the skirt by a 
 heavy fold of browner silk, though covered by 
 her cloak, and decorously looped over her 
 dainty white skirt, was yet sufficiently visible 
 for one to remark upon its elegance. 
 
 Her very waterproof, finished at the throat 
 by a high tucked linen collar, and thrown 
 gracefully back from her free arms, had more 
 of an "air" about it than would velvet upon 
 nine-tenths of the people who wear it. 
 
 It was also observable, as she slightly turned 
 
 her head, and the curve of her cheek was out* 
 
 *
 
 lined in rich dark carmine, that the pink feathet 
 was chosen with a studied aptitude of tints. 
 
 It is an " old saw," almost worn out in these 
 days of high wages and bead trimmings, that a 
 lady can always be recognised by her dress. 
 Perhaps the trimmed skirt was a little rich for 
 such a dingy, muddy, dripping day, but there 
 was something about the tout ensemble of this 
 young lady with which Gypsy was pleased. 
 There was, however, one exception. She 
 wore a pair of light, very light, kid gloves. 
 Whether this was a notch in the saw, could 
 not be decided at once. 
 
 When she had been a little while in the car, 
 she turned around to speak to the conductor, 
 and Gypsy could see her face fully. Her first 
 impression was that it was a very handsome 
 face, and as Gypsy liked to watch handsome 
 faces much as she liked to watch pictures, she 
 looked at it every chance she had, till the 
 whistle sounded for Snapberry. Her second 
 impression was that it was a handsome face 
 without the "very; " her third, that handsome
 
 was not the word. A striking face it certainly 
 was. There was an abundance of that oynx- 
 like hair ; good eyes, full, black, expressive ; 
 the mouth, however, was peculiar, it was 
 well shaped, with warm, rich colour in the lips, 
 but something, one could scarcely tell what, 
 was the matter with it. 
 
 As the train shrieked into Snapberry, and 
 Gypsy was putting on her gloves, she observed 
 the young lady take down her little bag from 
 the rack above her head. When Snapberry 
 passengers left the cars, she left with them. 
 
 Gypsy stepped out into the pouring rain 
 upon the uncovered platform of the little 
 wooden depot, with a great sinking sense of 
 loneliness. Wet umbrellas spattered into her 
 face, and wet overcoats brushed against her; 
 wet baggage-men were slamming wet trunks 
 about, and a very wet little girl who stood upon 
 the platform was crying because nobody had 
 come to meet her. Gypsy, seeking for the 
 Ladies Room, ran against a little coachman 
 with a moustache, who agreed to carry her to
 
 the Golden Crescent, and appeared to be the 
 only arrangement for such case made and 
 provided. 
 
 The Ladies Room consisted of a floor, and a 
 bench running around a wall. It contained a 
 very smoky kerosene lamp, and one old lady in 
 a poke-bonnet. Gypsy sat down on the bench 
 and winked very hard, first at the lamp, and 
 then at the old lady. While she was waiting 
 there for the coachman to find her trunks, the 
 wet little girl was brought in by a dripping 
 father, held warmly in his arms, with his kisses 
 dropping on her forehead. 
 
 "Did Dolly think papa d forgotten her?" 
 Gypsy heard him say; and it seemed as if 
 the great sinking would take away her breath. 
 
 Presently the little coachman came in, jing 
 ling a check. 
 
 " Can t find but one of yer trunks, mum ; 
 the big un s here, but there s no signs of 
 t other." 
 
 " My little trunk ! not here ! " 
 
 " No, mum, it hain t. Dy er thinks it "s got
 
 took to the Junction, an will be long down the 
 fust train in the morning; you jest take your 
 check and stick to t, and you ll git it, no dan 
 ger. This way, mum, this way." 
 
 Gypsy followed him out into the rain, with a 
 very sober face. 
 
 It is not exactly a cheering thing to lose 
 one s baggage in bright sunlight. Now, in the 
 dark and loneliness and strangeness, it seemed 
 to be the straw that broke the camel s back. 
 What would her mother say? And what 
 should she do for the very dress which she had 
 meant to wear to-morrow morning? And 
 what if the trunk did not come back by the 
 "fust train" or any train? and that Honi- 
 ton collar ! and the corn-coloured necktie ! 
 and that bridle with bead fringe ! 
 
 Gypsy found several girls in the coach be 
 fore her. One was the young lady with the 
 heather in her bonnet and the Mozambique 
 dress. Just before the door was shut, the 
 driver handed in a pretty girl with light hair 
 and very small hands; she muttered some-
 
 thing about it s being scandalously crowded, 
 and swept into the only vacant seat, beside this 
 young lady. She wore no waterproof, and 
 her showy travelling-suit was drenched and 
 spattered with mud ; the other, either by acci 
 dent or design, moved away a little into the 
 corner, and gathered her cloak closely about 
 her. The new-comer saw the act and turned 
 sharply, some words upon her lips, which she 
 apparently found difficulty in restraining. The 
 two girls eyed each other for a moment with 
 that sort of dislike which comes and goes 
 too, sometimes by instinct, but neither spoke. 
 
 The coach was dimly and drearily lighted, 
 the rain pattering in a dismal style upon the 
 drawn windows, and Gypsy noted these things 
 by way of something to think about. 
 
 There were two girls old scholars, evi 
 dently upon the back seat, chatting merrily 
 with each other. It never occurred to them 
 that the new-comers might feel strange and 
 homesick, and glad to be spoken to; so they 
 had all the talking to themselves. 
 m
 
 Presently, however, the young lady in the 
 Mozambique turned around with a smile to 
 Gypsy, and asked if she were going to the 
 Golden Crescent. 
 
 "Yes," said Gypsy; "is it very dreadful, do 
 you think?" 
 
 "I don t know," said the young lady; "I 
 am a new scholar too." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 " Did n t I see you in the cars, I wonder?" 
 
 " Did you? Well, I saw you, and I m much 
 obliged for your bonnet." 
 
 " Obliged for my bonnet?" 
 
 " Yes ; you see I came just about as near 
 being homesick ! and when your bonnet walked 
 in, it was so pretty I had to sit up and look 
 at it." 
 
 The young lady laughed, and looked very 
 much amused ; not ill-pleased, either, it seemed. 
 
 The rest of the girls had by this time all 
 grown quiet to listen to the conversation, and 
 Gypsy, hearing a little laugh go round, shrank 
 back, somewhat appalled, into the dark. 
 33
 
 Fifteen minutes ride brought them to a high 
 white house surrounded by large grounds and 
 many trees. Gypsy could see them dimly 
 through the rain, as she jumped from the coach 
 door at a bound, regardless of the helping hand 
 of the little coachman. Her acquaintance of 
 the cars came down more sedately, but seemed 
 quite able to take care of herself. The pretty 
 girl made a great commotion ; she handed her 
 umbrella to one, and thrust her bag into the lap 
 of another, and caught her crinoline upon the 
 steps, and must needs scream about it, gave the 
 driver both her very little hands, and finally 
 allowed him to lift her to the ground. Little 
 things make great impressions, and Gypsy 
 noticed. 
 
 A lady whom she concluded must be Mrs. 
 McMunn met the girls in the hall, shook hands 
 with each in turn, asked their names, and sent 
 a servant to show them their rooms. Gypsy 
 was taken to the third story, and shown into a 
 room by herself. 
 
 It was a low, small room, with one good 
 
 33
 
 sized window, an indescribable carpet, plain 
 furniture, brown papering, no pictures, and a 
 bare mantelpiece. 
 
 Somebody brought up her trunk; she un 
 locked it as she would unlock a trunk in a 
 dream, and dressed herself for supper with her 
 eyes shut, so as not to see that lonely, bare 
 mantelpiece and the staring walls; they had 
 the singular effect of making her feel as if she 
 were going to choke. 
 
 Presently a strange girl knocked at the door, 
 said that supper was ready, and went away again. 
 
 Gypsy found her way down through the 
 crooked entries to the first floor, where she 
 encountered her friend of the coach. 
 
 " Oh, is that you ? Good ! We 11 go in to 
 gether," said the young lady, drawing Gypsy s 
 arm through hers. Gypsy was pleased. She 
 had dreaded to walk the length of the long 
 dining-hall alone, and she was glad to have 
 somebody to speak to. She did not say so, but 
 there was a little grateful snap to her eyes, 
 which the young lady saw, and she slipped her
 
 arm about her waist, with a half-confidential, 
 half-patronising air, laughing. 
 
 " It is an undertaking to walk down a dining- 
 hall, but we won t look green if we are new 
 scholars, will we, Miss " 
 
 " There is n t any Miss about it I m just 
 Gypsy Breynton." 
 
 " Gypsy Breynton ! Gypsy Breynton ! What 
 an odd name ! Did your mother find it in a 
 book? Well, I m Maude Clare." 
 
 Gypsy thought that Maude Clare was a very 
 pretty name, and said so ; which Maude Clare 
 appeared to like. 
 
 " I don t see what they call this the Golden 
 Crescent for," said Gypsy, as they passed the 
 length of the table, arm-in-arm, to the seats 
 which Mrs. McMunn pointed out to them. 
 
 " I believe there are some yellow maples or 
 something on the hill behind the house," said 
 Maude Clare; and then in a whisper as they 
 sat down, "Plated forks ! did you ever?" 
 
 " Never," said Gypsy, without a very deaf 
 idea what she was talking about ; and the nexfc 
 
 35
 
 she knew, Mrs. McMunn was asking the 
 blessing. 
 
 The supper was good, but the table was long 
 and somewhat dimly lighted, and the girls 
 looked homesick and cold. Maude Clare 
 talked a good deal. 
 
 When Gypsy went up to her room after tea, 
 she was surprised and disappointed to find a 
 quiet, rather plain girl in black there, unpack 
 ing a bag. She and Maude Clare had been 
 hoping that they should room together* 
 
 She walked over to the window, and stood 
 looking out, with her forehead on the glass. 
 It was raining still, and the wind was blowing 
 bitterly. A little hill rolled up just behind the 
 house from the garden ; on its top, through the 
 darkness, she could faintly see the outline, high 
 against the sky, of a curve of tossing trees. 
 
 " I should like to know where the Golden 
 comes in, anyway," she said drearily. 
 
 " The old girls say it "s beautiful in the 
 sun," said the quiet room-mate, creeping into 
 bed.
 
 Gypsy pulled down the curtain, and began 
 to undress with a jerk. 
 
 Long after she was in bed, with her eyes 
 shut, she seemed to see the black mantelpiece 
 and the staring, pktureless walls, and the trees
 
 tossing out in the rain. Long after she was in 
 bed, she saw the fire in the parlour grate at 
 home, the little hair-cloth rocking-chair, and 
 the empty cricket. The room-mate, who was 
 not Maude Clare, was crying softly though 
 that she did not knew on the pillow beside 
 her. 
 
 The -year at the Golden Crescent began to 
 look very black.
 
 Y BLESSED LITTLE 
 MOTHER, You never 
 did ! No, I know you 
 never did, for all the 
 
 people you went to boarding-school with wear 
 little pugs to their hair behind, and have a 
 baby with whooping-cough ; besides, there 
 ms n t any Maude Clare. 
 
 I think it s perfectly mag. at the Golden 
 Crescent, and I 11 tell you why. It poured 
 pitchforks all day Tuesday, that isn t why, 
 but I m coming to it sometime, if I live long 
 enough, and don t forget it, and you d better 
 believe that I had on blue very delicate sky
 
 blue spectacles before night. Besides, I lost 
 my luncheon, and was hungry enough to eat 
 stewed marbles. Then I had to go and lose my 
 trunk on top of it, and when that man came 
 in jingling the check, did n t I want to see 
 you? 
 
 The trunk came back from the Junction Wed 
 nesday morning turned topsy-turvy, with the 
 cork out of the cologne bottle. I mean the 
 trunk was topsy-turvy, not Wednesday morn 
 ing. Mrs. McMunn says I m careless with my 
 commas. I meant to have written before, just 
 as much as could be, that little scrap I sent 
 off Wednesday, just to let you know I was 
 alive, was n t anything, but there has n t been 
 a minute. I have to study, and then Maude 
 Clare comes in. But here I Ve written three 
 pages, and have n t told you a thing you want 
 to know, and father will have such a quantity of 
 questions about Mrs. McMunn and all. Let 
 me see: 
 
 Sfiapberry is a town situated somewhere in 
 Massachusetts, upon the Snapberry River. It
 
 has five thousand inhabitants, six stores, three 
 churches, a bridge, a de"pot, and a large number 
 of minute boys with their mouths open. It is 
 celebrated for its little coachmen, brown sugar, 
 and pretty girls. 
 
 The Golden Crescent is a select family school 
 for young ladies; but twenty admitted, and 
 usually nineteen on hand ; young ladies expected 
 to supply their own napkin-rings, pillow-cases, 
 and Oh, I forgot, there is a beau-i\i\)\ row 
 of yellow maples over on a hill behind the 
 house, shaped just like a quarter of a moon, 
 and when I woke up Wednesday morning, they 
 were all blowing about in the sun, as if they 
 were on fire. 
 
 Mrs. McMunn is a widow, or else she is n t, 
 and I don t know which. The girls say she was 
 divorced from her husband, and that he is liv 
 ing somewhere ; but they say she never speaks 
 of him any more than if she had never had any. 
 Mrs. McMunn is the funniest ! I really can t 
 think of anything she looks like, but a barrel 
 walking about with a very large Baldwin apple
 
 for a head. She is so stout the same size all 
 the way up to her neck, and her cheeks are 
 so red, and then she is freckled. Besides, her 
 kid gloves don t fit, and her waterfall sticks out 
 like a little feather, ever so far from her neck, 
 and when she shakes her head at the girls, it 
 nods about; they cut up, just so as to see it go. 
 Besides, I can make her laugh, and then she 
 sobers down and says, " Too much levity, Miss 
 Breynton, too much levity," and then I nearly 
 go off; when I laugh, the other girls all have to 
 go and laugh too ; I m sure I don t see what s 
 the reason. 
 
 Then there is Mademoiselle. It is so funny 
 to hear her talk English. I don t see much of 
 her, except in French Reader, and she is very 
 quiet and stays in her own room. I don t know 
 whether she s lonely, or what. One girl in the 
 class insists on calling le chat, lee shat, and puts 
 poor Mademoiselle in an agony. Every time 
 the cat is round, she will say, " Comment s ap- 
 pelle-t-il ce bite Id, Miss Holly? " and poor 
 Miss Holly stammers and blushes, and is sure
 
 she has it right now, till she and the shat are 
 sent off in disgrace. 
 
 There are two other teachers, Miss Ayre 
 and Chaplain Goss. Chaplain Goss attends 
 prayers and Mathematics ; he wears green 
 spectacles, and has a cough ; the girls plague 
 him half out of his life, and when he wants to 
 make them mind, he snaps his fingers at them : 
 I do believe he knows that Algebra by heart, 
 though, anyway. You ought to have seen him 
 look at me this morning, when I said x was 
 equal to 3|, and it ought to have been some 
 thing else, I m sure I don t know what. My ! 
 you would have thought I was a chicken just 
 out of the shell, running round with horrid little 
 half-grown feathers on. 
 
 Miss Ayre teaches Latin, Botany, and all those 
 
 f .1 01 ,11 - RIGHT UP SO. 
 
 sorts of things. She talks ~~ 
 
 on a funny little squeak ; 
 
 she s as thin as a pin and as cross as a bear. 
 
 She always acts as if she were trying to make 
 
 up for Mrs. McMunn, and she scolds when 
 
 Mrs. McMunn laughs at the girls. 
 
 43
 
 Mrs. McMunn teaches History, and the big 
 girls who are finishing up on Mental Philoso 
 phy and Butler. What is Butler, some sort 
 of a geography? She s very pleasant, if she 
 only would take down that waterfall. 
 
 Oh, I forgot Mr. Schleiermacher, the music- 
 teacher. He has a moustache and a diamond 
 ring, and the girls put on their best dresses 
 days when they take a music-lesson. I asked 
 Maude Clare one day what she did it for, and 
 she said her other was torn. 
 
 And now I ve come to Maude Clare my 
 beautiful, darling, precious Maude Clare. Is n t 
 it a lovely name? and doesn t it sound just 
 exactly like a novel? She says her mother 
 found it in a book somewhere, and that it was 
 the name of an heiress who was carried off by 
 the Indians, and she had ever so many lovers, 
 and they all came after her and brought her 
 back ; I believe she married one of them with 
 a rich uncle, and they went to Europe for their 
 wedding tour. I think it must be a splendid story. 
 Maude Clare says she had such passionate eyes.
 
 Maude Clare is splendid. She is as hand 
 some as she can be, and so stylish why, you 
 haven t any idea! She has more things just 
 for this fall than I have in two years. 
 
 Jacqueline Delancey does n t think Maude is 
 pretty, but that is just because she is pretty 
 herself. I don t like Jacqueline Delancey. I 
 saw her in the coach and I knew I should n t. 
 She is afraid of things, and screams. Then she 
 has little bits of hands and is always showing 
 them off. Then she runs down Maude Clare. 
 
 I like to watch Maude Clare dress. She 
 moves her hands about in such a pretty way. 
 She looks at my things sometimes out of the 
 corners of her eyes, but she never laughs at 
 them, the way Jack Delancey does, and that s 
 one reason why I like her. I don t mind being 
 laughed at a bit, but then I d rather not. 
 
 Maude Clare and I are going to be friends 
 all our lives long, and she thinks ever so much 
 of me, and I think ever so much of her. I like 
 to braid her hair for her. She has seen ever so 
 many gentlemen, and they all thought a great
 
 deal of her, and she tells me about them 
 and she does n t tell another soul. 
 
 She and I are never going to marry, because 
 we never could love our husbands as much as 
 we do each other. Besides, I d a great deal 
 rather have her than a husband, and besides, I 
 would n t be married anyway. I think it s 
 horrid. Maude Clare and I always go to walk 
 together, and I sit by her at table. 
 
 I d give the world if we were room-mates, 
 but Mrs. McMunn won t let us change now. 
 Maude Clare rooms with poor Miss Holly on 
 the second floor, and I m up here with Jane 
 Bruce. Jane Bruce is very good, I guess, but 
 she s homely and she does n t talk. She s in 
 mourning, but I never asked her for whom. I 
 don t see much of her anyway, for we go right 
 to sleep at night, and I m always in Maude 
 Clare s room out of study-hours. Maude likes 
 to have me go down there because she says 
 the stairs are crooked, and she does n t like to 
 climb up. 
 
 Jo Courtis is another girl I know a littlft 
 
 46
 
 Her name is Josephine, but the girls call her 
 Jo. She came from the West somewhere, and 
 she talks very loud, and says funny things. 
 When they don t call her Jo they call her 
 Courtis, and she does seem like a boy. But 
 then I sort of like her. 
 
 There s a lame girl named Phcebe Hand, 
 who rooms on the first floor. She s pale, and 
 always looks frightened. I haven t seen much 
 of her. There are a good many others, but 
 most of them are in Jack Delancey s set, and I 
 don t go with them. 
 
 Mrs. Holt is the housekeeper, and she s cross. 
 Nancy and Dolly are the Irish girls, and Nancy 
 gave me some cold rice-pudding last night. 
 
 I study Algebra and French and Latin; 
 next term I m going to take Roman History. 
 I only take one music-lesson a week, as you 
 said, so I only have to give an hour a day to 
 practising. I told Mr. Schleiermacher that you 
 wanted me to give most of my time to my 
 lessons, because that was what I came to school 
 for. 
 
 4V
 
 I don t think I have to study very hard. 
 
 I was so homesick I thought I should go 
 crazy Tuesday night, but Wednesday the sun 
 shone, and Maude Clare made me laugh. I 
 am having a splendid time, and think boarding- 
 school s the nicest thing in the world. 
 
 Please pull father s whiskers for me, and give 
 Winnie a squeeze. I wrote to Tom yesterday. 
 
 I have n t forgotten what I promised you up 
 in my room in the dark. I Ve gone to work 
 and had a regular talk with you every night 
 since I ve been here. Last night I d been eat 
 ing peanuts all study-hours, and did n t want to 
 a bit; but I did. I don t mean to eat any 
 peanuts to-night. 
 
 Your letter was magnificent. I m sorry 
 Sarah Rowe has the measles. Do write very 
 soon again to 
 
 Your horrid little GYPSY. 
 
 P. S. Maude Clare says Jacqueline Delan- 
 cey is no lady, because she tries to show off her 
 
 diamond ring ; it was only her father who gave 
 
 48
 
 it to her, but she wears it on her first finger, 
 and tries to make people think she is engaged. 
 Maude Clare is very particular, and would n t 
 do an unladylike thing for a good deal. She 
 means to make her father give her a diamond 
 next Christmas. 
 
 P. S. No. 2. The girls won t believe I wear 
 my own hair, so I have to take it down and 
 run round with it hanging, to let them see.
 
 YPSY was standing one morn 
 ing at her window, watch 
 ing that crescent of yellow 
 maples, when Jacqueline Delancey called her. 
 Those maples, by the way, were well worth 
 watching. The light fell under them from the 
 east, where the sun climbed the little hill, cut 
 ting the outline of each separate leaf in flame. 
 The wind and the frost had begun to twist off 
 their rich, ripe stems, and the air was filled with 
 them ; down on the grass, where the hoar-frost 
 was heavy, they blazed like jewels. The swell 
 of the curve was marked and rounded out by 
 three blood-red trees, and the whole stood out
 
 sharply against a deep October sky. Gypsy 
 always brought her books to this window, and 
 did, I am inclined to think, quite as much look 
 
 ing as studying. She spent much of her play 
 time at this window, and sometimes forgot 
 here even Maude Clare. It held a spell for 
 her.
 
 But Jacqueline Delancey was calling. 
 
 " Gypsy ! Gypsy Breynton ! Courtis, where 
 is she? Has anybody seen her? Miss Breyn 
 ton ! Gypsy ! " 
 
 " Here ! " cried Gypsy, turning away with an 
 impatient start from the window; the maples 
 and Miss Delancey did not suit exactly. 
 "Here I am. What s up?" 
 
 Jacqueline Delancey climbed the last stair, 
 flew along the passage and through Gypsy s 
 opened door, with her breath gone. She 
 tapped her throat with her pretty hands it 
 was a fine opportunity to show them and sat 
 down panting. 
 
 " Well, you seem to be in a hurry," said 
 Gypsy, eyeing her not very hospitably. 
 " Don t sit on the bed, please. I don t like 
 my bed tumbled. Take a chair by the fire?" 
 
 Miss Delancey concluded that it was time to 
 stop panting, took the chair, and observed in a 
 very impressive manner that she had something 
 to tell her. 
 
 "Tell away," said Gypsy.
 
 " What do you suppose Maude Clare s name 
 is?" 
 
 "Maude Clare, to be sure," said mystified 
 Gypsy. 
 
 " It s Maude Clare as far as it goes, but that 
 is n t the whole." 
 
 " Not the whole ! " 
 
 " No, I guess it is n t ! She has another 
 name, and she s ashamed of it I m sure I 
 don t blame her, for the matter of that," said 
 Miss Delancey, making a gigantic effort to look 
 sarcastic, with about the success that a wax 
 doll would have under similar circumstances. 
 "But to think of her being ashamed of it, and 
 trying to hide it from people, and that s your 
 paragon of a Miss Maude Clare ! " 
 
 " I don t believe it ! " said Gypsy, more 
 warmly than politely. 
 
 " Oh, you need n t believe it unless you 
 choose ; it does n t concern me. I thought 
 you d like to know it, that s all, and I heard 
 Mademoiselle call her by it, in Racine this 
 morning you ought to have seen Maude 
 n
 
 look ! so, if you won t take my word, you 
 may take hers." 
 
 "What is the name?" 
 
 " Go and ask her yourself," said Miss De- 
 lancey, triumphantly. 
 
 Gypsy hurried away to Maude Clare, and 
 indignantly told the story as " Jack Delancey s 
 latest." 
 
 Maude Clare coloured. 
 
 " Why you don t " began Gypsy. 
 
 " Well, I suppose I do ; but I should like to 
 know what business it is of Jacqueline Delan 
 cey s if I choose to call myself Zerubbabel ! " 
 
 " Then Maude Clare is n t your real name ? " 
 
 " Of course. You don t suppose I d say so 
 if it were n t ! " 
 
 " But you have another, and it is n t pretty, 
 and so you leave it off," said Gypsy, in a maze. 
 Maude Clare nodded and looked cross. Gypsy 
 asked what it was. 
 
 " Smith" said Maude Clare, faintly. 
 
 Jacqueline Delancey had made a point, and, 
 as this young lady very seldom did make a 
 
 54
 
 point, she whittled it to its sharpest, and stuck 
 it into Maude Clare then and thenceforward 
 whenever occasion offered. 
 
 No one word was oftener on her lips, with 
 cough and laugh and sneer, and double enten- 
 dre, in season and out of season, than this poor 
 little word of five letters, which made Maude 
 Clare s pretty brows blacken like a thunder 
 cloud, and Maude Clare s keen tongue (of 
 which Miss Delancey was secretly in fear, hav 
 ing felt its edge more than once) keep silence. 
 Partly for the joke of the thing, partly from 
 unconscious imitation, the rest of the girls fell 
 into the way, as long as Maude Clare remained 
 at the Golden Crescent, of pronouncing the 
 unfortunate name as Maude Clare s rival did, 
 and of writing it as they pronounced it, - 
 Maude Clare Smith, with a pause of mock 
 respect at the dash that was indescribable. 
 
 Boarding-school was not pure Paradise, after 
 
 all. Gypsy found this out in due time. She 
 
 enjoyed the fun and chatter and novelty, 
 
 " wearing long dresses and drawing her ow 
 
 M
 
 checks," having no errands to do, and Mrs. 
 McMunn s waterfall to laugh at. She soon 
 found herself for some unaccountable reason 
 which she spent her whole year at the Crescent 
 trying to find out everybody s pet and 
 favourite ; and her lessons, to put it moderately, 
 could not be said to be so severe a strain upon 
 her intellect as to endanger health or reason. 
 As for home, why, she missed it, to be sure,, 
 but the holidays were coming sometime. Then 
 she never felt very far away from her mother ; 
 beginning, as she did in the morning, to 
 treasure up things for that talk with her at 
 night ; very often the talk was put into a letter, 
 but, written or spoken, Gypsy felt it a reality. 
 
 But still over her merry days there fell now 
 and then a little shade. 
 
 Maude Clare had plenty of money. So ]*cJ 
 Jacqueline ; so had the rest. It was an ex 
 pensive school, and attracted the notice of 
 wealthy parents. Gypsy and a small minority 
 of three or four must economise, sometimes 
 closely. The girls were for the most part too
 
 ladylike to taunt her with this, but they 
 reminded her of it, by no means infrequently; 
 sometimes unnecessarily, always painfully. 
 
 One day a little knot of them gathered in 
 Josephine Courtis room, discussing each other s 
 pretty things. Josephine s winter cloak had 
 just come from home by express. 
 
 " It s early for it, to be sure," she said, shak 
 ing out the heavy folds, " but I can t go the 
 buttons on my sacque ; they look as if they 
 were handed down from Mrs. Japhet." 
 
 " Why, I m sure they were only a summer 
 style," said Gypsy. 
 
 "Oh, well; it s all the same Dutch," an 
 swered Josephine in her brusque way, holding 
 up the cloak for inspection and admiration. 
 Josephine s " loud " no other word expresses 
 it Western taste was always questionable. 
 Gypsy did not like the striking cuir-coloured 
 cassock, with its heavy, dead-black finish of 
 velvet; and while the rest admired, she said 
 nothing. 
 
 " What are you going to have for a bonnet^
 
 Jo?" asked Jacqueline, in a tone which plainly 
 said that she should like to be asked what she 
 was going to have. As Jo did not ask, how 
 ever, Miss Delancey had to volunteer the 
 information. 
 
 " Green velvet with quilted white satin let 
 in. Quilted white is all the rage." 
 
 " Such showy things are not my taste," ob 
 served Maude Clare, who made it a point never 
 to agree with Jacqueline under any circum 
 stances, whatever the subject. 
 
 " Nor mine," said Gypsy. 
 
 " Of course, Gypsy always agrees with Miss 
 Smith," remarked Jacqueline, by way of 
 retribution. 
 
 " High crowns, you know," said a New York 
 girl, with the air of one quite willing to instruct 
 Boston and all other little villages. 
 
 " A?, if we did n t know that ! Of course 
 nobody would be seen without a high crown." 
 
 Gypsy thought of those " little pieces," with 
 which she was going to " poke it up." She 
 felt just the,* that to be obliged to wear a low
 
 crown would be an affliction greater than sh 
 could bear. I hardly think it was cowardly; 
 it was only natural. 
 
 After a little chatter about balmorals and 
 skating-boots, Alexander s gloves, thread iace 
 barbes, the price of ermine, the exact length of 
 dinner-dresses, and the relative merits of water 
 falls and coils, somebody said something about 
 furs. Jo Courtis had a faint prospect of Hud 
 son Bay Sables. 
 
 Everybody looked at Jo respectfully. 
 
 " Mother does n t like to see sables on 
 school-girls," observed Maude Clare, " but she 
 means to keep me in very nice mink till I 
 graduate." 
 
 As Maude Clare was generally conceded, 
 outside of Jacqueline Delancey s " set," to be 
 the most distingue-looking girl in school, every 
 body looked at her with an expression of relief. 
 
 " I would n t be seen in anything short of 
 mink," said Maude Clare, impressively; "every 
 thing cheaper than that is so common." 
 
 Gypsy s face flushed a little, where she sat 
 so
 
 over in the corner behind her friend, flushed 
 for the instant, as if she had received some 
 sudden degradation. 
 
 For her furs the pretty muff and collar, 
 her mother s Christmas present, which had 
 matched and finished off her gray cassock so 
 tastefully her furs were only squirrel. 
 
 " I m going to have Astrakhan," said Jacque 
 line (she had intended to have mink until this 
 very minute) ; " that s the latest, and they say 
 another year mink will be all out." 
 
 " That s fortunate, for I m sure I should n t 
 want yours just like mine," observed Maude 
 Clare, with her peculiar smile. 
 
 Gypsy, over in her corner, was thinking. 
 If squirrel were "so common," and Maude 
 Clare herself had said it, what should she 
 do? At least she could go without; her 
 mother would say it was a risk, when she had 
 been used to them so many winters; but her 
 mother would not know. 
 
 Perhaps this, however natural, was a little 
 
 cowardly. Was it not? However that might 
 60
 
 be, Jacqueline hit the unspoken thought with 
 an unexpected thrust, 
 
 * I don t see but I shall have to go without 
 tny till holidays ; I would n t trust anybody 
 else to chose Astrakhan for me, and Mrs. M. 
 won t let me go to Boston ; she *s been as cross 
 as a bear since she caught me in the cars 
 with Ben Sizer. I m ashamed to go without, 
 though ; it looks so poverty-stricken." 
 
 "Which would you rather do, Maude, go 
 without or wear squirrel?" asked Gypsy in an 
 undertone, fingering Maude Clare s tassel trim 
 ming Maude always had rich trimmings 
 in an uneasy, absent way. But Jacqueline 
 heard the question. 
 
 " I would n t be seen in squirrel a^how, H 
 said she, with a little disdainful gesture of her 
 pretty hands. 
 
 Jane Bruce had been sitting by the window, 
 so quietly that no one had noticed her. Con 
 sequently every one started a little in surprise 
 when she spoke suddenly and decidedly, 
 
 Well, I would, if I could n t afford anything
 
 nicer Of course, I d rather have an expensive 
 and stylish thing; so would anybody; but I 
 should feel degraded, I m sure I should, if I 
 endangered my health all winter long rather 
 than carry a squirrel muff 1 " 
 
 The girls had a liking, such as it was, for 
 Jane Bruce ; she had a way of doing errands 
 without grumbling, and curing their neuralgia, 
 and being sorry for their headaches, a very 
 quiet sort of way, to be sure, that nobody 
 thought much about; but at any rate, they did 
 not laugh at what she said. 
 
 "Well, well," said Jo Courtis, "Jane doesn t 
 care for the pomp and vanities, anyway, which 
 makes a difference; do you, Jane?" 
 
 The question was thoughtless, just like Jo. 
 Gypsy glanced from her room-mate s mourning 
 dress to her face, on which a slight sadness had 
 settled. Her good sense told her that Jane was 
 right. It told her, moreover, that Gypsy 
 Breynton was a little ashamed of herself. So 
 she spoke up in her honest way, 
 
 "Anybody want my sentiments on squirrel
 
 furs? Don t? What a pity! For you see, 
 you 11 have to see me in them all winter. It s 
 either that, or worrying mother for fear I shall 
 catch my death ; so you d better make up your 
 minds to it. Jane, where s the algebra lesson?" 
 
 Jane was gone, as she was very apt to be ; 
 and nobody thought any more about her. 
 
 Not long after this, another matter came up, 
 which troubled Gypsy more than anything of 
 the kind had done before. 
 
 One day three or four of the girls appeared 
 with three or four little gold stars, all just alike, 
 and all affixed by a tiny gold chain to their 
 pins. They were inscribed with some mysteri 
 ous hieroglyphics, which no one could decipher 
 without coming to an impertinent nearness. 
 
 "Why, what is it?" 
 
 "Did you ever? 
 
 " Where did they get them? " 
 
 "What do they mean? " 
 
 "What on earth do they keep it such a 
 dreadful secret for?" 
 
 So the whispers and the wonder buzzed 
 
 9
 
 around for a week, but the wearers kept their 
 lips shut, and nobody was any the wiser. At 
 last one day it was reported that the gold 
 stars were the badges of a Secret Society, the 
 Chapter of the Golden Crescent, solemnly 
 founded in the trunk closet on the fifteenth 
 of November, and solemnly to be handed 
 down to posterity as long as time and Mrs. 
 McMunn s should endure. 
 
 "Why, how splenafo//" said Gypsy. I 
 doubt if Gypsy will ever outgrow her penchant 
 for boy s plays. 
 
 Jo Courtis, Jacqueline Delancey, Mary Blunt, 
 Lou Armstrong, and the Colchetts were the 
 original members. There was a breathless sus 
 pense in official circles. Would the illustri 
 ous band enlarge itself? Who would be 
 chosen next? 
 
 One day Maude Clare walked into Shake 
 speare, with the gold star hanging from her 
 handsome lapis-lazuli pin. Maude Clare tried 
 not to look important, and succeeded in look* 
 ing it to perfection.
 
 As soon as the recitation was over, Gypsy 
 flew after her, and begged leave to examine the 
 badge. Upon one side was a cabalistic design, 
 
 which might have been a toasting-fork, or a 
 gravestone, or several other things. 
 
 " Or a teaspoon, perhaps?" suggested Gypsy. 
 
 "That s telling," said Maude Clare. Upon 
 the other side were the letters @. @, hand 
 somely engraved in German text. 
 
 65
 
 " E. S.? E. S.? What on earth does E. S 
 stand for?" 
 
 " Guess." 
 
 " Well Everlasting Sinners? * 
 
 " Guess again." 
 
 Gypsy could n t guess. 
 
 " Evergreen Sisters." 
 
 " Oh." 
 
 " That is to say, that s our public name. 
 There is a private meaning, of course; we re 
 on our oath not to tell that." 
 
 Gypsy fingered the pretty trinket with wist 
 ful eyes, but said nothing. 
 
 In the afternoon Maude Clare came into 
 her room with a very mysterious air; Jane 
 Bruce, seeing that she was not wanted, went 
 out. 
 
 "You are elected, my dear," said Maude 
 Clare, solemnly. 
 
 "Elected?" 
 
 " An Evergreen Sister. I am appointed a 
 committee of one to notify you." 
 
 Gypsy rose demurely from her chair, and 
 
 66
 
 jumped up and down three times, as hard as 
 she could jump. 
 
 "You had better go down town and order 
 your badge this afternoon, I think," said Maude 
 Clare. Gypsy stopped jumping. 
 
 "How much does it cost? " she said, turning 
 quickly round. 
 
 " Oh, only five dollars." 
 
 Only five dollars ! It might as well have 
 been fifty. Gypsy walked over to the window. 
 "Well?" said Maude Clare. 
 Gypsy made no reply; perhaps she could 
 not just then; she was bitterly disappointed, 
 and stood with flushed cheeks, and one little 
 pearl of a tooth biting sharply at her lip, think 
 ing about it. She had five dollars in her purse, 
 but it was nearly all owing to her washwoman. 
 They would send her checks from home as 
 often as she asked for them, but she very well 
 knew that her mother had set apart an allow 
 ance for the term, all that could be spared, 
 which it would require close economy to come 
 within. There was no twist or turn which
 
 Gypsy unpleasantly. For the first time, 
 though only for a moment, she felt not quite 
 satisfied with her " beautiful, darling, precious 
 Maude Clare." 
 
 " Tell them what you please," she said, and 
 walked away. 
 
 That night, just as she was growing sleepy, 
 Jane Bruce heard somebody whispering. She 
 could not understand a word, but if she had, 
 this is what she would have heard. 
 
 " I did n t, no, I did n t. I did n t come 
 near it. I only thought about it I nearly bit 
 my tongue off, too, I was so ashamed to think 
 I did think about it. But then you know I 
 did n t do it, and you see you don t know a 
 thing about it, and you re not going to, either. 
 No, ma am ! " 
 
 It was Gypsy, talking to her mother. 
 
 She chanced to be writing to Tom that 
 night; as she could not well keep a secret 
 from Tom, and feeling quite safe, she told him 
 the story of the badge. " Just to fill up, you 
 know. Of course it is all settled, and there s
 
 no use in talking ab iut it now; but I thought 
 you would like to hear. 
 
 " I suppose I felt pretty badly standing up 
 there at the window and telling Maude Clare I 
 
 couldn t afford it; I was just such a little 
 goose. But I might have worse things to feel 
 badly about, mightn t I, you blessed old 
 boy?"
 
 A few days after, a stout-looking letter came 
 from New Haven. Gypsy opened it, wonder 
 ing; and out dropped five dollars. Concern 
 ing which, Tom had this to say: 
 
 MY EVERGREEN SISTER, Run right down 
 town and buy your badge. You need n t go to 
 making up any of your horrible faces, for it s 
 all right A part of it is father s New Year s 
 present, a little ahead of time. The rest I 
 could spare just as well as not, and a little 
 better. 
 
 Who gave me all the cash she had, about 
 the epoch of those Freshman scrapes? to say 
 nothing of several other little things. If you 
 don t remember, 
 
 Yours respectfully, 
 
 T. BREYNTON, does. 
 
 Happy Gypsy, after writing just sixteen 
 pages of protestations and thanks to Tom, to 
 which he made answer only and characteristi 
 cally, " You hush up ! " concluded that there
 
 <vas nothing to be done but to order her badge 
 and become an Evergreen Sister. Which she 
 became, fifteen minutes after study-hours, on 
 the very next Tuesday night. 
 
 Now, if you would like to know, I think on 
 the whole I will tell you, that this account of 
 the Society of the Evergreen Sisters is not " a 
 story," but true, every word of it. How I 
 happen to know, is another matter; and it 
 would be very inquisitive in you to ask; espe 
 cially as I certainly should not say. I will 
 simply observe that I did not have to apply 
 to Gypsy for the info*. nation. 
 
 It was time long ago for another chapter, 
 but we really must stop for a glance at that 
 eagerly expected Tuesday night. As the 
 Evergreen Sisters long ago dissolved partner^ 
 ship or, as Gypsy more classically expresses 
 it, were " bounced up," nobody breaks any 
 oaths in telling the tale. 
 
 Tuesday night came as fast as other Tuesday 
 nights, though it seemed leaden-footed to im 
 patient Gypsy; and at a quarter of nine pre- 
 73
 
 cisely, the Sisters assembled in Maude Clare s 
 room. They were all there, Maude, and 
 Jacqueline, Jo Courtis, Lou, and Mary, and 
 the Colchetts. " Poor Miss Holly " was there 
 too. 
 
 " Had to let her in," whispered Maude 
 Clare. "Her room, you know; wouldn t 
 budge an inch ; would insist on going to bed ; 
 could n t get it into her head that anything was 
 up. What would you do, girls, if you d been 
 made an owl? " 
 
 After some whispering among the others, 
 the two new members of the Society Susan 
 Holly and Gypsy were put into a corner by 
 themselves, on Maude s large trunk. The 
 lamps were turned down dimly; the curtains 
 were drawn and pinned to the sills; the crack 
 under the door, and the key-hole were stuffed 
 with cotton wool. 
 
 "When Mrs. M. comes round to put out 
 lights, she ll think that the inhabitants have 
 gone to bed," explained Josephine. "Jack and 
 I do that little thing whenever there s a novel, 
 
 74
 
 or peanuts, or anything going on, and the 
 woman never so much as knocks, does n t 
 want to disturb our sleep, bless her kind 
 heart ! " 
 
 Finally the register was shut, that the sound 
 of their voices might not be carried to other 
 rooms, and then Jo Courtis taking the chair 
 that is to say, seating herself on Miss 
 Holly s study table, opened the meeting by 
 announcing that the new members would now 
 be initiated into the mysteries of the Ever 
 green Sisters and the Chapter of the Golden 
 Crescent. 
 
 Upon that, somebody blindfolded Gypsy, 
 and told her that she would first be required to 
 kiss the Holy Archives of the Society, which 
 she, reverently proceeding to do, splash ! went 
 her head into a pail of very cold water. After 
 that she was compelled to drink of the choice 
 and ancient wine of the Society; and, if you 
 know how water and sugar and salt, with a little 
 Cayenne pepper and a touch of vinegar, taste, 
 you will know how that tasted. After that
 
 there was a spirited endeavour to toss her in 
 a blanket; but the blanket, unfortunately, was 
 an old one, and Gypsy was heavy, and what 
 should it do but split the whole length through 
 the middle, and land Gypsy with such a noise 
 on the floor, that Miss Ayre came running 
 upstairs, and severely inquired through the key 
 hole if anybody were hurt or crazy? After 
 several other like exploits, of which the time 
 faileth me to tell, Gypsy took her oath upon 
 Webster s Unabridged, to keep the secrets of 
 the Society inviolate, and was pronounced 
 with due form and ceremony an Evergreen 
 Sister. 
 
 Miss Holly had meantime been put through 
 a similar process, and Josephine observed that 
 they were ready to begin. 
 
 "Begin to what?" asked Gypsy. "I sup 
 posed we had come to the end." 
 
 Maude Clare replied by throwing open the 
 closet door, and disclosing to view her light- 
 stand, neatly draped with a clean towel, and 
 covered with I really do not know what
 
 not. Cakes, and turnovers, and pies, and 
 lemons, and candy, and nuts, and all the indi 
 gestible horrors that heart of school-girl could 
 devise, to eat at ten o clock at night. 
 
 " And what does E. S. stand for, my dear?" 
 asked one of the Colchetts. 
 
 "Why, I suppose " 
 
 " To be sure. Eating Society. Yes ; come, 
 girls, I m dying for a chocolate cream." 
 
 " But I suppose you have to pay for it," 
 said Gypsy, looking up from her cocoanut 
 cakes presently. 
 
 " Oh, the tax is voluntary," said Maude 
 Clare. "/ give fifty cents a meeting; only 
 once a fortnight, you know." 
 
 Again, as happened so often, Gypsy felt a 
 little check upon her merriment. It would 
 seem mean to contribute less than the rest. 
 But then, she must make up her mind to it; 
 and perhaps Miss Holly would keep her 
 company. 
 
 The more pc : sonous a thing is to eat, and 
 the more unearthly the hour of eating it, the 
 
 77
 
 fuller the room is of kerosene gas from the low 
 burning lamps, the colder it is with the register 
 shut off, the greater the risk of a teacher in the 
 midst of them, and the deeper the mystery 
 and excitement and hush and discomfort, the 
 merrier girls will be. Very merry were the 
 Evergreen Sisters; as for to-morrow s head 
 aches and dyspepsia and bad lessons and 
 " blues " and crossness, if anybody thought of 
 them, why, sufficient unto the day was the 
 evil thereof; as Josephine said, if that wasn t 
 a scriptural principle, she should like to know 
 what was. 
 
 Mrs. McMunn came her rounds before the 
 lemonade was gone; found the cotton in the 
 keyhole, and passed on, leaving the girls all in 
 a heap in the closet, stuffing their handker 
 chiefs into their mouths to keep from laughing. 
 
 It was about half-past ten when Gypsy crept 
 into bed over Jane Bruce s feet, convinced that 
 the Evergreen Sisters were a great success. 
 
 One thing she did not feel quite at ease 
 about, the little deception practised on Mrs. 
 H
 
 McMunn. She said so the next day to Maude 
 Clare. Maude laughed at her, and called hei 
 a particular child, but said that they should 
 break up early after this. Mrs. McMunn had 
 suspected that something was in the wind last 
 night, and it was deemed advisable. The time 
 between study-hours and ten o clock was their 
 own, and Gypsy felt no further scruples about 
 being an Evergreen Sister. 
 
 It was enough to break down the constitu 
 tion of a giant, to be sure; but "girls will be 
 girls," and I am only telling what happened. 
 
 If, however, any poor victim stimulated to 
 imitation should go and do likewise, I should 
 repent having written this chapter, in dust and 
 ashes, to the day of my death.
 
 AUDE CLARE had a box. 
 The expressman had not rung 
 the door-bell, before every 
 body in the house, from 
 Phoebe Hand on the lower 
 floor, up to Jane Bruce in 
 the attic, knew that Maude Clare had a box. 
 Gypsy jumped and ran; Jane put away her 
 books; Phcebe limped out into the hall; the 
 whole second floor swarmed to the banisters, 
 and peered over, a medley of eyes, ribbons, 
 Waterfalls, curls, streamers, danglers, and 
 whispers. 
 
 " If it shouldrit be anything to eat ! " said 
 Mary Blunt, who had been eating taffy all day,
 
 and shagbarks all yesterday, and Ladies drops 
 all the day before, and something else every 
 day since anybody could remember. 
 
 " It looks like a bonnet." 
 
 " Or a foot-tub, perhaps. * 
 
 " Or books." 
 
 "The idea of sending Maude books?" 
 
 "Well, if it shouldn t!" sighed Mary. 
 
 "Oh, Mary Blunt!" But Jo sighed when 
 Mary sighed, and Jacqueline sighed when Jo 
 sighed, and in fact Mary cared no more about 
 it than the rest, except that she had the 
 courage to say so. And if you should observe, 
 after reading this book, that Gypsy s school 
 mates never did anything but eat, I should say 
 that I really doubt if they ever did. 
 
 Maude was hammering away at her box, and 
 denting her pretty fingers on the nails, and the 
 cover was coming off. 
 
 "Apples?" 
 
 The row of eyes over the banisters bright 
 ened like a galaxy. 
 
 " It is n t, either ! It s only red strings to
 
 Maude s winter bonnet ! " and the row of eyes 
 over the banisters looked like a little thunder 
 cloud. 
 
 " Oh, it is too it is a plum cake and a 
 bottle of pickles ! Girls, we never saw such a 
 duck of a bonnet as Maude s, did we? It s the 
 sweetest love in school, is n t it? " 
 
 This came from Mary Blunt, and the rest 
 flew after her down the stairs. Even Maude 
 and nobody liked to have her pretty things ad 
 mired better than Maude Clare was a little 
 suspicious of the singular amount of interest 
 that her bonnet excited. She went away up 
 stairs with it rather haughtily, that is to say, 
 as haughtily as she conveniently could, under 
 the circumstances, for the box was heavy, and 
 the nails stuck into her chin. 
 " She is n t going to stand that ! " 
 " Just like Maude ; she s a stingy thing ! " 
 " Gypsy Breynton, you go up after her! " 
 Gypsy preferred to wait till she was sent for, 
 and did so. Maude Clare called her up at last. 
 Cake and pickles were nowhere to be seen;
 
 Maude stood before the glass, with the winter 1 
 bonnet a rich velvet affair, which the light 
 struck as it strikes a garment tied over her 
 onyx hair. 
 
 "Pretty, isn t it?" 
 
 " Very." 
 
 Gypsy stood admiring it, and the face inside 
 83
 
 of it, but she was thinking about the pickles. 
 What did the girls mean by calling Maude 
 Clare "stingy"? 
 
 Presently Maude put away her bonnet, went 
 to the closet, and brought out a little a very 
 little cucumber on a fork. 
 
 " I would give you more," she said, " but I m 
 going to save them for to-night. We will have 
 the girls in after Biblical, and have a Heigh-o." 
 
 " Oh, splendid ! " Gypsy brightened ; so 
 Maude Clare was n t stingy, and the girls ought 
 to be ashamed of themselves. " And the cake 
 too?" 
 
 " No, not the cake," said Maude Clare, look 
 ing a little displeased. 
 
 Gypsy s face fell once more. Was she a 
 little? or wasn t she? 
 
 It was the custom at the Golden Crescent to 
 consider boxes from home as common prop 
 erty. There was not a girl in school but her 
 " beautiful, darling, precious Maude Clare," 
 who would have locked up her plum cake in 
 the drawer for private consumption.
 
 " Is n t Maude going to have a Bang-up to 
 night? What! only the pickles? Whe w!" 
 
 This was Jo Courtis judgment. 
 
 " But I m sure, Jo, it was very good in her 
 to give us those," argued Gypsy, trying to 
 comfort herself. 
 
 However nobody objected in the least to tak 
 ing what they could get, and at nine o clock 
 Maude Clare s room was crowded. Miss Holly 
 had built a particularly good fire, and Miss 
 Holly had brought in chairs, and Miss Holly 
 had dusted off the trunks, and Miss Holly had 
 borrowed plates of the housekeeper, and Miss 
 Holly had done all the work, generally, as she 
 was very apt to do, while Maude Clare did the 
 honours, and looked handsome. 
 
 But make the best they would of the re 
 past, there was certainly a most uncomfor 
 table consciousness of an aching void in every 
 heart. 
 
 " But clear, bare, unadulterated pickles* you 
 know ! " said Josephine, pausing at the outset 
 of a mouthful. 
 
 as
 
 " They last so long and they do seem te 
 taste so exactly the same all the way through ! " 
 remarked Mary Blunt, in a tone of conviction. 
 
 " Plum cake would n t be the thing at all," 
 said Gypsy, in an anxious undertone ; " it is n t 
 Maude s fault." 
 
 " Go down and lay siege to Nancy," sug 
 gested somebody; and Jo went down. She 
 was gone about ten minutes. 
 
 " It must be something extra superfine, you 
 see," said Gypsy, " it has taken her so long to 
 tease it out." Jo came in laughing. 
 
 " Here is a dainty dish to set before the 
 king ! speaking of kings. Oh, my bleeding 
 heart ! you ought to have seen me squeezed 
 up there behind the door on the back stairs, 
 waiting for Madame la Holt to clear the way ; 
 nearly twisted my neck off, to say nothing of 
 the spiders, and stepping on the cat and then 
 choking her so she should n t howl over it, 
 and just look here." 
 
 Three cold fish-balls on a cracked saucer ! 
 
 " That depraved female has either been read-
 
 ing her Bible, or getting her quarter s wages," 
 observed Mary Blunt, after a solemn pause. 
 
 " I m going down to appeal to the humanity 
 >f Dolly. I gave Dolly two old crinolines and 
 
 linen collar last week; habit of mine to pro 
 vide for emergencies ; you see if I don t bring 
 up bread and butter for you hot bread ; crisp 
 pieces of crust; right out of the oven; with 
 the butter melting." 
 
 Mary was gone another ten minutes, and 
 came back with a tumbler of water. 
 
 " Take it somebody, do ! I can t hold it for 
 laughing. Here, Lou Armstrong, you must 
 faint right away if you have the least regard for 
 my conscience. Ran into Mrs. M. splash ! 
 Knocked off her waterfall you ought to have 
 seen it spin ! begged her pardon, but my 
 feelings were agitated my room-mate was 
 sick, and wanted a glass of water. And Oh 
 dear ! the woman was so compassionate, and 
 offered to come up and see her ! Would n t 
 anybody have the goodness to be thirsty ! " 
 
 The prospect began to look serious; the 
 
 87
 
 " clear, bare, unadulterated pickles," impossi* 
 ble, through that hope deferred, which maketh 
 the heart sick. 
 
 At last Maude Clare said that she had 
 thought of a plan. Maude Clare was famous 
 for thinking of plans, and very willing to look 
 on and see somebody else carry them out. 
 
 There is a plate of oyster crackers on the 
 china closet shelf; I saw them this noon, when 
 we had n t enough for the oysters, and Dolly 
 said they were all gone." Maude was inter 
 rupted by a chorus of " Just the thing ! " 
 
 "And Gypsy might go down she s so 
 little through the dining-room ; there is n t 
 a soul there ; if anybody comes, she can whisk 
 up the kitchen stairs, and if anybody comes 
 from the kitchen, she can want my Testament 
 that I dropped under the dining-room table at 
 Biblical. You are so little, you know, Gypsy, 
 and can get out of the way like a squirrel. I 
 would go myself, but I m always so big; 
 everybody sees me" 
 
 Gypsy s eyes had begun to twinkle at th 
 
 S3
 
 prospect. What good fun it would be ! And 
 when a thing promised good fun, Gypsy was 
 not apt to think very far about it. 
 
 " Good ! I 11 do it. Here I bequeath you 
 my pickle, girls, if I come to an untimely end. 
 Keep it sacred to my memory, will you?" So, 
 with her bubbling laugh, she bounded away 
 from them, and downstairs. 
 
 The entry was nearly dark. The lamp at 
 the foot of the stairs had gone out, and only 
 the light from the front hall fell in faintly. The 
 house was quite still. 
 
 Mademoiselle was correcting exercises in the 
 back parlour. Jacqueline Delancey had fallen 
 asleep over her practising, in the music-room. 
 Phoebe Hand s room was just opposite the din 
 ing-room door, but Phcebe Hand s room was 
 always still. Phcebe roomed with Miss Ayre, 
 and that kept the girls away. Besides, as 
 Maude Clare said, " a lame girl is n t nice com 
 pany; she can t go about; and then it makes 
 you nervous to see an ugly crutch round all the 
 
 time, though, to be sure, it is n t her fault." 
 89
 
 Gypsy stole into the dining-room, and 
 looked around; crept to the closet door, and 
 looked around; nobody was to be seen; nobody 
 was to be heard. A little fleck of light fell 
 through a chink in the kitchen door, and fell 
 exactly upon the plate of crackers. 
 
 She stepped in on the softest tiptoe, leaving 
 the door open a crack behind her, for the sake 
 of the light. The plate was large, and very 
 full. She could not move it without rattling 
 off its contents, and she reflected that to climb 
 the side stairs dropping crackers all the way, 
 and that within an entry s width of Miss Ayer, 
 would be an undertaking more rash than val 
 orous. Accordingly she decided to put the 
 crackers into her pocket. Maude had a plate 
 upstairs, and school-girls are not particular. 
 
 The last cracker was just in, when she heard 
 a noise. Somebody groping for the door- 
 handle, and before she could stir, somebody 
 groping, groping, across the dining-room; then 
 a resounding blow, and a crash, and a groan, 
 and a voice,
 
 "Oh, the Land s End! Oh, goodness gra 
 cious mercy on me ! I ve gone over that 
 rocking-chair again ! Nancy, Nancy ! Here ! 
 You ve let that entry lamp go out, and this is 
 the third time I ve broken my bones over Mrs. 
 McMunn s rocking-chair, this blessed night. 
 Come right along with a match now, as quick 
 as you can ! " 
 
 Gypsy, in the closet, choked and gasped, 
 and stuffed her mouth with crackers to keep 
 herself from laughing. Nancy came, mutter 
 ing, with a lamp, and the housekeeper scolded 
 till her ankle-bones felt better. 
 
 " You may leave the lamp," she said then. 
 " I want to use it, to lock up for the night." 
 
 Oh dear ! Oh dear ! she was coming into the 
 closet ! Already her heavy steps sounded half 
 way across the room, limped by the register, 
 thundered up to the door. Gypsy had but an 
 instant to think. A barrel, nearly empty, stood 
 under the shelves. She whisked it out, climbed 
 into it, gave a little lurch partly back under the 
 shelves, and crouched there, waiting. Mrs.
 
 Holt came in with her lamp in her hand, and 
 her spectacles on her nose. 
 
 Gypsy held her breath. Mrs. Holt dusted a 
 plate, and looked into the sugar-bowl; shook 
 down the salt-cellars; looked in the macaroni 
 drawer, and counted the tumblers. 
 
 Gypsy, becoming suffocated, gave a little 
 gasp. 
 
 Mrs. Holt stopped, and looked around. 
 
 " Another mouse, I declare ! Nancy, bring 
 the trap." 
 
 Nancy brought the trap, and the housekeeper, 
 after setting it, put it down behind Gypsy s 
 barrel. 
 
 " Nancy ! " she called again. Nancy came 
 back. 
 
 " Have you been meddling with this barrel, 
 pushing it out in this style, from under the 
 shelf ? " 
 
 Nancy had not been meddling with the 
 barrel, and Nancy wished, though this was in 
 an undertone, that folks would mind their busi 
 ness, and let her go to bed in peace. 
 92
 
 Mrs. Holt took hold of the barrel with her 
 stout arms, and rolled it up with a jerk into the 
 corner, under the shelves. 
 
 " I v/ould n t have thought of its being so 
 heavy," she remarked half aloud, as she paused 
 for breath. "There must be more sugar left 
 than I supposed." 
 
 Upon that, she went out, shut the door, 
 locked it, put the key in her pocket, and 
 limped away. 
 
 " And never thought a thing about the 
 crackers ! " gasped Gypsy, through her stifled 
 laughter. " Locked me in, with them in my 
 pocket. Oh, I never did ! How the girls will 
 laugh ! Oh dear, oh dear ! Now it s only to 
 jerk out my barrel from under this old shelf, 
 and then in through the dumb waiter into the 
 kitchen and up the back stairs. Nancy will be 
 abed, or if she is n t, why, I 11 give her an old 
 necktie to-morrow, and that will be the end of 
 her. Now, Mrs. Halt, we 11 see ? " 
 
 See, she did, in a very unexpected manner. 
 For the sugar barrel absolutely refused to 
 
 93
 
 move. She jerked it and turned it ; she leaned 
 over on this side, she leaned over on the other; 
 she worked herself round in it; she jumped 
 up and down in it that is to say, she rose and 
 fell a very little way laboriously, bumping her 
 head each time against the shelf. But all 
 to no purpose. The barrel remained in statu 
 quo. 
 
 "You won t will you?" said Gypsy, 
 apostrophising it slowly. " Now, my dear, if 
 I were a barrel, I would n t ; I really would n t. 
 I don t think it s sweet-tempered in you ; and 
 who has facilities for cultivating sweet temper, 
 if you haven t? Now, if Jo Courtis gets over 
 this in a term ! I don t see as there is anything 
 to do but to call the daughters of Erin. 
 
 " Nancy ! Dolly ! Nancy ! " Somebody was 
 shuffling about the kitchen, but nobody 
 answered. 
 
 "Nancy/" 
 
 The shuffling stopped, apparently in some 
 alarm. 
 
 " Nancy ! Nancy Donnavan I Let me out ! "
 
 " Arrah ! The howly mither ! What s that 
 now?" 
 
 "It s I locked up here in a barrel, and I 
 can t get out ! " called Gypsy. " You crawl 
 in the dumb waiter, and pull me out, you 
 know. Nan-try, unfasten the dumb waiter, 
 quick ! " 
 
 The only answer was a quick stampede, as 
 of some one hiding behind the pantry door, 
 and a terrified, panting breath broken up into 
 short cries of " Oh, Lor have mercy ! " " An 
 it s kilt intirely I am with the fear!" And 
 "To think of their selthin afther a poor 
 creether this time o night the very time this 
 day year, me third cousin died of the liver com 
 plaint, an me sole an alon in the kitchen ! 
 Oh, good gracious ! " 
 
 Gypsy, rinding that any ordinary noise which 
 she could make rather complicated than bet 
 tered her prospects of release, began forthwith 
 to make a most extraordinary one. She rattled 
 the barrel, she pounded the barrel; she 
 bumped the shelf ; she slapped the shelf;
 
 she shouted after Nancy till her breath 
 out. 
 
 Nancy gave one howl, 
 
 " Och ! it s the ghost of him, as true as I m 
 a livin sinner ! The Virgin an the blessed 
 Saints have mercy on us," threw her apron 
 over her head, and tore upstairs as if her last 
 hour had come. 
 
 It was absolutely necessary to laugh now, no 
 matter what the consequences. 
 
 " Dear me ! " said Miss Ayre, coming to her 
 door in her night-dress, and putting the edge 
 of her sharp chin out into the cool entry air, 
 " what a racket ! Do you know what mischief 
 the girls are up to to-night, Phcebe? On the 
 whole, though, I think it must be Nancy 
 putting away her tubs." 
 
 She went back and shut the door, and after 
 that the house was still. Very still ; in fact, it 
 seemed to Gypsy as if she had never known it 
 so still. Her very breaths sounded like groans, 
 and a crack of the barrel like a thunderclap. 
 What was to be done? The idea of staying 
 
 c6
 
 locked up all night in a china-closet in a 
 barrel under a shelf! Jerk herself free she 
 could not, and tip herself over she dared not. 
 Such a noise in that deathly stillness would 
 wake every echo and every inmate of the 
 house. The chance of crawling through into 
 the kitchen and escaping upstairs before dis 
 covery was too slight to be worth the risk. 
 Besides, the dumb waiter might be fastened 
 upon the other side. 
 
 " C-h-a-r-ming little fix ! Now I should like 
 to know ! Let me see ; if I tip over, no, I 
 won t tip over. Mrs. M. would be frantic. If 
 I stay where I am and go to sleep, why, by- 
 and-by it will be morning, and Nancy will be 
 up building the furnace fire early, and if she 
 does n t expect her third cousin to walk round 
 by daylight, she will let me out ; and what .s 
 more, she will hold her tongue about it. But 
 to sleep in a sugar-barrel ! Let s taste ; yes, 
 to be sure. I wonder how many pounds there 
 are, or quarts don t they sell sugar by the 
 quart? I wonder if I shall have to pay for it 
 
 97
 
 You blessed little woman at home, what would 
 you think of this? I wonder what the girls 
 did with my pick-le and " 
 
 By the time that she had thought as far as 
 this, she was asleep. So, by that time, was 
 every one else. Maude Clare and the rest, 
 finding that she and the crackers did not make 
 their appearance, supposed that she had been 
 playing a trick upon them, and was gone to 
 bed. Jane Bruce, sound asleep half an hour 
 ago, did not suppose anything about her. 
 
 In the middle of the night there was an 
 unearthly noise in the china-closet. Gypsy, 
 dreaming that there was a mouse down her 
 neck, had tipped over her barrel. 
 
 Miss Ayre came to her door and screamed 
 " Robbers ! " Mrs. Holt appeared in an in 
 describable wrapper, groped into the dining- 
 room, tripped over the inevitable rocking-chair, 
 and fiercely demanded, "Who s there? Mr. 
 Holt, bring along that gun ! " This worthy 
 man, twenty years since departed to a world 
 where thieves do not break through and steal, 
 H
 
 was invariably at least so ran the traditiofc 
 made formidable use of against that per 
 sistent burglar by whom the dreams of his 
 valiant relict were almost nightly disturbed. 
 " Mr. Holt s gun " had passed into a proverb 
 at the Golden Crescent, but never with her own 
 ears had Gypsy actually heard it appealed to 
 before. It took her so long to smother her 
 laughter and gain her breath, that Mrs. Hcit 
 had gone back to bed, and the house was s . 11 
 again, and she had not called for help. 
 
 " However, now I m tipped over," she 
 thought, " I don t see what is to prevent my 
 trying the dumb waiter and getting upstairs in 
 my stocking-feet Hilloa ! " 
 
 The dumb waiter was fastened upon the 
 other side. 
 
 There being nothing to do but to go to sleep 
 again, Gypsy lay down with her head in the 
 barrel, and went to sleep ; and that was the last 
 she knew till it was morning, and somebody 
 was trying the key in the door. 
 
 Mrs. Holt had waked at six o clock and
 
 wjiought of those crackers, and, forthwith jump 
 Ing into her dressing-gown and spectacles, 
 down she had come, frowning and suspicious, 
 to see if they were safe. 
 
 She flung open the door and glared in. 
 There lay Gypsy, with her head in the sugar- 
 barrel. 
 
 " Miss BREYNTON ! " said Mrs. Holt, in a 
 voice of thunder. 
 
 " Ma am ? " said Gypsy, sleepily. 
 
 "Is \hhyou?" 
 
 "I suppose so," said Gypsy, faintly. "1 
 don t know exactly. I went to sleep, and 
 then-" 
 
 Mrs. Holt solemnly took off her spectacles, 
 solemnly rubbed them, solemnly put them on 
 again, solemnly pinched Gypsy to see if she 
 were flesh and blood, locked the door upon 
 her, and went straight to Mrs. McMunn. 
 
 Gypsy waited and trembled. Mrs. McMunn 
 came with awful haste, threw open the door, 
 and stood speechless. In the agitation conse 
 quent upon Mrs. Holt s announcemeal, the
 
 good lady had succeeded in fastening her 
 waterfall precisely in a line with her right ear, 
 and there it hung gracefully swaying, tremu 
 lous yet, from her hurried descent of the stairs. 
 
 Gypsy became so much interested in watching 
 it that she very nearly forgot what Mrs. 
 McMunn had come for. The Principal, how* 
 ever, quickly restored her memory. 
 
 ox
 
 " Miss Gypsy Breynton ! " 
 
 " Yes, m, I know it," said Gypsy, meekly. 
 
 " I should like to know," proceeded Mrs. Mc 
 Munn, with a severe shake of her waterfall, > 
 "I should like to know, if you will be so good 
 as to tell me, how you came here, and what 
 you have been doing." 
 
 Just then something rattled out of Gypsy s 
 pocket, and spun away over the bare floor. 
 
 " It s my crackers ! " screamed the house 
 keeper, looking in over Mrs. McMunn s shoul 
 ders. " It s those crackers, that I lay awake 
 half the night over, I was so anxious about 
 them. Oh, the Land s End ! to think of it ! " 
 
 " Oh, I forgot," said Gypsy. " Yes, the girls 
 wanted the crackers, Mrs. McMunn, and I 
 never thought, and so I came down and Mrs. 
 Holt locked me in, and then you see I thought 
 there was a mouse in my neck and the barrel 
 tipped me over, and I m very sorry, Mrs. 
 McMunn, but you can t think how funny it was, 
 I don t think you can possibly think how funny 
 it was, unless you were to see me, now really."
 
 The teacher s mouth twitched a little. 
 
 " Miss Breynton, we have had enough of this 
 levity, I think we have had enough of this levity." 
 
 " Yes, m," replied Gypsy mildly, regarding 
 her with an attentive air. 
 
 " You re not attending to what I say ! " said 
 her teacher, rather sharply. " What are you 
 looking at?" 
 
 " Oh, I do beg your pardon ! " Gypsy 
 blushed all over. "I was only thinking I 
 was only looking " 
 
 "At what?" insisted the Principal. 
 
 "At your your waterfall, you know." 
 
 It was now Mrs. McMunn s turn to blush. 
 She felt round her head with both hands, after 
 the unfortunate waterfall, till she found it; 
 when, by way of improving the matter, she 
 took it off and put it in her pocket. Gypsy 
 felt that the scene beggared description, but 
 look, she dared not. 
 
 "Altogether too much levity," repeated the 
 Principal, as severely as she knew how. 
 "And I really never would have supposed,
 
 Miss Breynton, that you could be capable 
 of" 
 
 " Mrs. McMunn," interrupted Gypsy, seriously. 
 - If you had spent the night in a sugar-barrel, 
 squeezed up in a funny little heap you Ve no 
 idea what a funny little heap it would make 
 of you under an old shelf, and bumped your 
 head every time you stirred, and found the dumb 
 waiter locked on top of it, and all, you would n t 
 want to be scolded very badly, Mrs. McMunn." 
 
 " In the sugar-barrel ! Oh, Miss Breynton, 
 Miss Breynton ! " 
 
 Mrs. McMunn gave up all efforts at com 
 posure, collapsed upon the nearest firkin, and 
 laughed till she cried. She seemed to recol 
 lect, at last, that Gypsy remained there to be 
 scolded, and grew suddenly severe again. 
 
 " I really never should have thought you 
 capable, Miss Gypsy, of stealing anybody s 
 crackers, much less " 
 
 " Stealing ! " 
 
 "Certainly, my dear. What was it if it 
 wasn t stealing?"
 
 " Why, so it was," said horrified Gypsy, 
 after some consideration. " Why, I never 
 thought ! Why, how funny ! " 
 
 " Funny i " said poor Mrs. McMunn, in im 
 minent danger of subsiding upon the firkin again. 
 " Funny, Miss Breynton? Why, really, I " 
 
 "What will that blessed woman say?" 
 observed Gypsy in an undertone, seriously 
 enough. " Stealing ! And I must tell her all 
 about it to-night. And to think it never 
 crossed my mind now ! " 
 
 "What blessed woman, my dear?" asked 
 Mrs. McMunn, looking very much flattered. 
 
 " Only my mother," said Gypsy, looking up. 
 " Mrs. McMunn, I believe I ve been a horrid 
 little wretch, and I ask your pardon, you know, 
 and I 11 pay for the sugar, but I m sure I did 
 not mean to be a horrid little wretch, and if 
 you please, I 11 never get into any of your 
 sugar-barrels again. I don t suppose I ever 
 shall hear the last of this, though." 
 
 She never did.
 
 GYPSY, Why don t Mrs. 
 
 Makmunn let you come home? 
 
 I don t like her. If I should 
 just see her, I d knock her down, sir, and 
 then I d stamp on her, and then I d frow 
 sum orful cold watter on her. My Cat had 2 
 fits ; she skratched Mrs. Surly too. I swallerd 
 a apple-seed yesterday, Why won t it gro upp 
 into a napple-tree inside of me. I would n t 
 like that. Tommy Rowe s dorg she laid him 
 4 little dorgs last week. They have n t got any 
 feathers. Besides, they re blind, and Besides, 
 they can t see anything. Father says if I etc 
 so much pop corn, I shan t live long enuff 
 to gro up and keep my kandy-shop. I am 
 
 106
 
 bigger n I was when you were hear. I am 
 a big Boy and go two Sundy-School now. I 
 know about Elijah. I would like to be as good 
 Mann as Elijah was. Of kourse a Prophett is 
 a great deal gooder than a kandy-man. Now 
 you just write me a leter as good as this. 
 MR. WINNIE BREYNTON. 
 
 Yorkbury, Vt 
 
 Gypsy laid down the letter laughing, and 
 took up her mother s. She had already read 
 that through twice, but one part of it much 
 surprised and somewhat puzzled her. So, 
 thinking it over, she read it again. It ran thus : 
 
 Be on your guard a little, Gypsy. There 
 will be, figuratively speaking, a good many 
 plates of crackers at the Golden Crescent, 
 which will draw you into locked closets, unless 
 you are on the watch against being led. Be 
 cause the girls are older than you, they have 
 a certain advantage of influence. Struggle 
 against it. Take your own time to think, and 
 act as you think, if what you think is right
 
 Yoar " beautiful, darling, precious Maude 
 Clare/ for instance ; she may be a very nice 
 girl, but remember that you do not yet know 
 very much about her. If, some day or other, 
 you should find out that she is not exactly 
 
 108
 
 what she seems to you to be in fact, that 
 she is something very different from what she 
 seems to you to be, it would be only what has 
 happened in girls lives ever since there have 
 been any girls. However, any such discoveries 
 that are to be made, you must make for your 
 self. I only throw out now and then a bit of a 
 hint, by way of signal-light. 
 
 By the way, speaking of Maude Clare, re 
 minds me: Be sure that you are a perfect 
 lady, no matter what anybody else may ever 
 
 prove to be. 
 
 As ever, lovingly, 
 
 MOTHER. 
 
 When Gypsy had read this for the third 
 time, she threw her Virgil and Lexicon with 
 such a bang upon the floor that quiet Jane 
 jumped half-way across the room. 
 
 "Why, Gypsy! What on earth is the 
 matter?" 
 
 " Nothing," said Gypsy, with flushed cheek, 
 "only I have something to say to mother; 
 that s all" 
 
 loq
 
 She sat straight down and wrote : 
 
 "Why, mother! Why, I never! Why, 
 how could you? You just went and hinted 
 that Maude Clare isn t a perfect lady you 
 know you did ! Why, she s so par&Vular, and 
 so proud, you ve no idea; and last summer 
 one day a gentleman kissed her and she fired 
 up and told him he did n t dare to do that 
 again, and he did it again, and by-and-by she 
 got up and walked right out of the room. She 
 never lets people take liberties with her, and 
 she s so polite, too, and I think you re very 
 much mistaken, and I don t see what made you 
 say such a thing, for you see you don t know 
 hardly anything about her; only what I Ve 
 told you; and I don t see how I can help 
 knowing best, mother, I m sure." 
 
 Had Gypsy seen the smile with which her 
 mother read this, she would have been more 
 perplexed than ever. 
 
 One afternoon when study-hours were over, 
 Maude Clare came upstairs to ask Gypsy to 
 go to walk with her.
 
 " Why you see," said Gypsy, hesitating, 
 with a glance at the window, where her room 
 mate was finishing her French exercise, " I 
 promised Jane I d go with her. I don t go 
 with her very often, you know. It s too 
 bad, though; I d a great deal rather go with 
 you." 
 
 This was in a whisper, but whispers are al 
 ways more easily audible than people suppose; 
 Jane may have heard it, for she turned over the 
 leaves of her Fasquelle quickly, with a sudden 
 flush upon her cheek. 
 
 "Oh, Jane doesn t care; do you, Jane?" 
 said Maude, aloud. 
 
 " Care about what? " 
 
 " Let Gypsy go to walk with me, there s 
 a good girl. I have a particular reason for 
 wanting her to-day." 
 
 "A particular reason?" questioned Gypsy, 
 curious and undecided. 
 
 " Oh, don t mind me," spoke up Jane, hur 
 riedly. " I don t care that is, I mean I 
 would rather have you do as you feel about it
 
 I can go with Phoebe Hand just as well, you 
 know." 
 
 " It s a very particular reason," urged Maude. 
 
 Gypsy, still looking undecided, began to put 
 on her things, saying something to Jane mean 
 while about being sorry, and hating to break 
 an engagement, and she did n t know 
 but 
 
 Jane put an end to the matter by running 
 down to find Phoebe ; and Gypsy and Maude 
 Clare went slowly down after her, and out of 
 the house. Maude was chattering about the 
 fit of her gloves. Gypsy did not listen. 
 
 " It is good," she interrupted suddenly. 
 
 "What the colour?" 
 
 " No ; I was n t thinking about gloves. I 
 mean Jane Bruce." 
 
 " Well, what about Jane Bruce? " 
 
 Maude spoke a little sharply, and pulled up 
 her gloves with a jerk. As long as Miss 
 Maude Clare was the subject of remark, this 
 young lady evinced unusual conversational abil 
 ities. Strike off upon another topic, and one
 
 could but notice every one, that fs, but 
 Gypsy how suddenly her interest flagged, 
 and her brilliancy grew dim. 
 
 " Why, I was thinking how good it is in her 
 to go so much with that Phoebe Hand," pur 
 sued Gypsy, too busy with the thought to ob 
 serve how Maude had received it. " She walks 
 with her, and she rides with her, and she goes 
 in to see her ; I don t see how she can, I m sure, 
 with Miss Ayre looking round." 
 
 " Yes," said uninterested Maude. " Yes, I 
 suppose so. Look at Jack Delancey showing 
 off those everlasting hands of hers across the 
 road there ! She wears kid gloves all the time 
 just because they make them look smaller. I 
 would n t be seen in kids every day, such freez 
 ing weather as this, in such a little country 
 place as Snapberry." 
 
 " I think your hands look prettier in Cash 
 mere than they do in kid," observed Gypsy. 
 " Such little soft brown stuff curves and fits so 
 easily; besides, it makes the fingers look 
 shorter." 
 
 03
 
 " Yes," said Maude Clare ; " I don t know 
 but it does. It is n t everybody that can bear 
 Cashmere without making one s hands look like 
 a cook s. I know Jack could n t, because hers 
 are so fat. I declare ! See her flirting her 
 handkerchief at those boys. How she does 
 act ! See, she has on her best bonnet too, and 
 I never saw anybody sail about the streets as 
 she does, since she had that trailing green pop 
 lin. I d bet you a cookie, as Jo Courtis 
 says, that Jack Delancey considers herself Num 
 ber i in this school, in fact, I have it on very 
 good authority, that she said so herself, to 
 Mary Blunt" 
 
 " Number I ! " repeated Gypsy, looking puz 
 zled. " Why, what do you mean by Number I ? " 
 
 " Why I mean just Number I ! I can t put it 
 any plainer ; if you don t know what that is." 
 
 " Why, I m sure she does n t profess to be 
 the best scholar," said Gypsy, considering, 
 " nor the best behaved ; and she is n t a bit of a 
 favourite among the girls, and 
 
 " You little simpleton ! " interrupted Maude
 
 Clare, with her patronising laugh. " Of course 
 I don t mean anything like that. If you must 
 have a translation, Number I means the most 
 stylish, the most distingue, the I suppose 
 having the most of an air to your things, 
 and plenty of money, you know, and why, all 
 that." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Gypsy. She looked down the 
 street as she spoke, where Jacqueline s striking 
 green poplin dragged its slow length along, and 
 Jacqueline s feathers and ribbons were blowing 
 about in the wind. Then turning around, her 
 eye fell on Phoebe, limping down the hill, and 
 leaning heavily on Jane Bruce s arm. 
 
 " You have n t shown yourself much inter 
 ested in what I said before we came out," said 
 Maude Clare, in an aggrieved tone, after a 
 silence had fallen between the two. 
 
 Gypsy started from her musing, and begged 
 pardon. 
 
 " Your particular reason for wanting me to 
 day ? Oh yes, I am interested ; I want to know, 
 Of course I want to know. What was it?" 
 
 115
 
 "I have something to show you, ma 
 and that s why " 
 
 "Something to " 
 
 " That is to say, somebody." 
 
 "Maude Clare, what is the matter? What s 
 up? What are you blushing about? " 
 
 Maude Clare indignantly denied that she 
 was blushing, and somewhat unintelligibly re 
 quested Gypsy not to say anything, but to wait 
 and see. Gypsy, not having anything to say, 
 said nothing, but waited and saw. 
 
 Presently Maude Clare turned from the main 
 street into a quiet by-road, bounded with 
 stone walls and apple-trees, and comparatively 
 secure from a crowd of passers. 
 
 " Why, what are you turning up Love Lane 
 for?" asked Gypsy. "It isn t half so good 
 walking; the ground is all frozen up in little 
 jolts, Maude." 
 
 "You ll see," said Maude, mysteriously. 
 At the same time she was looking very intently 
 up the road. 
 
 " There 1 " she said at last, and pulled her
 
 spotted lace veil it was very becoming 
 down suddenly over her face. 
 
 "There what?" 
 
 "There he is." 
 
 Gypsy observed then, far up the road, the 
 figure of a young man or boy approaching 
 them. He was not very tall, but of rather a 
 graceful form, and even at that distance she 
 could see that he was fresh from the hands of a 
 city tailor. 
 
 "Who is he, Maude?" 
 
 " Hush-sh ! It s Ben Sizer." 
 
 Gypsy hushed ; thinking that it was some 
 old acquaintance of whom Maude Clare had 
 never chanced to speak to her. She was much 
 surprised to see that, as the young fellow 
 neared them, Maude did not bow to him. She 
 glanced up with a smile one of those brilliant 
 smiles, such as had attracted Gypsy in the car 
 on the evening that they came to the Golden 
 Crescent and then looked demurely on the 
 g*^tmd, her eyelashes on her cheeks, and hef 
 hands in her sacque-pockets.
 
 The stranger had scarcely passed her, how 
 ever, when he stopped, and, raising his hat, said 
 something in an undertone that Gypsy did not 
 hear ; at the same time handing her his card. 
 If Gypsy had been surprised before, she was 
 struck dumb when Maude Clare, instead of 
 repelling the impertinence in a dignified way, 
 took the card with a blush and a smile, drew 
 her own from her pocket, handed it to him, 
 and with a familiar " Good-afternoon " walked 
 slowly on. 
 
 Gypsy waited till they were out of hearing, 
 then expressed her opinion in this fashion: 
 
 " Why, Maude Clare Smith ! " 
 
 "Well, what s the matter? You needn t 
 tuck on my last name if you are mystified. 
 Anybody would think you had been taking 
 lessons of Jack Delancey." 
 
 " I should like to know ! " 
 
 "Know what?" 
 
 " Did n t you why, have n t you ever seen 
 that boy before to-day?" 
 
 Maude laughed noisily. 
 
 1 18
 
 " Occasionally yes, dear; about a dozen 
 
 times, perhaps." 
 
 "Why, where?" 
 
 " Oh, church, and lectures, and down town, 
 ftnd so on. You ve seen him too, only you 
 had n t the sense to remember it. Did you 
 ever see such eyes? And such a love of a 
 moustache ! " 
 
 " Why, then, you must be acquainted with 
 him, I suppose?" 
 
 " Depends upon what you call acquaintance. 
 I never spoke to him till to-day. It was real 
 bright in him to think of introducing himself 
 that way, was n t it? I never should have got 
 an introduction any other way. Nobody knows 
 him in school but Jack Delancey, and she d 
 sooner cut her head off than have him fall 
 into my hands. It will be a joke to hear what 
 My Lady has to say to this. It was so cute." 
 
 " Cute ! Why, I thought he was the most 
 impudent fellow I ever saw. But you won t 
 treat him like anybody else, of course, and bow 
 to him?"
 
 " My dear little Gypsy, pray, why should n t 
 I ! Of course I would n t without any intro 
 duction, like Jack; but I m sure he was 
 very thoughtful and gentlemanly about it, 
 and I don t see any reason for cutting him. 
 I don t care anything about it though, any 
 way, and very likely I shall if I feel like 
 it." 
 
 " Oh," said Gypsy, looking a little relieved ; 
 " well, I hope you won t have anything more 
 to do with him, anyway ; it is n t a bit like 
 you." But after this she was silent for some 
 time. 
 
 "Have you ever met him before in Love 
 Lane?" she questioned presently. 
 
 " Why, let me see ; once or twice, perhaps," 
 said Maude Clare, evasively. 
 
 " But you know something about him, I 
 suppose, who he is, and all." 
 
 " Why, stupid ! he is Mr. Ben Sizer." 
 
 " But, I mean, anything more, you know." 
 
 " Well, he is a student at Harvard College^ 
 I believe ; so Jack says."
 
 " Harvard ! But it s term time at Harvard ; 
 how happens he to be here?" 
 
 " Oh, I don t know, nor care," said Maude, 
 carelessly. " Hush ! I declare ! Look 
 round ! " 
 
 Gypsy looked, and saw, to her surprise, that 
 Mr. Benjamin Sizer was following them at a 
 rapid pace. 
 
 "The horrid, impudent old thing! Come, 
 Maude, let s hurry home." 
 
 Just then, the most surprising series of acci 
 dents happened to Miss Maude Clare. She 
 dropped her glove, and she was sure that she 
 had lost her purse, and her boot-lacing came 
 untied, and her veil blew off, and, take it alto 
 gether, she was delayed so long upon the side 
 walk that Mr. Sizer had picked up the veil, 
 had joined them to return it, had fallen into 
 step to walk beside them, and had been for 
 mally introduced to Gypsy, before Gypsy had 
 fairly recovered from her amazement and seen 
 through the performance. 
 
 At this point, however, " I m going to walk
 
 on ! " she said, with bright cheeks and indig 
 nant eyes. 
 
 Maude Clare exclaimed: " Oh, don t, 
 Gypsy ! Stay with us, it s only a little 
 way." 
 
 " I should be really very sorry to be de 
 prived of the pleasure of your company," 
 urged the collegian, with a very low bow. 
 
 " Can t help it if you are ! " said Gypsy, 
 bluntly. " It s against the rules, and I ra 
 going home." 
 
 And home she went as fast as her feet could 
 carry her. 
 
 " Spunky ! I declare ! " she heard Mr. 
 Sizer observe as she crossed the street. 
 
 He strolled on slowly with Maude Clare, 
 very slowly; there were no teachers upon the 
 street; the twilight was falling. The twilight 
 had quite fallen when Maude Clare came in. 
 Gypsy was sitting alone in the dark, with her 
 cheek leaning upon her hand, and her hat in 
 her lap; she had not taken off the rest of 
 her things, but seemed to have dropped
 
 into the first chair that she came to, deep in 
 thought. 
 
 " Gypsy this you ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " What are you sitting here in this azure 
 fashion for?" 
 
 Maude Clare came up and pinched her cheek, 
 as she was used to, to " find the dimple," and 
 kissed her several times. Gypsy sat silent, and 
 did not return the caress. 
 
 " Gypsy, how cross you are ! What ails 
 you?" 
 
 But Gypsy sat silent still. If it had not 
 been dark, Maude Clare might have seen that 
 her pretty black eyelashes were wet. She 
 was thinking of what her mother had said. 
 She was thinking of Mr. Benjamin Sizer. All 
 her sense of delicacy and dignity had been 
 jarred. Could a lady have done what Maude 
 had done that afternoon? She must answer 
 her own question honestly, and it hurt her it 
 did hurt a little to decide it against her 
 " precious Maude Clare." 
 
 xat
 
 But Maude stood there, looking very hand 
 some and grieved and injured, and she 
 caressed the dimple back into its place with 
 her pretty soft fingers, and so they went 
 down to tea together, and Gypsy said nothing 
 about it
 
 GOLDEN CRESCENT, Dec. 20. 
 
 Y ANGEL OF A MOTHER, Holi 
 days, holidays, holidays ! The dar 
 ling McMunn has given us a week, and I ll 
 never laugh at her waterfall again, if I can 
 help it. I shall just catch that blessed Thomas, 
 and I shall sleep again in my own dear room, 
 and I shall climb into your own dear arms, and 
 besides, I shall have some rice griddle-cakes, 
 and I really don t know whether I am standing 
 on my head or my feet. 
 
 Your bewildered 
 
 GYPSY. 
 
 P. S. Maude Clare means to write to me 
 every day. A week is so long to be separated. 
 
 to*
 
 The little letter hurries on its way, and the 
 days are hurrying with it. There is much sur 
 prise and expecting and making ready, in the 
 happy Green Mountain home. There is impa 
 tient waiting and there are longing eyes, and 
 there is a wild sense of freedom in the very 
 grammars and lexicons at the Golden Crescent 
 Gypsy falters through the last Virgil lesson, 
 corrects the last French exercise, plunges poor 
 Chaplain Goss into despair over her last equa 
 tion, by announcing that x equals one goose 
 and two-thirds of a goose, rushes through the 
 last Shakespeare reading and the last composi 
 tion, loses the last lead-pencil, and tips over 
 the last ink-bottle; bestows the last crinoline 
 on Dolly, takes the last look at Mrs. McMunn s 
 ivaterfall, the last kiss from Maude Clare s red 
 rtps, and before she knows exactly what is hap 
 pening, has been steamed into Yorkbury, and 
 rumbled up in the old coach to the old home- 
 door, with the old dear faces clustered on the 
 steps. 
 
 Ah, such a pleasant week; such a short; 
 
 M6
 
 dear week ! She grudges every moment spent 
 in night and sleep, and is sure that the days 
 are not so long by several hours as they were 
 when last she was at home. Her mother s 
 sweet, bright face is there, to be watched and 
 kissed and patted and talked to, hours without 
 end. Her father s mind must be set at rest as 
 to the exact amount of her expenses, and the 
 ventilation of her room at the Golden Crescent. 
 Winnie s cat, feeling called upon to contribute 
 to the entertainment, has three fits regularly 
 every day; which furnish Winnie with a most 
 fruitful and interesting subject of conversation, 
 in season and out of season. Patty, with 
 beaming face, concocts the most delicious of 
 rice-cakes and Charlotte Russe, to honour the 
 vacation, and in addition gives astonishing 
 and practical evidence of her favour, by volun 
 teering to make Miss Gypsy s bed for her while 
 she is at home, which, be it recorded, Patty has 
 never thought herself capable of before. But, 
 best of all, is the short, sweet sight of Tom. 
 " So nice, you know, that his vacation should
 
 Just come right with mine," Gypsy says, " and 
 did you ever see such a handsome fellow in all 
 your life?" "Besides," she writes to Maude 
 Clare, " he studies like a house on fire, and 
 behaves like a deacon, and I have a good rea< 
 son for being glad of that. Perhaps," she is 
 going to add, " perhaps I will tell you about 
 it sometime ; " but hesitates, and leaves the 
 sentence unfinished. Maude Clare is not ex 
 actly the one to hear that story. Some quick 
 tears spring just then into her eyes; for she 
 has a thought of another than Maude Clare, 
 whom she used to love with a very different 
 love from that which she gives to this strong, 
 bright, handsome girl,, another, ^vho knew 
 all about " that story." As for the meaning of 
 these two memories, will it not be found re 
 corded in the chronicles of " Gypsy s Sowing 
 and Reaping"? or according to Winnie (who 
 has, by chance, heard a distant report of that 
 book), " Gypsy s Sewing and Ripping" 
 
 Right into the happy week come Christmas 
 frolics and sweet New Year hopes and wishes, 
 
 Ml.
 
 and last, but not least, a present or two. 
 Gypsy, undoing a curious, oblong bundle that 
 she finds in her chair at the breakfast-table, 
 fairly screams,
 
 " Oh, you sweetest of women ! A Chinchilla 
 muff! and a gray silk scarf to match! And 
 how you ever happened to guess what Jack 
 said, and Maude, and how I did try not to 
 mind its being squirrel, but kept wondering if 
 they were laughing at me, you know ! " 
 
 " I wish I could have bought a complete set, 
 dear; but if you can get along with the scarf 
 for the present " 
 
 " Get along ! " Gypsy fairly hushes up the 
 words with her kisses and delight, and must 
 needs sit straight down and write Jane Bruce 
 all about it. Somehow it does not come 
 natural to tell the little tale to Maude. Jane 
 always is interested to hear such things; and 
 then Jane was so brave about the squirrel, on 
 the whole, the thought of her slips most nat 
 urally into the matter. 
 
 The week has lengthened to ten short days, 
 and after the merry-making there comes a little 
 lull. Gypsy is going. Frolics and sleigh-rides 
 and Charlotte Russe and Winnie s kitty and 
 Tom s college stories are becoming part of a
 
 far-away past. Lexicon and copy-books and 
 compositions and Miss Ayre are drearily at 
 hand. 
 
 Her mother has not had a chance for a quiet 
 talk with Gypsy ; but one night just before she 
 goes, the chance comes, and the talk. 
 
 " Now I want to hear all about it, Gypsy." 
 
 So Gypsy, climbing into her lap, begins with 
 her appearance at Snapberry on the dripping 
 station-platform, and comes down through the 
 term, and everything that she has thought, 
 said, or done, she remembers and repeats to 
 the best of her ability. Her mother, at the 
 close, looks a little grave. 
 
 "But the lessons, Gypsy? " 
 
 " Lessons Oh, yes, I forgot. Yes, we 
 had some lessons. I did n t have very bad 
 ones, because I was ashamed to, but I don t 
 suppose I studied much, though." 
 
 To which her mother has a few things to say. 
 
 One day, soon after she was back at the 
 Golden Crescent, Maude Clare found Gypsy 
 studying directly after tea. 
 13*
 
 " Why, Gypsy Breynton, I Ve been hunting 
 the house over for you ! Why, this is n t study- 
 hours ! Come, the girls are having the Lancers 
 down in the music-room, and I want you." 
 
 Gypsy laid down her Roman History. 
 
 " Maude Clare, you re my evil angel. Now, 
 what do you suppose my mother told me, the 
 last night I was at home?" 
 
 " Oh, I don t know ; here, give us your book ! 
 Now ! it s behind the bed, and you 11 have to 
 come." 
 
 " She told me," pursued Gypsy, with great 
 seriousness, " she told me that I came to 
 school to think of it, Maude ! to study." 
 
 " She did ! " 
 
 " Yes, and she actually asked me how much 
 I supposed I had learned. Why, I laughed 
 right out. But what s more, I told her I would 
 learn something this term. Accordingly, I eat 
 chocolate taffy all study-hour this afternoon." 
 
 " Oh, well, it s all the same ; come, we can t 
 get along without you. Gypsy Breynton, if 
 
 you don t stir pretty quickly, I 11 pull your 
 13*
 
 hair down ! " Which Maude proceeded to 
 do, and Gypsy sat, a perplexed-looking little 
 statue, wrapped about with a flood of bright 
 black waves. 
 
 "I might make it up it s only five pages 
 more after Biblical." 
 
 " But it s Society night." 
 
 "So it is well, I will make time in the 
 morning, then. I can t stand that music much 
 longer." 
 
 So, still wrapped in her pretty hair, she 
 bounded down to the music-room, three stairs 
 at a time. 
 
 " I don t think you will study in the morn 
 ing," said Maude Clare, trying to keep up with 
 her, " when you see a novel I brought from 
 home on purpose for you to read. It s The 
 Shadow of a Life-time, most elegant story, 
 and so weird, you Ve no idea." 
 
 To her justice, be it recorded that Gypsy 
 did study in the morning till the history lesson 
 was learned. When afternoon came, however, 
 and she was sleepy, and the room was hot, and
 
 * The Shadow of a Life-time " lay, in tempting 
 brown binding and beautiful print, open upon 
 the table, she thought that she would just look it 
 over, see the heroine s name, and how it ended, be 
 fore commencing on those dreary conjugations, 
 
 " Over the little one s future all unknown fo 
 thee, innocent one, a Shadow hung / why, Jane, 
 this looks interesting. Oh, what s this pic 
 ture? Lorina found by her Lovers Dear 
 me ! what a lot of em she had ! Oh, here s a 
 description of a ball-dress. I think descrip 
 tions of ball-dresses are splendid. There, I ve 
 lost the place. Oh, no ! 
 
 " * Her head was unadorned, save by a single 
 iiamond, in a wreath of artificial roses Let 
 me see" and that was the end of the con 
 jugations. 
 
 " Jane dear," observed Gypsy, languidly, 
 looking up from the amiable Lorina when 
 study-hours were half over, " I don t see what 
 you are always studying for." 
 
 Silent study-hours were the rule, and Jane 
 made no reply.
 
 " Oh, I forgot," said Gypsy ; " well, I won t 
 talk. I m going to study when I get through 
 this chapter." 
 
 " This chapter " lasted till the bell rang to go 
 to walk. Gypsy, flushed and excited, threw 
 the book angrily down, but made no remarks. 
 
 " Why don t you come to bed? " asked Jane 
 that night, after the lamp was out. Gypsy was 
 sitting by the window in her night-dress. She 
 sat there some time; and there the following 
 conversation took place. 
 
 " I was a little villain, that s what I was ! I 
 won t do it again. But I think it s dreadfully 
 poky work studying." 
 
 " What did you come to the Golden Crescent 
 for, dear? " 
 
 " Oh, well I know it ; but I can t be an ex 
 emplary scholar now, like Jane there, mother. 
 Why, just think, she not only learns her lessons 
 perfectly; but she actually reads somebody 
 else s Roman History in connection with our little 
 black one, TO IMPROVE HER MIND ! " 
 
 " When Jane is out of school, she will know 
 135
 
 something to pay for it. And some day, you 
 will be sorry that you have not been more like 
 her, Gypsy." 
 
 " My dear, respected mother, I beg your 
 pardon, but I don t believe it! I won t be a 
 dunce, but I can t be a model." 
 
 After which, she went to bed. To do Gypsy 
 justice, the management at the Golden Cres 
 cent was not such as was calculated to help a 
 rollicking, frolicking, bright girl who could 
 skim over a lesson in ten minutes, make a fait 
 recitation, and forget it within an hour in 
 the formation of solid habits of study. Mrs. 
 McMunn was just what she looked to be, an 
 awkward, good-natured, easy-going, and by no 
 means scholarly woman. In fact, she owed her 
 position to the reputation of a distinguished 
 brother, rather than to any attainments or suit 
 abilities for the work of a teacher which any 
 body had ever been so fortunate as to discover 
 in her. Miss Ayre was a severe disciplinarian, 
 and Chaplain Goss a thorough mathematical 
 instructor; but under-teachers cannot guide 
 136
 
 the helm. Mrs. McMunn was careless about 
 enforcing their rules, and made herself no sys 
 tem of marks, rewards, or punishments, to 
 serve as incitement to the ambitious, or threat 
 to the lazy; so it was small wonder that 
 even Gypsy s most violent efforts to become 
 that " exemplary scholar " flagged after a 
 day or two, and subsided into taffy and 
 novels. 
 
 But Jane s did not Nor Lou Armstrong s. 
 Nor the efforts of one or two others. Had 
 Gypsy shown a little of the application of any 
 one of them, she might have outstripped them 
 all. She was simply spending her school-days 
 as many another thoughtless, talented girl is 
 spending them, the world over; neither better 
 nor worse, " I won t be a dunce, but I can t 
 be a model," just expressed it. 
 
 But Gypsy was not, as she used to say for 
 lornly sometimes to her mother, " just a 
 jumble of naughtiness, without any goodness 
 sprinkled in." Taking, for instance, a thing 
 that happened soon after the beginning of the
 
 term; it was a very little thing, but not too 
 small to be without its uses. 
 
 It was one Sunday noon, just after church; 
 several of the girls had come up into Gypsy s 
 room ; one or two with a headache or " the 
 blues," hunting for Jane; the rest Gypsy s 
 friends. It chanced that they were all busy 
 for a few moments about Jane, who was ex 
 plaining the Bible lesson to them, and that 
 Gypsy, turning away to the table to hunt for 
 her Testament, came upon " The Shadow of a 
 Life-time." It lay open where she had left it 
 at eleven o clock Saturday night. The lachry 
 mose Lorina was in a thrilling crisis of her 
 history ; tangled by her hair in a thorn-bush, I 
 believe, or something of the sort, with two 
 wild bulls, three robbers, and a rattlesnake 
 funning after her if rattlesnakes may, with 
 zoological propriety, be said to run. 
 
 Gypsy took up the book, thinking that she 
 
 would close it and put it on the shelf; turned 
 
 the leaves a little, glanced up and down a page 
 
 or two, looked at the next illustration, thought 
 
 138
 
 she would just see whether Adolphe did not 
 come to the rescue, sat down and read for 
 twenty minutes. 
 
 Suddenly the girls heard a great noise. It 
 was " The Shadow of a Life-time " flying across 
 the room, and going crash ! against the wall. 
 
 " You old thing ! " 
 
 "Why, Gypsy Breynton! What old thing? 
 The book?" 
 
 " No, not the book." 
 
 "Well, then; what is to pay?" 
 
 " I Ve been breaking the Sabbath, and I m 
 ashamed of myself, and that s what s to pay ! " 
 said Gypsy, with hot cheeks. One or two of 
 the girls laughed. Nobody said anything for 
 a minute, till Jo Courtis had recovered from her 
 astonishment. 
 
 "My stars! Why, I read Bleak House, 
 all last Sunday, and The Woman in White 
 all the Sunday before, and Harper stories Sun 
 day before that, and why, when would you 
 do your reading if you couldn t?" 
 
 "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, 
 139
 
 Courtis," said Maude Clare, with a virtuous 
 look of reproof. " If I did such things, I 
 would n t boast of them." 
 
 "Miss Smith didn t carry her Euclid to 
 church, and study behind her muff, all sermon 
 time, I suppose? Oh, no!" said Jacqueline, 
 with her inevitable effort to be sarcastic. 
 
 "Well," said Maude Clare, sharply, but with 
 brightened colour, "that is a different thing. 
 Besides, it was a very unusual case ; I had n t 
 learned a solitary proposition, and if I go into 
 recitation in that trim, Brother Ayre annihilates 
 me." 
 
 " I think it was just the same thing," pro 
 nounced Gypsy, boldly, "we were all wrong; 
 T was wrong, and Jo was wrong, and it was 
 wrong in you, Maude, and there! I won t 
 preach a sermon, but I believe it is our busi 
 ness to keep the Sabbath holy." 
 
 To say just that, before a crowded roomful, 
 before Maude Clare s vexed eyes, required - 
 did it not, girls? some courage. 
 
 140
 
 HE Character of Caesar." 
 (Goodness !) 
 
 " Enthusiasm." (Picture me 
 writing on Enthusiasm !) 
 " Eyes." 
 
 " Destruction of Pompeii." 
 " Advantages of Mathematics and other dis 
 ciplinary studies." (Oh, Horrors! } 
 " Sorrowing Nature." 
 
 " Marius in the Ruins of Carthage." ( Ma- 
 rius? Marius? Wasn t he a Carthaginian 
 General?) 
 
 " Sylvan Scenes." 
 
 " Longfellow s Psalm of Life."
 
 " Autobiography of a (what ? C-o-s-Cos- 
 mop Cos-mopo Oh, yes) Cosmopolite." 
 
 " Lost Opportunities." 
 
 " History of Judith." 
 
 Gypsy laid down the paper, and she and 
 Maude Clare looked at each other blankly. 
 
 " Charming, are n t they ? " 
 
 " Enchanting ! " 
 
 " If the amiable Ayre had searched the 
 dictionaries (I verily believe she has) for 
 the most outrageous and impossible set of 
 subjects, she could n t have succeeded better. 
 I think it is a shame we have to write com 
 positions, anyway. My sister went to school 
 in New York, and she did n t write but one in 
 two years." 
 
 As Maude Clare had never yet seen the sub 
 ject that was not " outrageous and impossible," 
 and had never been known to write a composi 
 tion without pronouncing the task a shame, 
 Gypsy was not as much interested as she might 
 have been, but looked over the paper thought 
 
 fully to choose her topic. 
 
 few
 
 Maude Clare thought that she would take the 
 ** Character of Caesar." 
 
 "If you only knew anything about him, you 
 know ! " remarked Gypsy, candidly. 
 
 " Perhaps I know more than you give me 
 credit for, my dear. At any rate, I mean to 
 write on Caesar." 
 
 Jane came in, after Maude had gone, and 
 found Gypsy perched on the arm of the 
 rocking-chair, still groaning over the list of 
 subjects. 
 
 " If I could be absolute monarch of America 
 awhile, Jane Bruce, I would decree that people 
 should all stay little girls till composition days 
 were over ; then you could write Histories of a 
 Pennv and Memorials of a Jointed Doll, to the 
 end of the chapter. Put on waterfalls and long 
 dresses, and they dump you into Enthusi 
 asm and such, and not a thing more do you 
 know about them than you did in the jointed 
 doll days. I think it is an imposition. Let 
 me see : Advantages of Math no, 
 you don t catch me. Autobiography of 
 
 U3
 
 what, under the canopy, is a Cosmopolite ? 
 Eyes if I should take that, Maude would 
 make me describe Ben Sizer s eyes, and then 
 she would blush when I read it, and I should 
 laugh. Sorrowing Nature. That sounds
 
 prettily. Sylvan Scenes. Sorrowing Scenes,* 
 and Sylvan Na ? Oh ! Well, I think I will 
 have one of those." 
 
 So, provided for an hour to come with 
 pencil, paper, and cocoanut cakes, down she 
 goes, a little heap, by the register, and the 
 groaning recommences. 
 
 " Ugh ! the hateful, horrid, hate-fut thing ! " 
 
 " Sorrowing Nature. 
 
 "Nature is of a very sympathetic turn of 
 mind, and " Oh dear ! and " sorrows and 
 sorrows over the griefs of the sons of the human 
 race" doesn t she, Jane? "When we hear 
 the rain fall, she is weeping. She is weeping. 
 She is " I can t think of another solitary 
 word. I believe I 11 try the other. There ! 
 
 " Sylvan Scenes" 
 
 Silence. Vigorous mastication of cocoanut. 
 " Sorrowing Nature " blows down the register. 
 More cocoanut. Silence prolonged. 
 
 Ml
 
 "Gypsy dear?" ventures Jane, at last. 
 
 "Oh! Why, I forgot! Why, where is it? 
 If there is n t the bell for walk ! Now I shall 
 have to stay in and begin all over. The old, 
 hate Would you mind eating the rest of 
 these cakes for me?" 
 
 After the endurance of tribulations manifold, 
 and perils oft, and crumplings many, and 
 poundings not a few, the unfortunate com 
 position arrives at completion, and is folded 
 away in fear and trembling, to await the awful 
 inspection of Miss Ayre. 
 
 Maude Clare wrote five pages upon " The 
 Character of Caesar " and read them to Gypsy. 
 Gypsy listened meekly, feeling herself utterly 
 extinguished. It was certainly a very well 
 written composition for a school-girl, espe 
 cially for just such a school-girl as Maude 
 Clare. 
 
 A few days after, Gypsy went to the library 
 to hunt up Marius in the Cyclopaedia, and find 
 out what he had to do with Carthage. Turning 
 over the leaves of C s, her eye fell upon Caesar-
 
 Julius, and she stopped to see what was said 
 about him. She had read but a little way 
 before a curious expression came into her face, 
 her eyes opened wide, and her cheeks grew 
 very red. 
 
 She finished the account, lifted the heavy 
 book upon her shoulder, and went, Carthage 
 and Marius forgotten, straight to Maude Clare. 
 
 She placed the book upon her lap, and 
 placed her finger upon the article and held it 
 there. 
 
 "Well?" said Maude Clare, "what of it?" 
 But she changed colour. 
 
 "What of it? Why Maude, that is just 
 your composition. There is n t a difference of 
 twenty words ! " 
 
 " Twenty words are a good many," returned 
 Maude, coolly. " I altered it wherever I could 
 think of anything else to say. I never copy 
 things every word, as Jack does. It seems 
 to me you are growing wofully fussy over 
 nothing lately, Gypsy." 
 
 Gypsy turned round and walked away.
 
 " Gypsy, ma belle ! " called Maude, " 
 did n t mean to be cross." 
 But Gypsy went downstairs. 
 
 GOLDEN CRESCENT, SKY PARLOUR, 
 January 31. 
 
 MOTHER DEAR, Sky Parlour is my room, 
 you know, I believe I never told you. All 
 our rooms have names. Maude Clare s is 
 " Robin s Nest," and the Colchetts is " Sleepy 
 Hollow," - that is because they re always late 
 to breakfast. The room Phoebe Hand and 
 Miss Ayre have is " Parsonage." Poor Made 
 moiselle has a funny little room all to herself, 
 and that is " Spinster." 
 
 But I did n t mean to stop to talk about 
 this, for I m in a hurry, and "i want to tell you 
 about those Compos. 
 
 You see I hate to write them, and Maude 
 hates to, and we all hate to, and nobody has 
 decent ones but Jane and Lou Armstrong. 
 Lou writes poetry, and Jane wrote the most 
 splendid one on the " Destruction of Pom*
 
 peii," and the teachers think everything of 
 her. 
 
 Now, I did the best I could, mother, really. 
 You know what a little goose I am, don t you? 
 and how I don t know anything; besides, I 
 never was known to string five words together 
 straight yet; they all tumble over each other, 
 into a jumble. So I wrote about " Sorrowing 
 Nature," and it blew down the register, and then 
 I wrote on " Sylvan Scenes." 
 
 Here s a copy if you want to read it 
 
 "Sylvan Scenes. 
 
 " How beautiful is the face of Nature in all 
 her varying moods ! Especially in the country. 
 
 " Go forth at early morn, and see the sun ris 
 ing in all his majesty. See the blushing clouds 
 that he kisses on his way. See the gold on the 
 mountains, and the great shadows in the forest, 
 and the sparkling glittering diamond dew-drops 
 that are nodding about on the clover-leaves. 
 Hear the feathered songsters in their nests, and 
 the brooks warbling over the stones, &c.
 
 " Go forth at noon, and how pleasant to rest 
 under the shade, protected from the rays of the 
 hot sun. 
 
 " Go forth at night, when the silver moon is
 
 beaming, or the stars shine coldly down upon 
 the earth. Does not everything whisper of the 
 wisdom of its Creator, and " 
 
 There was some more, but I did n t finish 
 this copy, and I Ve forgotten it. I wish they 
 would n t give us subjects. One time I chose 
 my own, and I wrote on " My Cat," and de 
 scribed Winnie s, and Miss Ayre said it was 
 very something sprightly, I believe. Then 
 another time I wrote on " Blunders," and Mrs. 
 McMunn laughed till she cried. 
 
 But you see I did n t know anything about 
 those old historical subjects, nor enthusiasm, 
 nor any of the rest, so I did the best I could 
 with " Sylvan Scenes." I meant to make it 
 sound like pictures, somehow, but it would n t. 
 
 So Compo day came, and we all had to read, 
 and mine would have been as good as almost 
 any except Jane s and Lou s, if it had n t been 
 for something that two or three of the girls did, 
 that I would n t have done for the world. They 
 copied. That s what they did. Everybody 
 expected it of Jack she always does, and
 
 Miss Ayre knows it But there was anothei 
 girl I sha n t tell you her name and she 
 copied, all but a few words, from the Cyclo 
 paedia. It was about Caesar, and it sounded so 
 grand, and we sat close together, and it made 
 mine sound so horrid, and there was such a 
 difference. 
 
 The worst of it was, Miss Ayre compli 
 mented her like everything, and then said she 
 thought there was room for improvement in 
 Miss Breynton, and I felt so ashamed, and the 
 other girl did n t say anything. I know she 
 did n t mean to make me feel badly, and I don t 
 think she meant to do wrong, for I have heard 
 her say she never means to do wrong; but she 
 ought not to have done it, I suppose. 
 
 At any rate, I m glad I did n t copy " Sylvan 
 Scenes." And I couldn t copy, mother, if I 
 never wrote a decent composition to the end of 
 my days, and if Miss Ayre blames me, I can t 
 help it. 
 
 If I were a girl in a story-book, I suppose 
 Miss Ayre would find out about that other girl
 
 and Csesar, and then she would praise me up, 
 and we should have a great time. 
 
 But she does n t do any such thing. I wish I 
 lived in a story-book. It would be nice. 
 
 Once I read about a girl who wrote a " glow 
 ing composition " on the " Future," and it took 
 a prize. Do you suppose I could write a 
 glowing composition on the Future? 
 
 Love to Father and Winnie. 
 
 Your everlasting GYPSY. 
 
 There was a postscript added and erased. 
 It is given for the benefit of the curious : 
 
 Maude Clare is so pretty. I do like to watch 
 her. I wish she would n t sit with her window 
 open so much ; I am afraid she will take cold. 
 Poor Miss Holly has to sit in her furs, and 
 cough. She says that Maude sits there to see 
 Ben Sizer go by, but Maude says she likes 
 the air. I wish there were n t any boys ia 
 Snapberry. 
 
 153
 
 THINK it is about time to say what 
 perhaps I ought to have said in a 
 proper little preface, or introduction, 
 or dedication, that if you took up this book, 
 girls, expecting to find it a miniature novel, of 
 thickly woven plot and heroine extraordinary, 
 of all exciting incidents and contretemps, such 
 as seldom happen at school, except in story 
 books, you will certainly be disappointed. 
 
 It is simply my business to describe Gypsy s 
 school-days at the Golden Crescent, just as they 
 happened; and Gypsy s school-days, I fancy, 
 were very much like the school-days of other 
 
 girls. Nobody stole a gold-pencil and slipped 
 
 15*
 
 it into her pocket ; or a ten-dollar bill, and put 
 it into her trunk. Nobody burnt her prize 
 composition the night before it was to be read. 
 Most of the girls were ladies, and, in general, 
 behaved like such. The Mondays and Tues 
 days, the Saturdays and Sundays, followed 
 each other quietly, with just such amount of 
 study and headache, of " blues " and homesick 
 ness, of fun and frolic, of little ambitions and 
 rivalries, of making and breaking friendships, 
 as Mondays and Tuesdays, Saturdays and Sun 
 days are apt to bring. Of such flashes of extra 
 excitement as occurred now and then, it shall 
 be faithfully told you. 
 
 None of Gypsy s schoolmates chanced to be 
 entirely bad or entirely good. If Maude Clare 
 was selfish and unladylike, she was affectionate 
 and of gentle manners. ] 
 
 If Jane was self-forgetful and industrious, she 
 was reserved and did not easily make friends. 
 Poor little shallow Jack, I think, was almost as 
 much to be pitied as blamed. Lou Armstrong 
 was a scholar, but she would break rules.
 
 Ab uno disce omnes. Gypsy herself was very 
 much, as she used to say, " Never one thing for 
 five minutes." She was into mischief, out of it, 
 in again, a dozen times a week. If there was 
 any golden lesson that the year brought her, 
 and I think there was, one could scarcely 
 catch sight of its broken fragments day by day. 
 She seemed to be living, as so many girls seem 
 to live, like a leaf upon a breeze; but the wind 
 bloweth where it listeth, and who can tell 
 whither it will go? 
 
 So I give you her story as she gave it to me, 
 the "scrapes" and the penitence, the learn- 
 mg and unlearning, a word here, a glimpse of 
 character there, a bit of fun, a sorry thought, a 
 dream, a rude deceiving, a self-acquaintance 
 I give you just her days and nights, her terms 
 and vacations, as they marked her memory 
 and moulded her life. 
 
 One day Gypsy went up to desolate " Spin 
 ster," to ask Mademoiselle the meaning of a sen 
 tence in the Telemaque lesson. Mademoiselle 
 was sitting alone in the dark and cold, crying.
 
 " How funny ! " said Gypsy to herself, and 
 forgot it by the time that she was downstairs. 
 Not long after, she was in the music-room 
 practising alone, when Mademoiselle came in. 
 
 " Oh, Mees Gypsy pardonnez ! I leave the 
 dictionnaire in here." 
 
 " Come in, oh, come in," said Gypsy, care 
 lessly, running over " Don Giovanni " as she 
 spoke. "You can stay if you want to; you 
 don t disturb me." 
 
 The piano stool stood just between two win 
 dows, in a corner, and Gypsy, as she bent for 
 ward a little to read her notes, her lips parted 
 and smiling, and her pretty head nodding time 
 unconsciously, was all framed in by the late 
 western light. Her face, especially, was 
 touched out brightly. 
 
 Mademoiselle did a queer thing. She forgot 
 all about the " dictionnaire," and stood still in 
 the middle of the room, and threw up her 
 hands once in an odd way she had, like some 
 one lonely or in pain. Then coming suddenly 
 up behind Gypsy, she drew her face back into
 
 her hands, and kissed her on the forehead. Before 
 Gypsy could speak, she had left the room. 
 
 The freak of Mademoiselle s has no partic 
 ular connection with this chapter, except that 
 it happened about the same time. But Gypsy 
 had afterwards occasion to remember it. 
 
 About the middle of the term there came a 
 long, dreary, drifting snow-storm. The Golden 
 Crescent was blocked up for two or three days, 
 and the girls were restless enough before they 
 were over. Especially Gypsy, used as she was 
 to long walks every day in the fresh winter air, 
 was thrown into much the condition of bottled 
 cider. Give the cork a little screw, and beware 
 of the results ! 
 
 A crowd of girls assembled in council at the 
 end of one of the short, dark afternoons, in the 
 garret where they had been playing Blind 
 Man s Buff to beguile the time. 
 
 " Oh, I wish there was something magnifi 
 cent and funny to do ! " sighed Gypsy, drearily. 
 " I wish I could go out and swim about 
 through those drifts." 
 
 158
 
 " Dear me, I should be afraid," said Jacque 
 line. 
 
 " Afraid ! " echoed Gypsy, in supreme con 
 tempt. "What is there to be afraid of? 
 Would n t it be fun ! I don t see why Mrs. M. 
 won t let me." 
 
 Jo Courtis was looking over some old things 
 in a corner of the garret, dresses and hoods,
 
 and female attire of various sorts, that were 
 waiting there for the rag-man or the Town-Poor 
 Society. All at once she shouted. 
 
 "Why, Jo, what is the matter? " 
 
 " I Ve thought oh, dear me ! I Ve thought 
 of the very way. There s an hour yet before 
 it s quite dark. Hush ! come here." 
 
 Gypsy came. 
 
 Awhile after, a negro woman made her ap 
 pearance in the kitchen. She wore an old 
 calico dress, a faded shawl, and a ragged hood. 
 She held in her hand an old spotted lace veil. 
 Dolly jumped and screamed. 
 
 " Hush sh ! " said the negro, choking down 
 a laugh, and, coming up, she whispered some 
 thing in her ear. 
 
 " Oh, the good Land ! Oil, good gracious ! 
 You 11 be me death of laughing some fine day. 
 Oh, Miss Gyp " 
 
 " Hush ! Will you do it? It s a real pretty 
 veil, see ; and so becoming. You shall have 
 it the moment I come back, if you let me in 
 Eke a good girl, and keep still. If anybody
 
 should be in the kitchen, why, I 11 just make 
 you a call. Is it a bargain?" 
 
 Dolly considered, and nodded. She opened 
 the door softly, and the negress went out into 
 the snow. She made her way unobserved into 
 the street, went up a little way, crossed over, 
 came back, rang the front door-bell, and asked 
 for Mrs. McMunn. 
 
 Dolly stuffed her apron into her mouth, and 
 gave a little gasp. 
 
 " Missus McMunn," repeated the visitor, 
 with consummate surprise at Dolly s behaviour. 
 " My good friend, I ask for Missus McMunn. 
 Hain t ye neber seen a nigger fore? Tears 
 like you finds it bery funny." 
 
 Dolly composed herself with a bewildered 
 look, and brought Mrs. McMunn to the door. 
 
 " Good-afternoon," said the Principal, in sur 
 prise ; " I am Mrs. McMunn. What can you 
 want of me this bitter day ? " 
 
 " It s bery cold out here," said the negro, 
 shivering. " If ye 11 let me jes step inside de 
 door, pears like I ken tell ye easier." 
 
 161
 
 Mrs. McMunn allowed her to step in upon 
 the hall mat, and stood regarding her compas 
 sionately. 
 
 " Now what is it you want a supper?" 
 
 " No, missus." 
 
 " Clothes?" 
 
 "No, missus." 
 
 " What, then, money? " 
 
 " I wants," said the negro, with solemnity, 
 " I wants de pattern of your waterfall, ef ye 
 please, missus." 
 
 A suppressed titter ran along the banistei in 
 the upper hall. 
 
 " Young ladies ! " said the Principal, with 
 crimson face, " I am surprised at your levity. 
 I should not have supposed that you would rid 
 icule a poor lunatic negro like this. My poor 
 woman, I think you had better go, unless you 
 will take some supper." 
 
 " I hearn a heap bout dat ar waterfall ob 
 yourns," said the negro, regretfully ; folks 
 say it s so peart an graceful like. I have heaps 
 of trubble wid my waterfall, and I " 
 b
 
 But Mrs. McMunn had gently shut the door 
 upon her. 
 
 The girls, watching at the garret window, 
 saw her taking her way up the street, through 
 the drifts. 
 
 " How she does flounder about ! She has 
 on rubber boots, you know. Looks as if she 
 were having a good time, does n t she? What 
 is she going to do next, I wonder? " 
 
 What she did was to call at several houses 
 on the Main street where she was acquainted, 
 asking either for mistress or maid, as the fancy 
 suited her, begging for supper, coppers, Gari 
 baldi patterns, gold bracelets, Bibles, cayenne pep 
 per, anything that occurred to her at the moment. 
 
 " Poor crazy thing ! " said everybody, which 
 was precisely what she meant that everybody 
 should say. 
 
 Now, there lived in Snapberry a Mr. Short, a 
 tobacco-grower, and an agent of the Colonisa 
 tion Society; in whose service he lectured 
 through his nose, whenever he could find an 
 audience; and by his self-denying labour and 
 163
 
 missionary spirit, earned, it was said, exactly 
 his own salary. To the house of Mr. Shorf 
 the negro went with mischief in her eyes. She 
 asked for supper, and a shelter from the storm. 
 She had heard of his interest in the coloured 
 race, and felt sure that he would help her. 
 
 " I help those that help themselves," replied 
 Mr. Short, who had been called away from a 
 cigar, and felt cross. " It s poor benevolence 
 to help wandering beggars, black or white. If 
 you had appreciated your privileges and gone 
 to Liberia, where you belong, in that last colony 
 we sent out free of expense, to roam in their 
 ancestral forests, you would n t be here begging 
 to-day, I suppose, would you? " 
 
 She meekly replied that she supposed not. 
 
 " Well, then, don t come to me," said Mr. 
 Short, shutting the door. " I Ve done my duty 
 by you. If you won t go to a happier clime 
 and roam in your ancestral forests, you must 
 take the consequences." 
 
 A little distance beyond the amiable Mr. 
 Short s something quite unexpected happened.
 
 Deacon Popkins, the Overseer of the Poor, 
 was out toiling through the drifts with horse and 
 sleigh to the Office ; and Deacon Popkins, peer 
 ing from under his fur cap, saw the wretched 
 figure of the negro blown about by the wind. 
 
 " Hallo ! " shouted he, reining up. 
 
 "Hud d ye, massa?" said the figure, hurry 
 ing on. 
 
 " Here, stop there ! Whar ye goin this sort 
 of night, that style ? I m Town Overseer, and 
 you jes tell me your business if you please." 
 
 "I I don know," said Gypsy, unwilling to 
 manufacture a story even in her disguise. "I 
 thank ye kindly, sir, but I m done used to 
 taking care of myself." 
 
 " Worse for you if you are, then," said Dea 
 con Popkins, climbing briskly from his sleigh. 
 "I m Town Overseer, I say, and it s my busi 
 ness to pick up vagrants, and see em safe in the 
 Poor-us ; and as for findin you froze in a drift 
 somewhars to-morrow morning, it would be on- 
 convenient to all parties ; so, if you please, mum, 
 
 you may jes step in, an we 11 go long now." 
 165
 
 Here was a charming little combination ol 
 circumstances, verily ! Gypsy began to have 
 a suspicion that her fun was turning into most 
 uncomfortable earnest, and, moreover, that she 
 had been doing a very imprudent thing. Not 
 seeing exactly how to help herself, and hoping 
 that a chance for escaping without detection 
 would occur, she climbed into the sleigh reluc 
 tantly, and Deacon Popkins carried her straight 
 to the Poor-house. 
 
 Once fairly in the dreary entry, consigned 
 for the night as a " nigger vagrant," to the care 
 of a vinegar-faced matron, with Deacon Pop- 
 kins rapidly taking his departure, Gypsy felt, 
 that her hour had come. 
 
 "Deacon Popkins?" she said faintly. He 
 did not hear ; he was already in the sleigh. 
 
 " Deacon Popkins ! " 
 
 "Well, what s the matter now?" said the 
 Deacon, standing impatiently with the reins in 
 his hand. 
 
 "I I m not a negro, and I think I 11 go 
 home now." 
 
 166
 
 The deacon laughed loudly. 
 
 " Poor crazy critter, you ! Not a nigger ! 
 Ha, ha, ha ! " and he was driving off. Gypsy 
 broke away from the detaining hands of the 
 sour matron, flew down the steps, and out into 
 the snow after him. 
 
 " Deacon Popkins, I really can t stay in a 
 Poor-house all night, and I m not any more of 
 a negro now than you are." 
 
 " Waal, mum, if you ain t a nigger, you re 
 the blackest white gal ever / see; that s all 
 G lang, Billy!" 
 
 " Shake hands and see ! " cried Gypsy in 
 despair, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. 
 She held out her corked hand all wet with 
 snow, and the deacon drew off his mitten and 
 shook it violently. It would have been difficult, 
 after this proceeding, to say which hand was 
 the blacker. 
 
 "I vum ! " said the deacon, slowly. 
 
 " Told you so ! " cried Gypsy, determined to 
 make sure of the matter. " See here ! " Up 
 wer*, a handful of snow upon her forehead, 
 |H
 
 over her cheeks, across her chin, down her 
 neck. The effect was absolutely indescribable. 
 
 " There, now ! I m nothing but Gypsy 
 Breynton blacked up. Don t you see?" 
 
 She turned her face, all streaks of white, and 
 rivers of black, full upon him, and the Town 
 Overseer sat back in his sleigh and laughed till 
 -the matron thought that he had a stroke of 
 apoplexy, and came running out with a pitcher 
 of half-frozen water, which she poured all over 
 him. 
 
 Gypsy found her way back to the Crescent 
 safely, and Dolly let her in at the back door 
 just as the tea-bell rang. 
 
 But the next day the whole town had the 
 story, and in due time it came to Mrs. Mc- 
 Munn. 
 
 She could not keep sober long enough to 
 give Gypsy the scolding that she richly de 
 served, but Miss Ayre kindly made up the 
 deficiency. 
 
 168
 
 ANE BRUCE is developing." 
 
 Mary Blunt said this, standing with 
 her poplin skirt half folded over 
 her arm. 
 " Developing? " 
 
 " Yes, all round. (I think she mended this 
 trimming for me really very well, didn t she?) 
 She always was one of your goodish kind, and 
 helped you shell popped-corn, and was sorry 
 when you were sick, and would n t tickle you at 
 devotions, and all that ; but don t you see how 
 she s spruced up and bloomed out lately? 
 She rushes round and laughs, and gets ac 
 quainted like anybody else ; and she is actually 
 witty when she sets about it. Besides, her 
 
 dresses did n t use to fit* and now she really 
 160
 
 takes pains to come out in decent "style like 
 other girls not exactly d la Paris, to be sure ; 
 Jane doesn t go into that sort of thing; but it 
 is an improvement, an improvement. I must 
 say, if you re going to have good people, I like 
 that kind. I don t like to see a girl spend a 
 hundred dollars on lace trimming, and then go 
 and pray in it at a missionary meeting. Not 
 but that I had rather have the velvet, but 
 then " 
 
 " Yes," said Gypsy. " Yes, Jane is a nice 
 girl. I don t see as much of her, though, if she 
 is my room-mate, as I do of ever so many 
 others. I don t know why. I m almost always 
 with Maude. You see she is nt half as pretty, 
 and stylish, and graceful, and sweet, and loving, 
 as Maude Clare. But then," with a little sigh, 
 " I don t suppose Maude is good." 
 
 " Not exactly, no," said Mary, with a short 
 laugh. 
 
 "Now, Jane, for instance, wouldn t laugh," 
 pursued Gypsy, glad to change the subject, " at 
 that little performance the other morning." 
 
 170
 
 "Oh, it was you, was it? 1 suspected as 
 much." 
 
 " Yes ; don t you tell, though. I went," 
 Gypsy s eyes began to twinkle at the memory, 
 
 "I went into the music-room early to prac 
 tise, and I was tired of Tarn O Shanter, and 
 something put it into my head, I m sure I don t 
 know what and I did n t mean to do anything 
 bad but I thought how funny to write it and 
 pin it up on the mantelpiece before they all 
 came in to prayers. Then, you know, it hap 
 pened that they two came in together so nicely 
 
 Mrs. McMunn was sick, and Miss A. took 
 her place ; and they marched in arm-in arm, 
 and saw it in the great letters Oh dear ! 
 
 " New and interesting Chemical Experiments! 
 Union of Air and Gas! Fearful Explosion* 
 looked for. 
 
 " The chaplain turned as red as a beet. 
 Don t you want some flag- root?" 
 
 " Thank you. I know it, and Miss Ayre wa3 
 just as white and angry, all except her chin; 
 that is always red."
 
 They do really say they are engaged, any 
 way; Jack Delancey found her sitting in his 
 lap in the front parlour she says. Poor Mr, 
 Goss! He can t get over it; and he goes 
 about so meekly, and blushes every time he 
 sees a girl. Altogether, he is the most sub 
 limely uncomfortable mortal I ever looked at. 
 Peanuts? Why! why not?" 
 
 " Why, I m sorry," said Gypsy, the twink 
 ling dying away. "I never meant anything 
 but fun. I should like to tell him so. What 
 do you suppose Jane said about it, though?" 
 
 " Oh ! that you had broken the Ten Com 
 mandments, perhaps." 
 
 " No. She just said she should n t think it 
 would pay." 
 
 "Just like Jane. Have a cream-cake?" 
 
 " No, thank you. If you will let me have 
 your little hammer you said I might? I ll 
 go back now and fix my trunk. I sha n t get 
 packed till midnight at this rate, and neithef 
 will you, if you don t stop eating." 
 
 She stopped in the doorway, thinking.
 
 " I wonder if It did pay. I wonder if it ever 
 pays." 
 
 Mary was too much engaged in emptying 
 her pockets of cooky crumbs to make answer; 
 so Gypsy went away to her own room. 
 
 The end of the long winter term had come, 
 and six ecstatic weeks of vacation werfc at 
 hand. 
 
 Gypsy stuffed her stove with compositions, 
 packed her trunks, and went home. 
 
 And no sooner was she there, as it seemed, 
 than it was time to turn about and go back 
 again. 
 
 Jane Bruce had spent her vacation in having 
 a severe influenza, and was not strong enough 
 to come back at the beginning of the term. 
 
 Maude Clare s sister was going to be married, 
 and Maude was to stay over the wedding. 
 
 Gypsy, left alone, invited Josephine Courtis 
 to share her room with her till Jane or Maude 
 came back. 
 
 " Oh, my good gracious ! " cried Mis* Delan- 
 cey. "Why, she sha n t! Why, I wouldn t 
 
 *73
 
 be hired to sleep alone one night, for any 
 money you could give me. My sister Belle 
 always has to sleep with me at home ; and if 
 she is away visitiag, I make mother come ; or 
 else I have one of the servants sleep on the 
 couch. Why, I should die of fright before 
 morning ! " 
 
 "Fright! What can you find to be afraid 
 of, I should like to know? " 
 
 " Oh, I don t know ; robbers, and ghosts, 
 and spiritual rappings, and fifty things. I have 
 an aunt who saw her candlestick walk right 
 out into the air off the mantelpiece, one night, 
 and how do I know but that I should see mine 
 walking, if I slept alone ! I always cover my 
 head up in the clothes, anyway, and I always 
 make Josephine sleep the front side; don t I, 
 Jo?" 
 
 "We-<?///" said contemptuous Gypsy, slowly. 
 " If I enjoyed being an infant, I d be an infant, 
 but it would be a good while before I would 
 boast of it." 
 
 " It is very nice to talk," said Jacqueline, 
 
 174
 
 colouring, " but I should like to know what 
 you want of my room-mate if you re not afraid 
 just as much as I am." 
 
 " I want her because she is funny, and good 
 company to have round, and I never was afraid 
 to sleep alone, since I dispensed with nurses ! 
 If you won t believe me, I 11 go and spend a 
 night up garret, for I should be ashamed to 
 have anybody think I was afraid." 
 
 Now, the garret at the Golden Crescent was 
 a dismal place; dark with cobwebs, frowning 
 with shadows, ghostly with old quilts and cast- 
 off garments ; moreover, the wind shrieked, 
 with an extremely unpleasant sound, down the 
 huge old-fashioned chimneys. Therefore, in 
 credulous Jacqueline screamed at Gypsy s pro 
 posal, and said that it made her cold so much 
 as to think of it. 
 
 Gypsy made herself up a bed under the 
 eaves, and at nine o clock that night, went up, 
 a stout-faced, white-robed little figure, dragging 
 a pillow, and slept there, true to her word, till 
 morning. 
 
 is 175
 
 Jacqueline went up herself at six o clock 
 to wake her, and be sure that there was no 
 hoax about it. 
 
 The girls rushed to Gypsy s room while she 
 was dressing, to hear about it. 
 
 " How did you ever dare to? " 
 
 " Were n t you awfully scared? " 
 
 " Did n t you lie awake all night?" 
 
 "And didn t you once think you saw a 
 ghost?" 
 
 " Or a candlestick walking? " 
 
 " Oh, I would n t have done it for anything ! ** 
 
 Nor I ! " 
 
 " Think of it ! " 
 
 " Such a quantity of rats and spiders ! Why, 
 I m as afraid of a mouse as I can be." 
 
 " Well," said Jacqueline, finishing the chorus, 
 " it is very well for you ; you don t mind thun 
 der-showers, and you did n t scream when we 
 upset on that sleigh-ride, and you re not afraid 
 of robbers, but / am nervous. I am so timid 
 mother says I am the most timid child she 
 
 ever had." 
 
 176
 
 It required all Gypsy s politeness to keep 
 out of her face and tones the little flash of 
 scorn with which she heard this remark. 
 
 "Jacqueline Delancey, you really talk as 
 if you thought it were a pretty thing to be 
 timid ! " 
 
 And Jacqueline looked very much as if she 
 thought so, which was more. 
 
 " I really don t see," persisted Gypsy, "I 
 really don t see why a girl should be a goose, 
 because she is a girl. Now, if my brother Tom 
 were here, and had slept up garret, would you 
 ask him if he was afraid, or would you think it 
 an insult? " 
 
 " Of course I should n t ask him ! " 
 
 " Well, then, if it would be unmanly in him 
 to be afraid of nothing, I say it is unwomanly 
 in me to be afraid of nothing, and what s more 
 I won t be ! Now, where did I leave that hair 
 brush?" 
 
 Mademoiselle, when she heard of the matter, 
 proposed to sleep with Jacqueline, in order that 
 Jo might be free to make the visit to Sky
 
 Parlour. The offer must have been quite a little 
 sacrifice on the part of the French Teacher, for 
 Miss Delancey was anything but an agreeable 
 room-mate, had always been one of her most 
 troublesome scholars, and had barely treated 
 her with civility. It was evident that Made 
 moiselle had taken a fancy to Gypsy. 
 
 So Josephine " struck tents," as she said, 
 with Gypsy, for the time in which her room 
 mate should be away. The time became a 
 week, became a fortnight, and Jane had not 
 come, nor Maude. 
 
 Put two such impulsive, out-spoken girls as 
 Jo and Gypsy in the same room, on equal foot 
 ing of privilege, for fourteen days, and they are 
 apt at the end to understand each other about 
 as well as they would in fourteen years. Had 
 Maude Clare, instead of Jo, been subjected to 
 the test, Gypsy would not have been so long in 
 discovering some things that she did discover 
 about her friend. Josephine was one of those 
 people whose faults and virtues, equally, make 
 
 more impression on one the more one knows 
 178
 
 of them : the faults were not easily " put tip 
 with : " the virtues did not lessen through 
 familiarity. 
 
 She was, unmistakably, what Gypsy had pro 
 nounced her, " good company." She was 
 well, and strong, and happy; never had head 
 aches or " blues ; " never was homesick, never 
 cried or moped ; she overflowed with fun and 
 jest, nine-tenths of it girl s pointless chatter, 
 one-tenth genuine wit. Moreover, she had a 
 good large Western heart, that took in with 
 especial fervour the person with whom she 
 happened to be at any particular moment. A 
 generous room-mate she certainly was; she 
 never growled at making the bed ; she took her 
 turn in dusting the room; she would kindly 
 volunteer to read magazine stories aloud to 
 one while one was studying Virgil, and of her 
 taffy one had invariably the lion s share. 
 
 But good company is not always the best 
 If, the more Gypsy saw of her, the more she 
 liked her for her kind heart, the more hei 
 
 rough nature grated. 
 
 179
 
 Jo was loud of laughter and noisy of speech , 
 she shouted on the street ; she sung at the 
 window when boys were going by; she would 
 carelessly break a rule, and carelessly be im 
 pertinent to a teacher; she was not of nice 
 culture in matters of etiquette or personal 
 habit ; she would jest wittily, sometimes blas 
 phemously, at things of sacred name. 
 
 Now, none of this could hurt Gypsy. Im 
 pulsive and unceremonious though she was, 
 from roughness, from open breaches of the 
 laws of courtesy and refinement, nature and 
 training led her to revolt ; and she believed 
 with simple and confiding reverence in the God 
 to whom she " talked " every night after that 
 other talk with her mother. 
 
 But there was one respect in which Josephine 
 Courtis did her positive harm ; and as I be 
 lieve that there are few merry, mimicking 
 girls like Gypsy who do not fall at some 
 time or other into the same trap, I shall men 
 tion it, at risk of being accused of delaying, 
 by an interminable sermon, that masquerade 
 
 Oo
 
 with which I so inappropriately headed this 
 chapter. 
 
 Jo inclined to " being a boy." She liked to 
 be called Jo. She liked better to be called! 
 Courtis. She was sorry that she was made a 
 woman. She wished she were a man. She 
 liked to wear noisy boots and round turbans. 
 She affected paper collars and broad neckties, 
 and turned back the lappets of her sacque. 
 She always walked with her hands in her 
 pockets. She whistled well, and whistled a 
 great deal. She talked slang. 
 
 When Gypsy had roomed with her about a 
 week, it was observed that she had cut over her 
 hat into a turban; that she was whistling a 
 good deal ; that she had a mannish little way of 
 opening and shutting doors, splashing through 
 mud-puddles, giving her orders at the stores. 
 She learned to touch her hat to the girls when 
 she met them in the street, and she liked to 
 offer them her arm at a concert. In fact, it 
 was the little hoyden of a few years ago, com 
 ing out in new and more dignified shape.
 
 And as for slang, she scarcely talked any* 
 thing else. Josephine was Courtis, invariably. 
 The absent Jane was appropriately referred to 
 as Bruce. McMunn and the Amiable Ayre 
 were the established cognomens of her teach 
 ers, while poor Mr. Goss, whose Christian name 
 the girls had discovered on a card in one of 
 Miss Ayre s books, was designated respectfully 
 as the Lovely Leonard. 
 
 A bad lesson was a " flunk," or a " fizzle," 
 or a " slump." A fine recitation was a " rush." 
 The meetings of The Evergreen Sisters were 
 " bums." A party was a " spree." A little 
 difficulty with a teacher was a " row." A 
 room-mate was a " chum." Pleasant girls 
 were " good fellows," &c., &c., &c., in variety 
 without end. 
 
 Now, as Mrs. Breynton knew from week to 
 week just about what Gypsy was living, she 
 very soon noticed the growth of this doubtful 
 accomplishment, and when at last she received 
 a letter written from beginning to end in this 
 
 style, 
 
 m,
 
 * Chum and I got into a regular row eating 
 dates in one of McMunn s classes, and I think 
 it s a bothering bore to have to cram so on 
 Roman History. I don t like to be scolded 
 better than the next man, and would n t it be 
 jolly if vacation were here? " 
 
 Gypsy had by the next mail the following : - 
 
 MY DEAR DAUGHTER, I return your 
 letter, which, owing to my long habit of corre 
 sponding in English, I am unable to translate. 
 A vocabulary perhaps would be of service, if 
 you have one to spare. 
 
 If you have given up all intention >f becom 
 ing a young lady, I can undoubtedly find a 
 school where they will make a boy of you to 
 order; perhaps you would enjoy yourself at 
 Andover or Exeter; or shall it be Harvard at 
 once? Please give me early notice of yout 
 preference, that I may have time to look 
 about. 
 
 There might, to be sure, be some little incoiv 
 venience to me in the arrangement, as you hap
 
 pen to be my only daughter, and three sons 
 would be a good many, but still 
 
 Affectionately, 
 
 MOTHER 
 
 To which Gypsy made answer: 
 
 "Why, mother! Why, Mother Breynton! 
 Why, I would n t be a boy for anything in the 
 world. I think they re horrid ! " 
 
 And quickly back came the reply, 
 
 " Well then, my dear, don t try to be a 
 boy. You remember the poor little swan who 
 couldn t be a duck? Everybody laughed at 
 her, you know. 
 
 " If you decide to be a woman, be a woman. 
 It may be as brave and strong and bright 
 and learned and independent a woman as it 
 chooses, but it must not degrade itself by aping 
 something which it was never destined to be, 
 and never can be, try as hard as it may. 
 
 " Furthermore, my dear, I really don t see 
 how I could have a daughter of mine grow uji 
 
 other than a lady. 
 
 164
 
 * A lady never talks slang. And these habits 
 which you are forming just now, will cling to 
 you like burs, long after school-days are over. 
 So, shall this be the end of my refractory duck 
 ling s career? " 
 
 I believe that it was. 
 
 Lou Armstrong was talking about a masquer 
 ade, in these days. These masquerades held 
 on holiday evenings, in which the girls were 
 their own hostesses and cavaliers, and to which 
 the lady teachers were invited as spectators 
 were hereditary amusements at the Golden 
 Crescent, handed down from class to class. It 
 should be observed, however, that the term 
 " masquerade " was a title more honorary than 
 appropriate. Nobody masked but the homely 
 girls. It was not becoming. 
 
 " We can go into the Music Room," said 
 Lou, " and let me see ; who will play for 
 us?" 
 
 " Mr. Schleiermacher," suggested Josephine. 
 " No, indeed 1 We don t want a man look-
 
 ing on. I guess Emma Colchett will play. 
 Let us get it up in style, and have a subscrip 
 tion for oysters Dolly will cook them for a 
 pair of cuffs. As for characters and dresses, 
 I Ve thought of some that are mag. Queen 
 Marie. Jeanne d Arc. Leicester, and his 
 
 
 
 Queen. Zenobia " 
 
 " Yes, and Sappho." 
 
 " And King Lear, and that old what s his 
 name? John Burns? who fought in the old 
 white hat at Gettysburg, or somewhere." 
 
 " Good ! Then flower-girls and gypsies to 
 fill up, of course Josephine, you must be 
 Leicester, and I 11 be Bess." 
 
 " Lou Armstrong, you know nobody else can 
 he Sappho. Put on ivy-leaves, and take off 
 your waterfall. Let Mary Blunt be Queen 
 Bess; her hair is just the colour." 
 
 "And Gypsy? Gypsy Breynton? What 
 shall she be?" 
 
 " Oh, let me be a page, a funny little page 
 with a cap on. I will wait on Queen Marie, I 
 believe." 
 
 186
 
 Maude Clare had been written to about the 
 masquerade, and if she came back in time, she 
 was to be Marie. Not a little flattered that 
 she should be chosen as the " Bonnie Queen," 
 Maude thought that she should be back in time. 
 
 As it chanced, she and Jane came in the 
 same train; and they came just after supper, 
 the very night of the masquerade. 
 
 Jane looked tired and pale, when she came 
 upstairs. Gypsy gave her one hurried kiss, 
 and bounded away to Maude Clare, to fondle 
 and pet and squeeze her, to scream over her, 
 and laugh at her, and question her, and pinch 
 her in a bewilderment of joy. Never had 
 Maude so fascinated her by her little graceful 
 ways and caresses; never had she looked so 
 white and pink and pretty, so stylish, or so 
 dear, as after their long separation. 
 
 " And you have come just in time to be 
 Queen Marie, my pretty Queen Marie ! Made 
 your dress at home? Oh, splendid ! Real lace 
 collar, and pearls in your hair? Oh, Maude, 
 you will be a queen ! "
 
 " I shall have a blossom of a page, I think, 
 mignon. See here, Gypsy, who do you think 
 has come back? Somebody." 
 
 " Not that old " 
 
 " Yes. Ben Sizer." 
 
 " But I thought he went back to College 
 long ago." 
 
 " So he did ; but he is here again. He came 
 on in the cars with me." 
 
 " Why ! how did he know what train you 
 were coming in? " 
 
 " Oh, I dropped him a line," said Maude, 
 carelessly. 
 
 " They say," observed Gypsy, " that he was 
 rusticated from Harvard, and that s how he 
 came here." 
 
 " I don t believe it ! " said Maude, indig 
 nantly. " He says he comes for his health. I 
 suppose he studied too hard." 
 
 The idea of Mr. Benjamin Sizer studying too 
 hard so amused Gypsy that she hurried away 
 to (Jress, without venturing on any further 
 remarks.
 
 A very pretty little page she made, when that 
 dressing was over. She had compounded a 
 graceful tunic out of a broad crimson silk scarf 
 and sash, with trimmings of gilt paper. The 
 full, Oriental-looking trousers, which came 
 down closely about her ankles, were (but no 
 body would have thought it) made of old white 
 cotton-cloth, covered with figures of every 
 colour cut from silk and cashmere, and sewed 
 on. She wore white kid gloves with scarlet 
 gauntlets, and carried a riding-whip. Her hair 
 was caught up on top of her head out of sight, 
 the short side brushed out around her temples, 
 and over it was the jauntiest little blue velvet 
 cap with silver tassels. This was Jacqueline 
 Delancey s skating-cap; rather showy for a 
 skating-cap, but very suitable for Queen 
 Marie s page. 
 
 As Gypsy was hurrying to the music-room 
 in the little flush and excitement which comes 
 from the consciousness that one looks pretty 
 and that one is going to have a very good time, 
 she passed by Phcebe Hand s room. The dooi
 
 tood partly open. Miss Ayrc had gone al 
 ready to the masquerade, and Phoebe sat there 
 alone. 
 
 " Coming, Phcebe, are n t you ? Why ! why 
 not?" 
 
 " I don t care to," said Phoebe, sadly ; and 
 Gypsy saw that her eyes were red with crying. 
 
 "Why, Phcebe, what s the matter? I wish 
 you M come. I should think it would be horrid 
 sitting here all alone." 
 
 " I can t I don t want to," murmured 
 Phcebe, turning her face away. " I can t dance> 
 you know. I never can do what the rest do. 
 Nobody will miss me." 
 
 " Now," said Gypsy to herself, thinking last, 
 " if anybody had thought ! She might have 
 been dressed up into a very nice enchanted 
 Princess who could n t move, and sat on the 
 sofa in a long white veil." She lingered a 
 moment in the doorway, sorry and uncomfort 
 able, wondering if she ought to leave the poor 
 girl so ; if she could comfort her up a little, or 
 
 coax her to come in with the rest just as she 
 190
 
 was. But all were 
 ready and waiting, 
 and Emma Col- 
 chett had begun 
 to play, and the lights flashed, and Queen 
 Marie was calling impatiently for her page 
 she could not go to a masquerade without a 
 
 page- 
 
 " Fidelio ! Fidelio ! Gypsy ! "
 
 So Gypsy shut Phoebe s door softly, and ran 
 away, and there was a buzz in the music-room 
 when Fidelio announced the Queen, it was 
 really as loyal a sight as ever was seen. 
 
 Such a pretty, gay roomful as it was ! There 
 was Maude in her rich, conspicuous costume, 
 her own white alpaca with its long trail, 
 trimmed heavily with lace of silver paper; over 
 her shoulders black velvet edged with ermine 
 (cotton-wool and ink-spots, that ermine), the 
 " real lace " about her throat and turned back 
 in long cuffs from her wrists, and on her hair 
 the delicate point of lace and pearls, that be 
 came her as it might have done the very face 
 of the bonnie Queen. 
 
 There was Leicester with sash and sw, d 
 (pasteboard), and his haughty Queen with her 
 huge ruff. 
 
 Sappho wore her ivy-wreath, and a beautiful 
 young poet she made. 
 
 Jeanne d Arc bore herself with a military 
 air, and old John Burns chose her for a partner 
 Sad Zenobia appeared in chains, and there was 
 
 BM
 
 a funny little King Lear the shortest girX 
 in school with a long white flaxen braid. 
 Jacqueline Delancey was a flower-girl, because 
 it was becoming; Miss Holly was a ghost, and 
 
 \ 
 
 wore a mask ; and there was the usual propor 
 tion of gypsies and Indians. 
 
 Just after they had begun to dance, several 
 
 of the girls noticed a tall Benedictine friar, who 
 
 had come in a little late. The Queen of Scots, 
 
 it was said, waited to be confessed by him bc 
 
 193
 
 fore she could join in the dance with a cleat 
 conscience. He now attended her zealously, 
 counting his beads. 
 
 As he was masked, there was a little specula 
 tion at first as to his identity, till some one sug 
 gested Jane Bruce. 
 
 " Rather tall for Jane, seems to me." 
 
 " Why, no ; Jane is tall, and it makes such a 
 difference going without hoops." 
 
 " It must be Jane," decided Gypsy, " for 
 when I asked her what she should be, she said 
 she did not know certainly that she should 
 come, but if she did, she should probably be a 
 monk; that is the quickest thing to get up; 
 you know there s that old black cloth up 
 garret that Mrs. M. said we might use." 
 
 So nobody thought any more about the 
 Benedictine friar, and when, sometime before 
 the party broke up, he went away, he was 
 hardly missed. 
 
 " Tired, I suppose," thought Gypsy, " she 
 has gone to bed." 
 
 The girls kept, up their merry play till tea 
 194
 
 o clock; Dolly brought in the oysters, Mrs. 
 McMunn thanked them for the entertainment, 
 and they broke up with a sense of brilliant 
 success. 
 
 Queen Marie and her page made their adieu* 
 to Emma Colchett together (poor Emma had 
 to be hostess and musician in one), and went 
 upstairs. Maude Clare did look magnificently 
 that night. Her cheeks were hot with ner 
 vous colour, and her eyes dry and bright, with 
 excitement. 
 
 " Maude, you are just beautiful ! " said 
 her pretty page, throwing his most unpagelike 
 arms about her neck. 
 
 "Thank you, dear," said Maude Clare wea 
 rily, shrinking a little from her caress. " I am 
 tired. I think I will go to bed. See, poor 
 Miss Holly wants to go to sleep, and we should 
 disturb her talking." 
 
 Jane was in bed and asleep when Gypsy went 
 to her room. The next morning the girls as 
 sembled to talk over the masquerade, and 
 strange fact came out.
 
 Jane was not the Benedictine friar. Jane 
 spent the evening with Phoebe Hand. 
 
 What did it mean? 
 
 It was many days before Gypsy knew what 
 every girl in school knew before her, what none 
 were quite willing to tell her, what I believe 
 none of the teachers at the Golden Crescent 
 know, to this day. 
 
 Jacqueline Delancey finally told her. 
 
 " Gypsy, who was the Benedictine friar?" 
 
 " I don t know, I m sure." 
 
 " I do." 
 
 Jacqueline whispered something in her ear. 
 
 " What?" 
 
 " Yes she let him in the side door, by the 
 piazza ; and he went out the same way, early, 
 before we broke up." 
 
 " But but I don t understand. Will you 
 say the name over?" 
 
 Jacqueline said the name over. I cannot say 
 that Jacqueline did not take a relish in the saying. 
 
 The Benedictine friar was no other than Mr 
 
 Benjamin Sizer. 
 
 196
 
 BOUNCIN 
 UP%) *0 
 
 ^CHAPTER XI 
 
 UT I did n t mean anything but 
 fun, and he wanted to come so 
 as to dance with me, and when 
 he said, Please/ I could n t help myself. I 
 never meant to be mean, and I never thought 
 you d be so cross with me, Gypsy," sobbed 
 repentant Queen Marie. 
 
 And how could Gypsy be cross? Shocked 
 and angry and grieved as she was, wounded 
 and astonished that her beautiful Maude should 
 do this thing, how could she bear it to see 
 Ker in such distress and mortification, her hand 
 some face disfigured with tears, her bright hair 
 falling neglected against her shoulders? (It
 
 made her look prettier than ever, but it never 
 occurred to Gypsy that Maude might think of 
 that.) At any rate, she did n t bear it. She 
 had scolded Maude roundly at first, in the 
 frankest of Gypsy fashion. Now, she began to 
 wonder if she had not been too severe. She 
 herself had been into mischief too often, to 
 throw very heavy stones at another; and 
 though she was sure that she should never 
 have done this thing that Maude had done, yet, 
 after all, was Maude very much more to blame 
 than herself? And if Maude could n t help 
 it when he said " Please ! " (conceited little 
 monkey, to think himself so irresistible !) and 
 was it not some excuse when one liked a hand 
 some fellow who would take all that trouble 
 to have a dance with one? and so, relenting 
 slowly, she stopped scolding, and drew a little 
 nearer to Maude, and looked at her sorrowfully. 
 Upon this, Maude Clare cried all the harder, 
 and sobbed till she could hardly catch her 
 breath. " She knew that Gypsy thought she 
 was a hateful old thing, and she supposed of
 
 course she had n t any pity for her, and did n t 
 know how hard it was to be separated from 
 anybody you liked a whole winter, and have 
 him come back so suddenly and look so hand 
 some. She did n t suppose Gypsy had the 
 charity to forgive her though she was sorry 
 of course, and never meant to do so again, 
 never and the future looked very dark; 
 there were a great many Shadows in her heart, 
 and this was another; Gypsy was the only 
 friend she had in the world who understood 
 and appreciated her, or had ever been a con 
 genial spirit or had any sympathy, and now 
 she had lost her, and was left to take her dark 
 way through life alone, and nobody would care, 
 and and " 
 
 By this time Gypsy was crying in concert; 
 so they kissed each other, and Maude looked 
 very pretty, and Gypsy said that she should 
 always love her, but she did wish she would n t 
 do such things, and Maude said that she never 
 would again, and called her her Fidelio; so 
 then they kissed each other once more, and 
 
 199
 
 several times after that, and then the bell rang 
 for study-hours. 
 
 The summer term went fast, as summer 
 terms are apt to go. It was too warm to live 
 slowly and seriously. There was much fun, 
 much frolic, few lessons, and less studying at 
 the Golden Crescent through the golden days. 
 
 As for Gypsy, she lived, as the Gypsies will 
 live in summer-time, in a sweet, lazy excite 
 ment of walks and drives, of concerts and sere 
 nades, of moonlight nights and novels and 
 dreaming, with few distinct thoughts beyond. 
 
 One warm week towards the end of une, 
 there was talk of a grand meeting of the Ever 
 green Sisters, which should be celebrated as the 
 last for this term. 
 
 It would be, as Lou said, " too warm to eat 
 so much in July, and then there were examina 
 tions to make ready for. Besides, the mosqui 
 toes came in if you lighted a lamp." 
 
 Extensive preparations were made. Jo 
 Courtis bought a freezer and made ice-cream 
 in the cellar, explaining to Mrs. Holt that the
 
 girls needed a little refreshment after study, 
 hours such abominable weather to have to 
 apply one s mind ! 
 
 Cake, candies, fruits, and pastry were ordered 
 from Boston, and came as a private express- 
 bundle to Mary Blunt. 
 
 Dolly was bribed to make a basketful of her 
 inimitable wafers ; for the material of which, at 
 Gypsy s suggestion, Mrs. Holt was fairly paid. 
 " To eat with the ice-cream, you know," ex 
 plained Josephine, " and I will send you down 
 a saucerful if I don t forget it." This put 
 Mrs. Holt into very good humour, and she 
 neglected to tell Mrs. McMunn that the girls 
 "would eat themselves sick and we should all 
 have the cholery," as she had intended. 
 
 The trunk-closet was turned into a manu 
 factory of whips and lemonade. 
 
 Finally, Jack Delancey was to send home 
 for wines. Her father a wealthy distiller 
 would supply her with whatever she wanted in 
 that line. 
 
 " Wine 1 " xclaimed Gypsy. " Oh, don t/
 
 I don t think it s right. Mother would n t want 
 me to have anything to do with it, if you have 
 such things. Come, girls, we don t want to 
 turn it into a regular boy s class-supper, that 
 way please don t ! " 
 
 But to turn it into a boy s class-supper was 
 precisely what the girls did want, and Jacque 
 line sent for the wine. " If Mrs. McMunn 
 finds it out," said Gypsy, " the Evergreen 
 Sisters will be bounced up pretty fast." Gypsy 
 felt uncomfortable about it. When she sat 
 down for her night s talk with her mother by 
 the window, she left out all about the Ever 
 green Sisters. I think she knew that she ought 
 to stay away from the supper. But she did 
 not stay awa^. 
 
 The night which they had chosen, was sultry 
 and clouded. The teachers went to bed early. 
 Even Miss Ayre had not the energy to climb 
 upstairs and find out what was going on, when 
 she heard the noise of preparation in the third 
 story after study-hours. 
 
 Maude Clar*> wanted to sleep with Gypsy
 
 that night, and, strange to say, Jane objected 
 She did not feel very well, or something, in 
 deed she had no definite reason, but preferred 
 to stay in her own room. Jane was usually 
 the most accommodating girl in school. 
 
 " Why, it is n t a bit like you," said Gypsy, 
 rather crossly. " I m sure you might oblige us 
 when Maude wants to come so much." 
 
 " But why is she so anxious to come this 
 particular night?" asked Jane, quietly. 
 
 " Because I am," snapped Maude, " and 
 that s reason enough." 
 
 Jane yielded the point with reluctance, and 
 went down to Miss Holly. 
 
 The Evergreen Sisters met promptly in tht 
 trunk-closet, and for a while the supper passed 
 off with great success. Mellow ice-cream, 
 daintily shaped cream-cakes, pure white ladies 
 cakes, jelly-rolls that would melt in one s 
 mouth, bananas from which the soft skin 
 was bursting, strawberries wrapped in cool 
 green leaves, rainbows of the " latest, candies 
 in pretty painted boxes, and nobody there to
 
 say that they were poison, Dolly s delicate 
 wafers, and rich, yellow whips beaten to solid 
 froth, it was not a bill of fare to be despised. 
 
 But by and by Jacqueline brought on her 
 wine. Gypsy did not like it, and she would 
 not have touched it if she had, but there were 
 enough who did. 
 
 They drank quite enough, too. 
 
 I am not proposing to state that these young 
 ladies got drunk, but it is a simple fact that 
 they became very noisy. Jo Courtis and 
 Jacqueline thought it was " fun ; " the well-bred 
 girls, who had not exactly thought what it was 
 that they were doing, began to look displeased, 
 and fell silent one by one. Presently Jo took 
 a little bunch of cigarettes from her pocket, 
 and, lighting one with an ease which showed 
 that it was not the first time, offered them, in 
 her rough, hospitable way, to the rest. 
 
 Gypsy could stand it no longer. The dis 
 gusting scene had quite opened her eyes to 
 the wrong that she had done in coming to the 
 supper. She had not, to be sure, expected
 
 anything like this, but she should have guarded 
 against it. What would her mother say? Oh, 
 what would she? 
 
 She stood up with hot cheeks, " Girls, this 
 is shameful, and I m sorry I ever came, and 
 I m going right away ! " and walked straight 
 to the door. Somebody on the other sick 
 opened it for her.
 
 " There ! We are bounced up ! " said Gypsy, 
 in a tone of calm despair. And in walked Mrs. 
 McMunn. 
 
 Mrs. McMunn was utterly confounded. I 
 believe it was five minutes by the clock before 
 she found breath to say a word. That her 
 young ladies that any young ladies should 
 smoke cigarettes and drink champagne, was to 
 the poor woman a revelation so stupendous 
 that it stunned every idea of which she was 
 the possessor. 
 
 When at last she found words, they were but 
 two, but they were terrib e. 
 
 " Young LADIES ! " 
 
 " Ma am? " said Josephine, faintly. 
 
 " You may go to your rooms. We will dis 
 cuss this conduct at another time ! " 
 
 They went to their rooms with hanging 
 heads. The Principal saw them all out and 
 shut the door. There is a tradition at the 
 Golden Crescent that she and Mrs. Holt stayed 
 up and finished the ice-cream, but you must 
 refer to Miss Delancey for its authenticity. 
 
 206
 
 That " other time " was deferred by an event 
 for which both teacher and scholars were 
 equally unprepared, and which threw the of 
 fence of the supper so much into the shade 
 that none of the girls were ever punished as 
 they deserved. I will pause to say here, how 
 ever, lest there should not be another chance, 
 that when the day of reckoning came, penitent 
 Gypsy, without attempting to excuse herself or 
 to shift the blame upon the other girls, gave 
 her teacher to understand that she had had 
 only the part of a spectator in the disgraceful 
 scene upon which Mrs. McMunn had broken 
 in ; and that the Principal pardoned her with 
 some good advice, which Gypsy sorrowfully 
 remembered. 
 
 Maude Clare and Gypsy went directly to bed 
 that night, and Gypsy directly to sleep. Owing 
 to her excitement and weariness and supper, 
 she slept heavily, disturbed only by broken 
 dreams. 
 
 When she had been asleep some time she 
 learned afterward that it was about eleven
 
 o clock she wakened from a dream that 
 robbers were at the window, looked about her, 
 and started up. 
 
 Maude Clare was not in the bed. She was 
 not in the room. 
 
 Gypsy sprang to the window. There was a 
 piazza roof running along the story below, and 
 a wooden trellis for vines, nailed to the house, 
 connected the window and the roof. Down the 
 piazza pillars another trellis extended to the 
 ground. A fearless person, if not too heavy, 
 might climb down with safety. 
 
 The moon was struggling through a mass of 
 clouds, and in the faint light Gypsy saw among 
 the garden trees the flutter of a woman s dress. 
 
 Bewildered and trembling, all in a whirl of 
 vague fear, Gypsy stood fixed upon the spot, 
 with her eyes on the fluttering dress, when a 
 hand touched her arm. She started with a cry 
 of relief. Here was Maude, after all. How 
 foolish she had been ! 
 
 But it was not Maude. Jane Bruce stood 
 there, her face as white as her nightdress.
 
 " I was afraid of it, I was afraid of it ! Oh, 
 Gypsy, that s Maude Clare ! " 
 
 Gypsy turned cold, and hot, and cold again. 
 "Jane, what shall we do? What shall we 
 
 " Go after her," said Jane, promptly. " If 
 we can get her back quietly, it will save Maude 
 and the school so much disgrace; if not, we 
 must call Mrs. McMunn. Here ! put on your 
 dress and slippers. Give me my wrapper from 
 the closet, and shawl. Come now, quick ! 
 Down the back stairs ! Oh, don t make a 
 noise ! " 
 
 Gypsy obeyed like a child, and they glided 
 out, with breath held in, into the garden. It 
 was sweet with the perfume of yellow June 
 lilies, and the clovers were heavy with dew. It 
 was very dark among the trees. The flutter 
 ing dress had disappeared. A figure two 
 figures were stealing up the street. 
 
 " Run ! " said Jane. She and Gypsy began 
 to run. 
 
 " This way ! Along by the hedge ! Don t
 
 fet them see till we have caught up with 
 them." 
 
 " Jane," panted Gypsy, as they ran along, 
 " how did you know? " Jane answered, be 
 tween her breaths, 
 
 " I knew that Maude was not to be trusted. 
 I did n t like the looks of it of her wanting 
 to sleep in your room. I saw her talking with 
 him down town a long time to-night. She has 
 been to ride with him in the evening twice this 
 term." 
 
 " You knew it, and never told not even 
 me!" 
 
 "I m not a tell-tale," said Jane, "but I 
 mean to stop this Poor Maude, poor Maude ! 
 I am afraid it is worse than that." 
 
 That it was " worse than that " they found 
 when, coming out at last into the open road in 
 the now clear moonlight, they faced Maude 
 Clare and young Sizer, standing by a horse 
 and chaise. 
 
 Maude Clare saw them and screamed. Mr. 
 Sizer expressed his sentiments in an oath.
 
 " Maude," said Jane, stepping up with quiet 
 authority, " come back. Come back with 
 us." 
 
 " She sha n t do any such thing ! " said the 
 collegian emphatically, taking Maude s gloved 
 hand upon his arm. 
 
 " Maude, Maude, don t let him touch you ! " 
 cried Gypsy vehemently, springing forward. 
 " Come back with me. Oh, what are you 
 doing, Maude Clare?" 
 
 " I am going to be married," said Maude 
 Clare, trying to put on her haughtiest look. 
 " Mr. Sizer s father disapproves of the match ; 
 but when it is all over, he will relent, and then 
 we are going home to mother s to make it all 
 right with hen (Probably this plan would 
 have been accurately carried out; the young 
 fellow being simply weak and sentimental, like 
 herself.) Mr. Sizer comes of a very good 
 family, and I know she won t object after a 
 while. I should like to know what business it 
 is of yours, either, Gypsy Breynton, and I 11 
 thank you to " But silly Maude s hauteur
 
 broke into a sob, as Gypsy clung to her, 
 pleading. 
 
 " See here," interrupted Maude s companion. 
 " It seems to me this is my business, and I say 
 she shall go. Come, Maude, it is n t safe to 
 stand here. Jump in quick ! " 
 
 Jane, comprehending matters at the first 
 glance, had seen that their hope of influencing 
 Maude Clare was not worth an instant s delay, 
 and had stolen swiftly back to the house for 
 help. Gypsy was left alone to plead with her. 
 
 " Come, Maude, don t disgrace and make a 
 fool of yourself don t! Mr. Sizer, won t you 
 just step into your chaise and take yourself 
 off no, I want Maude s hand on my arm. 
 Come, Maude, come ! " 
 
 Maude cried and hesitated, went a little way 
 with her, lingered, stopped. 
 
 "Oh, Maude!" It seemed to Gypsy as if 
 Jane would never be back ; as if hours passed 
 while Maude stood there sobbing. 
 
 " Maude, Maude ! " called the voice from 
 the chaise. Maude turned her head
 
 " Maude Maude Clare ! Maude Clare ! " 
 " Oh, let me go, let me go ! " cried Maude, 
 and tore herself from Gypsy s arms to find 
 herself in the stouter ones of Mrs. McMunn. 
 Jane had roused the Principal, and the Prin 
 cipal had roused Chaplain Goss, and the three 
 stood there together. 
 
 Mr. Sizer, his horse and chaise, disappeared 
 somewhat faster than they had come, and 
 Maude Clare was carried back to the Golden 
 Crescent in hysterics.
 
 ISS MAUDE CLARE SMITH 
 was publicly expelled from the 
 Golden Crescent. 
 Her father came, a stern, indignant man, and 
 took her home. " His daughter would go 
 back to her mother s nursery," he said, " and 
 there she would stay till she gave evidence of 
 having outgrown her childhood." 
 
 Unhappy Maude packed her trunks, and 
 bade the girls good-by, and clung to Gypsy 
 sobbing. " Her heart was broken, she was 
 Mire her heart was broken, and she should
 
 never see a happy hour again, never! They 
 had taken her away from Ben poor fellow ! 
 she knew his heart would break too, and she 
 should find in the papers some morning that he 
 had drowned himself, or hung himself with a 
 horrid rope O-o-o-oh ! and now they were 
 taking her away from Gypsy, the only friend 
 she had who ever cared anything about her, 
 and Gypsy did n t have half the sympathy with 
 her that she expected; and oh, to think of 
 never seeing Ben again ! The Shadow of her 
 Lifetime was darkening down, and there was 
 nobody left to understand or appreciate. She 
 wished she were dead, she did ! dead and 
 buried up in a coffin, with her weary heart at 
 rest ! She thought she should n t live very 
 long, either; and if Gypsy heard of her in 
 consumption, she need n t be surprised." 
 
 Gypsy kissed her and cried a little, and when 
 the carriage had fairly rolled away with her, 
 went away alone upstairs, and cried a little 
 more. But she was surprised to find that she 
 did not feel as badly as she had expected to, 
 
 5
 
 and that when Jane came in and kissed away 
 her tears she was quite ready to be comforted. 
 
 The fact was, that Gypsy s respect for Maude 
 Clare, which Maude herself had been slowly 
 undermining bit by bit the last few months, was 
 now gone " at one fell swoop," and love with 
 out respect is like a house without foundation. 
 She felt sorry for Maude with a compassionate, 
 superior sense of pity. Beautiful Queen Marie 
 had lost her Fidelio ; the sweet allegiance was 
 broken ; the pretty dream was gone. So she 
 wiped her eyes, hoped Maude would not have 
 consumption, and learned her Virgil lesson as 
 if nothing had happened. 
 
 i will state, for the benefit of the compas 
 sionate, that Maude Clare did not have con 
 sumption, and I am really afraid that she has 
 not had even the consistency to break her 
 heart. For I read last week in the newspapers 
 an account of a fashionable marriage at St. 
 Paul s: "Miss Maude Clare, daughter of John 
 
 Smith, Esq., of Boston, to Colonel Jones," 
 
 I think, aide on a great General s staff. 
 
 216
 
 Truth compels me to say, also, that Mr. 
 
 Benjamin Sizer has as yet neither drowned 
 himself nor hung himself with a horrid rope. 
 When last heard from, he was cheerfully, and 
 to all appearance resignedly, engaged in the 
 
 yacht-racing business, in which he was betting 
 away his father s fortune as fast as he con 
 veniently could. Owing to the fact that his 
 latest-launched boat rejoices in the name of 
 The Fair Sarah Popkins (reported to be that 
 of a daughter of the Snapberry Town Over-
 
 seer), I am driven to infer that not even the 
 ghost of the memory of Mrs. Colonel Maude 
 Clare Jones disturbs his peaceful dreams. 
 
 June days became July days, and it was 
 warm weather at the Golden Crescent, very 
 warm. Lessons flagged ; spirits drooped ; girls 
 who feasted on cream-cakes and lemonade at 
 eleven o clock at night, cried with headache all 
 the next day ; walks were few, and frolic less ; 
 the world gave itself up to gasping at open 
 windows, and sighing for rain. 
 
 One morning Phoebe Hand did not come to 
 recitation. She did not feel exactly well, Miss 
 Ayre said. The next day she felt no better. 
 Night came, and somebody went for the 
 doctor. Morning came, and the girls clus 
 tered in groups, talking about her. At noon, 
 a slow, low whisper went round from one t 
 another. 
 
 " They say hush ! " 
 
 " He is afraid so hush ! There are somi 
 cases down town; don t speak of it." 
 
 " Awful ! Why hush ! don t you know? w 
 218
 
 It was curious how everybody hushed her 
 own lips in speaking the word, as if she could 
 not become used to or bear the sound of it. It 
 ^ame in time to Gypsy. 
 
 "What!" 
 
 " Yes. Varioloid." 
 
 Jacqueline Delancey took the first train for 
 home. The other girls kept away from " The 
 Parsonage," kept away from the lower floor; 
 faces were pale, and the house was still. 
 
 " Her friends send for her friends," said 
 Jane. Mrs. McMunn, bewildered and fright 
 ened, acted on the suggestion, and the tele 
 graph carried the news. Poor Phoebe had 
 neither father nor mother to be moved to 
 tender anxiousness by it. The crippled orphan 
 was the charge of an uncle, who, to tell the 
 truth, kept her at the Golden Crescent because 
 he did not know what else to do with her. He 
 wrote that he was sorry to hear of his niece s 
 illness, and would come on, if there were any 
 occasion; it was really impossible for him to 
 break certain business engagements which 
 
 1 6 210
 
 bound him for this week; he felt sure that 
 there was no danger of " anything happening " 
 to Phoebe, who had a strong constitution ; but 
 if there were any danger, he wished to be in 
 formed at once, and was Mrs. McMunn s very 
 truly Eliphalet Hand. 
 
 Miss Ayre moved upstairs with Mademoi 
 selle. " She should be glad," she said, " to be 
 of any assistance, and wished to do her duty, 
 but felt that justice to the rest of the girls 
 required that she should not expose herself 
 rashly." Mrs. McMunn did the best that she 
 could for Phoebe, but she was busy and fright 
 ened. They searched the town for a nurse 
 who could not come till next week. 
 
 Upon this, Jane Bruce put on slippers and a 
 soft dress, and went into the sick-room. Before 
 she went, she kissed Gypsy and said good- 
 by. 
 
 " Oh dear, how can she go? " cried the girls, 
 in frightened groups ; " she will have it, and 
 we shall all have it and die." 
 
 But Gypsy held up her head, with bright
 
 eyes, and only said : " I wish I were Jane 
 Bruce; yes, I do. I call her a hero." 
 
 The very next morning the doctor said that 
 it was only typhus fever. But I believe no 
 body thought that gentle Jane, who came out 
 laughing and crying together to bring the news, 
 was any the less a hero for that. 
 
 Phoebe was very sick. Gypsy went in sev 
 eral times to see her, but she was asleep or 
 delirious. 
 
 " She does n t want to get well," said Jane 
 one day, sadly ; " and if we can t make her 
 want to, I m afraid she won t." 
 
 " Does n t want to get well ! " 
 
 Happy Gypsy, to whom life was as sweet as 
 love, and the future as bright as a dream, 
 opened her great eyes wide. 
 
 " No ; she is n t afraid to die, she thinks she 
 should be happier in heaven, poor thing ! I m 
 afraid Phcebe has n t had a pleasant time in this 
 world." 
 
 Gypsy, making pretence to study through 
 the long days (nobody made anything but pre-
 
 tence to study, just now), thought about this. 
 Poor Phoebe ! Why did n t people make her 
 have a pleasant time? Well, why? She 
 why she, Gypsy Breynton, it had not been her 
 business, had it? Whose, then? If anybody s, 
 why not hers? If Jane s, why not hers? 
 What was that about " Whatsoever thy hand 
 findeth"? She could not remember the rest; 
 but the words were in her mind, and they 
 turned themselves about. 
 
 Phoebe was worse. The girls in their groups 
 grew grave; stepped about the house on tip 
 toe; spoke in whispers. Miss Ayre, looking 
 a little ashamed of herself, came down into 
 the sick-room and went to work. The uncle 
 was sent for. The doctor came twice, three 
 times, four times a day. 
 
 One afternoon Jane came out crying, and Gypsy 
 tried some time to find out what was the matter. 
 
 " Poor thing, poor thing ! " said Jane, at last. 
 " She says she has been here a year and a half, 
 and nobody has been sorry for her, nobody 
 but me."
 
 Gypsy flushed to her forehead, and drew hd 
 breath in fast. She did not answer Jane, but 
 walked away and sat down alone. She felt a3 
 if she were sitting alone in the world, and One 
 with finger pointed at her asked a question: 
 " Why was nobody sorry for her? Why ? " 
 
 That night the sleepers at the Golden Cres 
 cent were awakened by a sudden cry. Lights 
 flickered past the windows, and quick steps 
 sounded on the stairs, and presently silence fell 
 again, and sleep. 
 
 But in the morning the girls, with awestruck 
 faces, heard that one lay dead in the house. 
 
 Mr. Eliphalet Hand came by the early ex 
 press, and with decorous, grave face wished 
 that he had been sent for sooner. Jane was 
 busy with flowers, and tried, she said, " to have 
 things look as if the poor child s mother were 
 there to attend to them." 
 
 Gypsy, still feeling as if that Finger pointed 
 at her and her only, in all the world, went in 
 by herself to look at Phoebe s quiet face. 
 
 The uncle, with craoe upon his hat, took
 
 away what was left of her, to his expensive lot 
 in Laurel Hill, and went back to those business 
 engagements which her death had so incon 
 siderately broken in upon. 
 
 The girls, as is the way with girls, now that 
 Phoebe was dead, were convinced that they had 
 always been very fond of her, and cried for her 
 profusely. 
 
 Jane mourned her as a valued friend, and 
 Gypsy thought of her as an accusing angel. 
 
 " If she had only got well, Jane ! I would 
 have been sorry for her ! " 
 
 " But is n t it a great deal better to be glad 
 for her now, dear?" said Jane, looking off aj 
 the serene summer sky.
 
 BORDERLAND 
 CHAPTERS" 
 
 ISS AYRE has the typhus fever. 
 
 People wonder a little, and 
 wish that the weather would 
 
 cool. The days grow hotter; the nights are 
 sultrier ; Lou Armstrong complains of a 
 headache. One morning Lou has the typhus 
 fever. The doctor looks grave, but is not 
 surprised ; it is an old trick of the typhus 
 "Not contagious, ma am, not contagious; 
 but an epidemic, without doubt. Let the 
 young ladies keep as much as possible out of 
 doors, and I would not advise their running in. 
 and out of the sick-room unless they can be of 
 some use." There is little need of any such 
 advice, did the excellent doctor but know it
 
 " The young ladies " are, if possible, more 
 frightened than at the varioloid rumour, and 
 the closest friendships will be severely tried if 
 there is much more of this. 
 
 But Lou is not very sick, and Miss Ayre is 
 better, and the fickle disease has about made 
 up its mind to take a quiet departure, but 
 pounces on one most unsuspecting little victim, 
 by way of farewell. 
 
 Gypsy, worn with the excitement of the 
 term, and the heat, and the little shock that 
 Phoebe s death had given, wakes up one morn 
 ing feeling very weak, and thinks that she will 
 not go into Shakespeare. 
 
 After dinner, Jane finds her with aching 
 head, and cheeks on fire; and at night Mrs. 
 McMunn thinks that the doctor had better just 
 step in and look at her. 
 
 The doctor steps in to look at her, and 
 Gypsy is too sleepy to ask him what he thinks. 
 She sees him pour out some medicine and go 
 away, and by and by she tells Jane that she 
 does not need anything; she wishes that she
 
 would go down and sleep with Miss Holly, and 
 get a good night s rest. But Jane does not go. 
 Gypsy feels too weak to argue the matter, 
 and the long night sets in. It is a very long 
 night. The lamp is left lighted, and she sees 
 the shadows flicker on the wall ; sees Jane ly 
 ing quietly at her side, wondering a little if she 
 wakes her every time she turns over, tries to 
 lie still, but turns and turns again. She sees 
 strange shapes gliding slowly over the ceiling, 
 walking beside and around the bed, and cries 
 out sometimes when they touch her. She calls 
 she is afraid that she calls very often for 
 water, and drinks fast, and drains the glass. 
 She wonders what thr,.: it is, and if the night 
 will ever be gone, and if she shall have an 
 excuse from composition, and who kindled 
 that fire in her head that crackles so. What 
 did they want of a fire in such warm weather? 
 And how did they ever put in the kindling- 
 wood? By and by, she sees the lamp burn 
 pale and blue, and thinks that it must be morn 
 ing, and wonders if the rising-bell has rung, 
 337
 
 and wonders what they sent the doctor in her& 
 for before she was dressed. 
 
 After that, she does not wonder any more. 
 The hot sun rises and rides on; sinks, rises, 
 sinks again, like the great brass pendulum of a 
 clock how many times she does not know 
 but she neither wonders, nor thinks, nor cares. 
 
 The doctor is there, and Mademoiselle is 
 there, and Mrs. McMunn is there. Mrs. Mc- 
 Munn has an inconvenient way of turning into 
 a Baldwin apple whenever she passes in front 
 of the window, and Gypsy is uncomfortable 
 because she cannot twist the stem off. 
 
 It occurs to her once, when she is drinking 
 her medicine, that it may not be a stem, after 
 all, but a waterfall. Mademoiselle cries in the 
 corner, and sometimes she kisses Gypsy softly. 
 Jane is always there. Jane opens the windows, 
 Jane brings her medicine, Jane fixes the ice 
 upon her forehead. At sunset and at sunrise 
 Jane s face moves about in a cloud of pallid 
 gold, like a face in an old picture. Gypsy 
 watches it idly, and idly thinks of Peace May 
 
 228
 
 thorne, and wonders what makes the two look 
 so much alike; and if Peace, away in heaven, 
 knows anything about the Golden Crescent, 
 and how hot the sun is here, and how long the 
 nights. 
 
 They have sent for her mother, though that 
 she does not know. But the letter missed, and 
 the telegram was delayed ; it is many days be 
 fore she comes, and still Jane moves about the 
 room in the cloud of pallid gold. 
 
 One night the doctor stands with his back to 
 the bed, talking with Mrs. McMunn. Gypsy 
 has a dim idea that they think she is asleep, 
 and dimly she seems to hear him say, 
 
 " The case disappoints me. The chances of 
 recovery are ve-ry small." 
 
 But she does not think much about it, nor 
 care. Presently Jane comes in crying, and she 
 wonders what is the matter with her. Perhaps 
 she has the headache, too. 
 
 The great brass pendulum has swung up and 
 swung down once after that, over the crescent 
 of green maples, and then the door is opened
 
 as nobody has opened the door since Gypsy 
 has lain there, and some one lies down softly 
 by her on the pillow, and lips touch her fore 
 head as no lips have touched her all the sum 
 mer long. 
 
 " Ye-es," Gypsy says sleepily; "that is 
 nice. My head ached so last night, I cc^ld n t 
 talk with you. I ve been a little a horrid 
 little villain all this" the thought wanders 
 away, and the lips kiss down the words with 
 their rare touch, and all the world seems to 
 grow cool and green and still. 
 
 After a time, it may be longer or shorter, a 
 thought comes to Gypsy; it is sharp and clear; 
 it strikes her as if steel struck her, and she cries 
 out with it. 
 
 " Oh, mother, mother, mother ! I don t 
 want to die ! I don t want to die ! " 
 
 Her mother s arms just gather her in and 
 hold her, and nobody says a word. 
 
 It was Mademoiselle over in her corner, who 
 sobbed aloud. Mademoiselle hovers about the 
 bed in these days, with red eyes and gentle
 
 touch ; begs leave to change the ice and bring 
 fresh water; sends Jane and the worn mother 
 away to rest; insists on taking the night- 
 watch and running for the doctor. Poor 
 Mademoiselle carries her rosary in her hand, 
 and tells over Aves and Paternosters between 
 the drops of medicine, wetting the beads with 
 tears. 
 
 But by and by the brass pendulum ceases to 
 swing over the maple, and the world goes out
 
 NE morning it moves again a 
 little, slowly, faintly ; the 
 leaves of the Crescent shine 
 out beyond the window ; Jane s face, and 
 every face, glides about again in pallid gold. 
 
 So Gypsy cries for very weakness and thank 
 fulness and joy, and cries herself to sleep. 
 
 They do not let her talk for many days, but 
 one morning, feeling very br.ght and strong 
 after her beef tea, she wakes from a bit of a 
 nap, and finds Mademoiselle sitting alone by 
 her bed. Mademoiselle is correcting exercise?, 
 with her rosary twined about her wrist
 
 Gypsy watches her for a while in thoughtful 
 silence, and suddenly raises herself a little on 
 her elbow, and speaks, 
 
 " Mademoiselle ! " 
 
 " Oh ! Why, Miss Gypsy ! You must n t 
 talk, my dear." 
 
 "Yes, I must talk, Mademoiselle. My fate 
 cries out against this deaf and dumb treatment, 
 and makes each petty artery in this body as 
 hardy as the Nemean lion s nerves ! " (Shake 
 speare.) " So, if you please, I want you to 
 listen to me, and answer me a question." 
 
 " Very well, my dear ; if la bonne mere will 
 not " 
 
 " Oh, la bonne mre won t say a word. 
 Now, Mademoiselle, I want to know what ever 
 made you take a fancy to such a hor-rid little 
 thing, and come in and take care of me this 
 way while I ve been sick." 
 
 Mademoiselle drops the exercises, and her 
 eyelids quiver a little, 
 
 " N importe, n importe, my dear I like you, 
 C est assez, n est-ce pas? " 
 
 33
 
 " I suppose it will have to be assez, if you 
 have n t any better reason." 
 
 " Mais ! I have one reason," said Made 
 moiselle, in a low tone. " Helas ! Pauvre moi ! 
 pauvre moi ! " 
 
 Gypsy watched the French teacher in com 
 passionate wonder. What was she " poor " 
 for? Did she need anybody to be sorry for 
 her, too? " I wonder," she said softly. 
 
 " I go to tell you," said Mademoiselle, 
 squeezing her handkerchief into her eyes, " I 
 go to tell you in a minute. II fait mal aux 
 yeux, this writing. Voila! You care to hear 
 then about poor Mademoiselle, you? I think 
 nobody care to hear about Mademoiselle." 
 
 Gypsy turned upon the pillow restlessly. 
 
 " It is one little story," said Mademoiselle, 
 half under her breath. " One tres little story. 
 I tell it in not many words. I have one petite 
 sceur one little sister; just one little sister. 
 I have no thing else. I leave la mere et le 
 pere in two graves at Havre. La petite sceur. 
 she is all there is left. We come to Amerique
 
 deux ans, two years ago. La petite soeur 
 look like you hair, eyes, mouth she 
 look like you. I love la petite soeur, I 
 love you." 
 
 "And where is she, the little sister? " asked 
 Gypsy, waiting for more. " Why did n t she 
 come here with you? Is she dead?" 
 
 " Ah, mon Dieu, non," said Mademoiselle, 
 very low. " If it were that she were dead, I 
 go not to cry so many tears in the dark. 
 Pauvre petite ! She have one fine voice, elle 
 aime chanter et danser; she not let me pay 
 monaie for the books and clothes here at the 
 school. She go to to what you call it? 
 to support herself at the Ope>a. I write the 
 letters to her. She write to me. Last winter 
 I write tres manier lettres, but I nevaire hear 
 one word. I go to Boston to the Op^ra, and 
 they tell me she have gone. She have run 
 away. I nevaire find her. I nevaire see her 
 any more. Pauvre petite sceur ! I am tire s 
 lonely. Nobodie speak to me or cry with me. 
 Mademoiselle Bruce is ver kind, ver kind, but 
 
 335
 
 I tell not her about la petite soeur. I tell not 
 anybodie. Mais ! que c est triste, cela ! " 
 
 Gypsy s pillow was wet and salt, and Gypsy s 
 face was hidden. 
 
 " Mademoiselle?" she said softly. 
 
 " Well, my dear." 
 
 " I want you to kiss me." 
 
 Mademoiselle climbed upon the bed, and put 
 her arms about Gypsy s neck, and kissed her 
 sobbing. 
 
 " Make believe I am la petite sceur, all good 
 and safe and happy, just for a minute, Made 
 moiselle. Come, I will kiss you. Did she 
 kiss you so? " 
 
 Poor Mademoiselle cried very hard, and 
 Gypsy let her, thinking it was best. By and 
 by, when she grew quiet, Gypsy lay back wea 
 rily upon the pillow and said, 
 
 " Mademoiselle, would you please to forgive 
 me! " 
 
 " Forgive ! Ma che re, I have no thing to 
 forgive, moi ! " 
 
 " Yes, you have," said Gypsy, decidedly. 
 *>
 
 "/ know, if you don t. I know that if I 
 had n t been just a selfish old thing, bent on 
 having a good time, I might have made you 
 tell me about the petite soeur long ago, and I 
 might have gone up and cried with you in the 
 dark, and you d have felt better, would n t you, 
 Mademoiselle? Yes, I know you would, and 
 now it s all over and gone, and too late, and 
 everything, and perhaps I sha n t come back to 
 the Golden Crescent, and oh, dear ! Made 
 moiselle, will you write to me, and let me write 
 to you, and let me try to make up ever so 
 little bit?" 
 
 Poor Mademoiselle tried with grateful tears 
 to speak, but Mrs. Breynton came in just then, 
 and the talk was broken up. 
 
 Gypsy said nothing about it to any one for 
 a while, but one day, one of the cooler days 
 in which her strength came fast, finding her 
 self alone for an hour with Jane, she intrusted 
 to her confidence the story of the poor little 
 sister who " have run away." 
 
 "Poor Mademoiselle, poor Mademoiselle! 
 
 337
 
 And to think I never noticed nor thought ! It 
 just fits in with Phoebe, under that Finger that 
 kept pointing before I was sick. Jane Bruce, 
 
 I wonder what has been the matter with me 
 this year?" 
 
 Jane kissed her, smiling, but did not answer. 
 
 " And here you come on top of it all," said
 
 Gypsy, trying to laugh, but winking savagely. 
 " You you blessed old dear ! I should call 
 you a saint, only I never had but one saint, 
 and that was my poor Peace Maythorne, long 
 ago at home; such a sweet, lame girl, Jane, 
 and she is dead, you know, so nobody else can 
 be just that. But you are a blessed old girl, 
 and I Ve been all the whole year finding it out. 
 I was so taken up with Maude Clare, and you 
 did n t say much ; why did n t you talk to me, 
 as you did with some of the others?" 
 
 " I thought you did not care about it, you 
 know; I did not want to be in the way," said 
 Jane, in a tone of quiet self-respect. Gypsy s 
 pale cheeks crimsoned faintly. 
 
 " The little vil " 
 
 But Jane kissed away the rest of the word. 
 
 " Well, I ve found you out now, and if I 
 ever let you go again, you 11 know it ! And so 
 many nights as I left you to walk by yourself, 
 or all alone after study-hours ! Jane, dear, I 
 wish you would tell me now, if you don t mind 
 about your black dress."
 
 It was not all neglect on Gypsy s part, that 
 ahe had never asked this question before. 
 irls, and such merry girls, shrink from the 
 ^ight of distress that they can neither under 
 stand nor help. Then Jane had kept her sad 
 ness very quietly to herself; it was something 
 of which she neither sought nor cared to speak. 
 
 Jane was still for a moment after Gypsy 
 spoke, and then she crept upon the bed, lying 
 so that Gypsy could not see her face. 
 
 "Just my brother, dear. All the brother I 
 ever had. He was in the army. There s no 
 body now but mamma and me. He has been 
 gone two years, and sometimes, Gypsy oh, 
 sometimes, it seems as if it were only two 
 days ! I do not know that it will ever seem 
 any more. I am afraid I shall never get used 
 to it. When I first came, I couldn t laugh 
 and play round with the rest, and I used to 
 stay up here alone ; there was nobody to find 
 that out and stop me, but by and by I thought 
 perhaps he would n t like it ; perhaps I was 
 disappointing him a little; so I tried to cheer 
 
 340
 
 and go about and listen to the girls. After 
 that, I did n t seem to be of so much conse 
 quence, you know, and it was easier. It s 
 never the less lonely if one thinks, but one 
 need n t think all the time, you see, dear." 
 
 Something in the quiet voice with which 
 these words were spoken, awed Gypsy. It 
 made her feel weak and small and young. 
 She felt by an instinct, that she had no word 
 of help for Jane; Jane was older than she, as 
 well as better ; so she tried to comfort her only 
 by touch and silence. 
 
 " If you had only told me ! If I had only 
 let you tell me ! " she said at last. " I don t 
 suppose that it could have made any difference 
 to you, except that I should have loved you the 
 very first minute I heard it but it would have 
 made me remember; it would have carried me 
 back; it would have stopped me. Jane Bruce, 
 I believe I Ve found out what is part of the 
 matter with me this year ; why, I Ve been just 
 like a silly little canary, that finds the cage 
 door open, and flies out and loses his way; 
 
 941
 
 why, I have n t learned my lessons, nor thought 
 of a thing but taffy, and Maude Clar<* and 
 good times." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Well, I m not just sure of the word, you 
 see. Hand me the dictionary, will you? " 
 
 Jane brought the dictionary, laughing, and 
 Gypsy looked into it, and shut it up with a 
 snap. 
 
 " Reback, why, no ! Let me see. Re 
 action. That s it. Reaction." 
 
 Jane did not understand. 
 
 " WeU, I mean you shall. I believe I Ve 
 bounced up like a ball, from that year when I 
 had to think and plan and worry about Tom. 
 I never told you no, and I wish I had. 
 Sometime when I am stronger, perhaps I will. 
 But it was a year I don t like to remember, and 
 I felt as if I had been stretched on pulleys at 
 the end of it. He went to the war, too, at the 
 last, and he came home ; but I thought once he 
 never would, so you see, Jane, I know how to 
 
 be a little bit sorry. May I kiss you?" 
 242
 
 " A wasted year ! " said Gypsy, half to her 
 self, after a silence. "A whole, long, wasted 
 year ! That s what it is. Lessons, and 
 Phoebe, and Mademoiselle, and you ; and I 
 don t doubt fifty other things that I haven t 
 found out. If I could creep back into some 
 little corner of an October day, without any 
 body s knowing it, and begin all over again! 
 Jane Bruce ! " 
 
 " Why, Gypsy, you look frightened." 
 
 " What do you suppose becomes of a wasted 
 year, when you get through with all the years? 
 I believe I am frightened." 
 
 " Perhaps one might do enough in another 
 year to well, I suppose not make up, ex 
 actly, but something like it," said Jane, 
 thinking. 
 
 " Anyway," observed Gypsy, after a pause, 
 " I Ve found out who Number i is, and I 
 should like to tell Maude Clare so." 
 
 "Number I?" 
 
 " Yes. Curing headaches, being sorry for 
 
 this girl, and glad for that girl, and not 
 
 243
 
 ashamed to say the other girl does wrong. 
 Going to walk with poor dead lame girls. Oh, 
 I don t mean they were dead when they went to 
 walk, dear. Being ver kind to Mademoi 
 selle; learning your lessons; behaving; walk 
 ing right up to an awful varioloid that nobody 
 else would go near. Nursing a little villain till 
 you re as white as a ghost. Always some 
 other people; never yourself. That is what I 
 call Number i." 
 
 " I don t understand," said puzzled Jane. 
 
 " That is quite likely, my dear." Gypsy is 
 fairly tired out by this time, and falls asleep 
 before Jane can ask another question. 
 
 Time slips away fast when one is getting 
 well ; Gypsy can hardly believe her senses 
 when she finds herself one bright morning 
 dressed, and packed, and starting for home. 
 Her mother, not quite satisfied with the man 
 agement at the Golden Crescent, has told her 
 that she will probably not come back ; so thfs 
 is a last good-by. 
 
 Mrs. McMunn, with her waterfall more
 
 crooked than ever, is sorry to part with her, 
 very ; she has been a good pupil, with the ex 
 ception of a little levity, very natural, I m sure, 
 Mrs. Breynton, to her years; and she would 
 like to kiss her good-by if Miss Gypsy has no 
 objections. 
 
 Josephine Courtis sheds a few honest tears, 
 and apologises for them in a little slang. Jack 
 Delancey (whose parents sent her back when 
 the varioloid turned out to be typhus) exhibits 
 her diamond deftly in shaking hands, wonder 
 ing if Mrs. Breynton notices it. Lou Arm 
 strong, and " poor Miss Holly," the Colchetts, 
 and all the girls are there upon the steps to see 
 her off; they are going themselves most of 
 them to-day, for the term is over. Mary Blunt 
 tucks a paper of peppermint in through the 
 carriage window at the last minute, and is 
 "sorry that she hasn t some nut-candy; but 
 the nut-candy is in a state of compound frac 
 ture, a little accident; Mrs. Holt sat down 
 on it." 
 
 Mademoiselle says good-by sadly, and calls 
 
 4S
 
 Gypsy her "petite sceur, ma chtre petite f and 
 reminds her of the letters that are to be written. 
 
 Miss Ayre extends the tip of a cold hand, 
 and hopes that Miss Breynton will review her 
 Latin grammar through the vacation; it will be 
 excellent practice. 
 
 Mrs. Holt and Dolly and Nancy look on 
 in the background, and Mr. Schleiermacher 
 and the Chaplain were taken leave of last night. 
 
 Nobody remains but Jane, standing by the 
 carriage, who has a long kiss all to herself, but 
 not a sorrowful one ; for Jane is to make a visit 
 at Yorkbury the last of August, and that is not 
 Jong to wait. 
 
 So the carriage rumbles away, and the 
 figures on the steps grow dim, and the Golden 
 Crescent is out of sight at last. 
 
 Gypsy is inclined to stop the coachman and 
 turn about to tell Dolly that she may have that 
 crinoline, and ask the girls if they are not seri 
 ously glad to be rid of such a horrid but her 
 mother thinks that they might be late to the 
 train,
 
 " Is n t it going to tire you all out to travel 
 with a little villain so far?" asks Gypsy, lean 
 ing back on the cushioned seat to hide rather a 
 regretful face; she has had a pleasant time at 
 the Golden Crescent, after all. 
 
 Her mother thinks that she can, by making 
 up her mind to it, endure the little villain, at 
 least for a day; so presently they reach the 
 station, and the train is just coming in. 
 
 Gypsy, turning to take a last look at Snap- 
 berry through the car-window, sees the little 
 coachman twirling his moustache, and Mr. 
 Short giving Colonisation tracts to Deacon 
 Popkins. The Deacon catches sight of her as 
 the train puffs off, and throws himself back in 
 his buggy, and laughs till he cries; which I 
 believe that excellent Town Officer has never 
 failed to do, every time he has seen her, since 
 the day on which they went to the Poor-house 
 together. 
 
 The Deacon is out of sight now, and the 
 roof of the Golden Crescent, and the last 
 traces of Snapberry. Gypsy says Hurrah for 
 347
 
 home, and her magnificent old mountains! 
 then wants to know if that is slang; is sure 
 that she never shall learn to be proper, and is 
 convinced that she is a hopeless case, and 
 ought to be pinched a little. So she pinches 
 herself a little, and then down goes her head 
 a bit tired upon her mother s shoulder, and 
 she wanders away into a wide-awake dream of 
 sweet content.
 
 A 000138264