Gypsy Breynton | Page 6

down stairs as much as could be, but that everlasting Tom had to go and---- Oh dear! did you ever see anything so funny in all your life?" And Gypsy looked at the image, and broke into one of her rippling laughs.
"It is really a serious matter, Gypsy," said Mrs. Breynton, looking somewhat troubled at the laugh.
"I know it," said Gypsy, sobering down, "and I came up-stairs on purpose to put everything to rights, and then I was going to live like other people, and keep my stockings darned, and--then I had to go head first into a box of beads, and that was the end of me. It's always so."
"You know, Gypsy, it is one of the signs of a lady to keep one's room in order; I've told you so many times."
"I know it," said Gypsy, forlornly; "don't you remember when I was a little bit of a thing, my telling you that I guessed God made a mistake when he made me, and put in some ginger-beer somehow, that was always going off? It's pretty much so; the cork's always coming out at the wrong time."
"Well," said Mrs. Breynton, with a smile, "I'm glad you're trying afresh to hammer it in. Pick up the beads, and tear down the image, and go to work with a little system. You'll be surprised to find how fast the room will come to order."
"I think," she added, as she shut the door, "that it was hardly worth while to----"
"To shake Winnie?" interrupted Gypsy, demurely. "No, not at all; I ought to have known better."
Mrs. Breynton did not offer to help Gypsy in the task which bade fair to be no easy one, of putting her room in order; but, with a few encouraging words, she went down stairs and left her. It would have been far easier for her to have gone to work and done the thing herself, than to see Gypsy's face so clouded and discouraged. But she knew it would be the ruin of Gypsy. Her only chance of overcoming her natural thoughtlessness, and acquiring the habits of a lady, lay in the persistent doing over and over again, by her own unaided patience, these very things that came so hard to her. Gypsy understood this perfectly, and had the good sense to think her mother was just right about it. It was not want of training, that gave Gypsy her careless fashion of looking after things. Mrs. Breynton was a wise, as well as a loving mother, and had done everything in the way of punishment, reproof, warning, persuasion, and argument, that mothers can do for the faults of children. Nor was it for want of a good example, Mrs. Breynton was the very pink of neatness. It was a natural kink in Gypsy, that was as hard to get out as a knot in an apple-tree, and which depended entirely on the child's own will for its eradication. This disorder in her room and about her toilet was only one development of it, and by no means a fixed or continued one. Gypsy could be, and half the time she was, as orderly and lady-like as anybody. She did everything by fits and starts. As Tom said, she was "always on the jump." If her dress didn't happen to be torn and her room dusty, why, she had a turn of forgetting everything. If she didn't forget, she was always getting hurt. If it wasn't that, she lost her temper every five minutes. Or else she was making terrible blunders, and hurting people's feelings; something was always the matter; and some one was always on the qui vive, wondering what Gypsy was going to do next.
Yet, in spite of it all, the person who did not love Gypsy Breynton (provided he knew her) was not to be found in Yorkbury. Whether there was any reason for this, you can judge for yourself as the story goes on.
After her mother had gone down, Gypsy went to work in earnest. She picked up the beads, and put them back into the drawer which she left upon the floor. Then she attacked Tom's image. It took her fully fifteen minutes merely to get the thing to pieces, for the true boy-fashion in which it was tied, pinned, sewed, and nailed together, would have been a puzzle to any feminine mind. She would have called Tom up to help her, but she was just a little bit too proud.
The broom she put out in the entry the first thing; then, remembering that that was not systematic, she carried it down stairs and hung it on its nail. The shoes and the dresses, the cape and the cloak, the tippet and the hat, she put in their places; the torn