Gypsy Breynton | Page 8

decidedly, and so it must wait till to-morrow.
Tom came in just as everything was done, and Gypsy had drawn a long breath and stood up to look, with great satisfaction, all around her pleasant, orderly room.
"Well done! I say, Gypsy, what a jewel you are when you're a mind to be."
"Of course, I am. Have you just found it out?"
"Well, you know you're a diamond, decidedly in the rough, as a general thing. You need cutting down and polishing."
"And you to polish me? Well, I like the looks of this room, anyhow. It is nice to have things somewhere where you won't trip over them when you walk across the room--only if somebody else would pick 'em up for me."
"How long do you suppose it will last?" asked Tom, with an air of great superiority.
"Tom," said Gypsy, solemnly; "that's a serious question."
"It might last forever if you have a mind to have it,--come now, Gyp., why not?"
"That's a long time," said Gypsy, shaking her head; "I wouldn't trust myself two inches. To-morrow I shall be in a hurry to go to school; then I shall be in a hurry to go to dinner; then I shall be in a terrible hurry to get off with Sarah Rowe, and so it goes. However, I'll see. I feel, to-night, precisely as if I should never want to take a single pin out of those little black squares I've put them into on the cushion."
Gypsy found herself in a hurry the next day and the next, and is likely to, to the end of her life, I am afraid. But she seemed to have taken a little gasp of order, and for a long time no one had any complaint to make of Gypsy's room or Gypsy's toilet.
CHAPTER III
MISS MELVILLE'S VISITOR
As will be readily supposed, Gypsy's name was not her original one; though it might have been, for there have been actual Billys and Sallys, who began and ended Billys and Sallys only.
Gypsy's real name was an uncouth one--Jemima. It was partly for this reason, partly for its singular appropriateness, that her nickname had entirely transplanted the lawful and ugly one.
This subject of nicknames is a curiosity. All rules of euphony, fitness, and common sense, that apply to other things, are utterly at fault here. A baby who cannot talk plainly, dubs himself "Tuty," or "Dess," or "Pet," or "Honey," and forthwith becomes Tuty, Dess, Pet, or Honey, the rest of his mortal life. All the particularly cross and disagreeable girls are Birdies and Sunbeams. All the brunettes with loud voices and red hands, who are growing up into the "strong-minded women," are Lilies and Effies and Angelinas, and other etherial creatures; while the little shallow, pink-and-white young ladies who cry very often and "get nervous," are quite as likely to be royal Constance, or Elizabeth, without any nickname at all.
But Gypsy's name had undoubtedly been foreordained, so perfectly was it suited to Gypsy. For never a wild rover led a more untamed and happy life. Summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, found Gypsy out in the open air, as many hours out of the twenty-four as were not absolutely bolted and barred down into the school-room and dreamland. A fear of the weather never entered into Gypsy's creed; drenchings and freezings were so many soap-bubbles,--great fun while they lasted, and blown right away by dry stockings and mother's warm fire; so where was the harm? A good brisk thunderstorm out in the woods, with the lightning quivering all about her and the thunder crashing over her, was simple delight. A day of snow and sleet, with drifts knee-deep, and winds like so many little knives, was a festival. If you don't know the supreme bliss of a two-mile walk on such a day, when you have to shut your eyes, and wade your way, then Gypsy would pity you. Not a patch of woods, a pond, a brook, a river, a mountain, in the region (and there, in Vermont, there were plenty of them), but Gypsy knew it by heart.
There was not a trout-brook for miles where she had not fished. There was hardly a tree she had not climbed, or a fence or stone-wall--provided, of course, that it was away from the main road and people's eyes--that she had not walked. Gypsy could row and skate and swim, and play ball and make kites, and coast and race, and drive, and chop wood. Altogether Gypsy seemed like a very pretty, piquant mistake; as if a mischievous boy had somehow stolen the plaid dresses, red cheeks, quick wit, and little indescribable graces of a girl, and was playing off a continual joke on the world. Old Mrs. Surly, who lived opposite, and wore green spectacles, used to roll up her eyes, and