Gypsys Cousin Joy | Page 2

she had tied to a spool of thread at recess, had been discovered, and an
awful suspicion that Mr. Jonathan Jones saw her run across his plowed
field after chestnuts, went slowly up to the desk.

"Your mother has sent for you to come directly home," said Miss
Cardrew, in a low tone. Gypsy looked a little frightened.
"Go home! Is anybody sick, Miss Cardrew?"
"She doesn't say--she gives no reasons. You'd better not stop to talk,
Gypsy."
Gypsy went to her desk, and began to gather up her books as fast as she
could.
"I shouldn't wonder a bit if the house'd caught afire," whispered Agnes
Gaylord. "I had an uncle once, and his house caught afire--in the
chimney too, and everybody'd gone to a prayer-meeting; they had now,
true's you live."
"Maybe your father's dead," condoled Sarah Rowe.
"Or Winnie."
"Or Tom."
"Just think of it!"
"What do you s'pose it is?"
"If I were you, I guess I'd be frightened!"
"Order!" said Miss Cardrew, in a loud voice.
The girls stopped whispering, and Gypsy, in nowise reassured by their
sympathy, hurried out to put on her things. With her hat thrown on one
side of her head, the strings hanging down into her eyes, her sack rolled
up in a bundle under her arm, and her rubbers in her pocket, she started
for home on the full run. Yorkbury was pretty well used to Gypsy, but
everybody stopped and stared at her that morning; what with her
burning cheeks, and those rubbers sticking out of her pocket, and the
hat-strings flying, and the brambles catching her dress, and the mud
splashing up under her swift feet, it was no wonder.

"Miss Gypsy!" called old Mr. Simms, the clerk, as she flew by the door
of her father's book-store. "Miss Gypsy, my dear!"
But on ran Gypsy without so much as giving him a look, across the
road in front of a carriage, around a load of hay, and away like a bird
down the street. Out ran Gypsy's pet aversion, Mrs. Surly, from a
shop-door somewhere--
"Gypsy Breynton, what a sight you be! I believe you've gone clear
crazy--Gypsy!"
"Can't stop!" shouted Gypsy, "it's a fire or something somewhere."
Eight small boys at the word "fire" appeared on the instant from
nobody knew where, and ran after her with hoarse yells of "fire! fire!
Where's the engine? Vi----ir-r-!" By this time, too, three dogs and a
nanny-goat were chasing her; the dogs were barking, and the
nanny-goat was baaing or braying, or whatever it is that nanny-goats do,
so she swept up to the house in a unique, triumphal procession.
Winnie came out to meet her as she came in at the gate panting and
scarlet-faced.
Fifty years instead of five might Winnie have been at that moment, and
all the cares of Church and State on the shoulders of his pinafore, to
judge from the pucker in his chin. There was always a pucker in
Winnie's chin, when he felt--as the boys call it--"big."
"What do s'pose, Gypsy?--don't you wish you knew?"
"What?"
"Oh, no matter. I know."
"Winnie Breynton!"
"Well," said Winnie, with the air of a Grand Mogul feeding a chicken,
"I don't care if I tell you. We've had a temmygral."

"A telegram!"
"I just guess we have; you'd oughter seen the man. He'd lost his nose,
and----"
"A telegram! Is there any bad news? Where did it come from?"
"It came from Bosting," said Winnie, with a superior smile. "I s'posed
you knew that! It's sumfin about Aunt Miranda, I shouldn't wonder."
"Aunt Miranda! Is anybody sick? Is anybody dead, or anything?"
"I don't know," said Winnie, cheerfully. "But I guess you wish you'd
seen the envelope. It had the funniest little letters punched through on
top--it did now, really."
Gypsy ran into the house at that, and left Winnie to his meditations.
Her mother called her from over the banisters, and she ran upstairs. A
small trunk stood open by the bed, and the room was filled with the
confusion of packing.
"Your Aunt Miranda is sick," said Mrs. Breynton.
"What are you packing up for? You're not going off!" exclaimed Gypsy,
incapable of taking in a greater calamity than that, and quite forgetting
Aunt Miranda.
"Yes. Your uncle has written for us to come right on. She is very sick,
Gypsy."
"Oh!" said Gypsy, penitently; "dangerous?"
"Yes."
Gypsy looked sober because her mother did, and she thought she ought
to.
"Your father and I are going in this noon train," proceeded Mrs.

Breynton, rolling up a pair of slippers, and folding a wrapper away in
the trunk. "I think I am needed. The fever is very severe;
possibly--contagious," said Mrs. Breynton, quietly. Mrs. Breynton
made it a rule to have very few concealments from