Gypsys Cousin Joy | Page 3

her children. All
family plans which could be, were openly and frankly discussed. She
believed that it did the children good to feel that they had a share in
them; that it did them good to be trusted. She never kept bad tidings
from them simply because they were bad. The mysteries and
prevarications necessary to keep an unimportant secret, were, she
reasoned, worse for them than a little anxiety. Gypsy must know some
time about her aunt's sickness. She preferred she should hear it from
her mother's lips, see for herself the reasons for this sudden departure
and risk, if risk there were, and be woman enough to understand them.
Gypsy looked sober now in earnest.
"Why, mother! How can you? What if you catch it?"
"There is very little chance of that, one possibility in a hundred,
perhaps. Help me fold up this dress, Gypsy--no, on the bed--so."
"But if you should get sick! I don't see why you need go. She isn't your
own sister anyway, and she never did anything for us, nor cared
anything for us."
"Your uncle wants me, and that is enough. I want to be to her a sister if
I can--poor thing, she has no sister of her own, and no mother, nobody
but the hired nurses with her; and she may die, Gypsy. If I can be of
any help, I am glad to be."
Her mother spoke in a quiet, decided tone, with which Gypsy knew
there was no arguing. She helped her fold her dresses and lock her
trunk, very silently, for Gypsy, and then ran away to busy herself with
Patty in getting the travelers' luncheon. When Gypsy felt badly, she
always hunted up something to do; in this she showed the very best of
her good sense. And let me tell you, girls, as a little secret--in the worst
fits of the "blues" you ever have, if you are guilty of having any, do you
go straight into the nursery and build a block house for the baby, or

upstairs and help your mother baste for the machine, or into the
dining-room to help Bridget set the table, or into the corner where some
diminutive brother is crying over his sums which a very few words
from you would straighten, or into the parlor where your father sits
shading his eyes from the lamplight, with no one to read him the paper;
and before you know it, you will be as happy as a queen. You don't
believe it? Try and see.
Gypsy drowned her sorrow at her mother's departure, in broiling her
mutton-chops and cutting her pie, and by the time the coach drove to
the door, and the travelers stood in the entry with bag and baggage, all
ready to start, the smiles had come back to her lips, and the twinkle to
her eyes.
"Good-bye, father! O-oh, mother Breynton, give me another kiss.
There!--one more. Now, if you don't write just as soon as you get
there!"
"Be a good girl, and take nice care of Winnie," called her mother from
the coach-window. And then they were driven rapidly away, and the
house seemed to grow still and dark all at once, and a great many
clouds to be in the warm, autumn sky. The three children stood a
moment in the entry looking forlornly at each other. I beg Tom's
pardon--I suppose I should have said the two children and the "young
man." Probably never again in his life will Tom feel quite as old as he
felt in that sixteenth year. Gypsy was the first to break the dismal
silence.
"How horrid it's going to be! You go upstairs and she won't be there,
and there'll be nobody coming home from the store at night, and,
then--you go round, and it's so still, and nobody but me to keep house,
and Patty has just what she likes for breakfast, for all me, and I think
Aunt Miranda needn't have gone and been sick, anyway."
"A most sensible and sympathizing niece," observed Tom, in his
patronizing way.
"Well, you see, I suppose I don't care very much about Aunt Miranda,"

said Gypsy, confidentially. "I'm sorry she's sick, but I didn't have a bit
nice time in Boston last vacation, and she scolded me dreadfully when I
blew out the gas. What is it, Patty? Oh, yes--come to dinner, boys."
"I say," remarked Winnie, at the rather doleful dinner-table, "look here,
Gypsy."
"What?"
[Illustration]
"S'posin' when they'd got Aunt Miranda all nailed into her coffin--tight
in--she should be un-deaded, and open her eyes, and begin--begin to
squeal, you know. S'pose they'd let her out?"
Just four days from the morning Mrs. Breynton left, Tom came up from
the office with a very sober face and