Gypsys Cousin Joy | Page 2

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 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