Gypsy's Cousin Joy

"Mother, is it selfish to have upper drawers, and front sides, and things?"

"What are you talking about, Gypsy?"

"Why, don't my upper drawers, and the front side of the bed, and all that, belong to me, and must I give them up to Joy?"

"It is not necessary," said her mother, laughing. But Gypsy fancied there was a slight emphasis on the last word.

Joy was sound asleep, and dreaming that Winnie was a rattlesnake and Gypsy a prairie-dog, when somebody gave her a little pinch and woke her up.

"Oh—why—what's the matter?" said Joy.

"Look here, you might just as well have the upper bureau drawers, you know, and I don't care anything about the front side of the bed. Besides, I wish I hadn't let you come home alone this afternoon."

"Well, you are the funniest!" said Joy.

But, fit or not, it was the the only school to be had, and Joy must go. Perhaps, on some accounts, Mrs. Breynton would have preferred sending the children to a private school; but the only one in town, and the one which Gypsy had attended until this term, was broken up by the marriage of the teacher, so she had no choice in the matter. The boys at the high school were, some of them, rude, but the girls for the most part were quiet, well-behaved, and lady-like, and the instruction was undoubtedly vastly superior to that of a smaller school. As Gypsy said, "you had to put into it and study like everything, or else she gave you a horrid old black mark, and then you felt nice when it was read aloud at examination, didn't you?"

"I wouldn't care," said Joy.

"Why, Joyce Miranda Breynton!" said Gypsy. But Joy declared she wouldn't, and it was very soon evident that she didn't. She had not the slightest fancy for her studies; neither had Gypsy, for that matter; but Gypsy had been brought up to believe it was a disgrace to get bad marks. Joy had not. She hurried through her lessons in the quickest possible fashion, anyhow, so as to get through, and out to play; and limped through her recitations as well as she could. Once Gypsy saw—and she was thoroughly shocked to see—Joy peep into the leaves of her grammar when Miss Cardrew's eyes were turned the other way.

Altogether, matters did not go on very comfortably. Joy's faults were for the most part those from which Gypsy was entirely free, and to which she had a special and inborn aversion. On the other hand, many of Gypsy's failings were not natural to Joy. Gypsy was always forgetting things she ought to remember. Joy seldom did. Gypsy was thoughtless, impulsive, always into mischief, out of it, sorry for it, and in again. Joy did wrong deliberately, as she did everything else, and did not become penitent in a hurry. Gypsy's temper was like a flash of lightning, hot and fierce and melting right away in the softest of summer rains. When Joy was angry she sulked. Joy was precise and neat about everything. Gypsy was not. Then Joy kept still, and Gypsy talked; Joy told parts of stories, Gypsy told the whole; Joy had some foolish notions about money and dresses and jewelry, on which Gypsy looked with the most supreme contempt—not on the dresses, but the notions. Therefore there was plenty of material for rubs and jars, and of all sad things to creep into a happy house, these rubs and jars are the saddest.

One day both the girls woke full of mischief. It was a bracing November day, cool as an ice-cream and clear as a whistle. The air sparkled like a fountain of golden sands, and was as full of oxygen as it could hold; and oxygen, you must know, is at the bottom of a great deal of the happiness and misery, goodness and badness, of this world.

"I tell you if I don't feel like cutting up!" said Gypsy, on the way to school. Gypsy didn't look unlike "cutting up" either, walking along there with her satchel swung over her left shoulder, her turban set all askew on her bright, black hair, her cheeks flushed from the jumping of fences and running of races that had been going on since she left the house, and that saucy twinkle in her eyes. Joy was always somewhat more demure, but she looked, too, that morning, as if she were quite as ready to have a good time as any other girl.

"Do you know," said Gypsy, confidentially, as they went up the schoolhouse steps, "I feel precisely as if I should make Miss Cardrew a great deal of trouble to-day; don't you?"

"What does she do to you if you do?"

"Oh, sometimes she keeps you after school, and then again she tells Mr. Guernsey, and then there are the bad marks. Miss Melville—she's my old teacher that married Mr. Hallam, she was just silly enough!—well, she used to just look at you, and never open her lips, and I guess you wished you hadn't pretty quick."

It was very early yet, but quite a crowd was gathered in the schoolhouse, as was the fashion on cool mornings. The boys were stamping noisily over the desks, and grouped about the stove in No. 1. No. 1. was the large room where the whole school gathered for prayer. A few of the girls were there—girls who laughed rudely and talked loudly, none of them Gypsy's friends. Tom never liked to have Gypsy linger about in No. 1, before or after school hours; he said it was not the place for her, and Tom was there that morning, knotting his handsome brows up into a very decided frown, when he saw her in the doorway, with Joy peeping over her shoulder. So Gypsy—somewhat reluctantly, it must be confessed, for the boys seemed to be having a good time, and with boys' good times she had a most unconquerable sympathy—went up with Joy into Miss Cardrew's recitation room. Nobody was there. A great, empty schoolroom, with its rows of silent seats and closed desks, with power to roam whithersoever you will, and do whatsoever you choose, is a great temptation. The girls ran over the desks, and looked into the desks, jumped over the settees, and knocked down the settees, put out the fire and built it up again, from the pure luxury of doing what they wanted to, in a place where they usually had to do what they didn't want to. They sat in Miss Cardrew's chair, and peeped into her desk; they ate apples and snapped peanut shells on the very platform where sat the spectacled and ogre-eyed committee on examination days; they drew all manner of pictures of funny old women without any head, and old men without any feet, on the awful blackboard, and played "tag" round the globes. Then they stopped for want of breath.

"I wish there were something to do," sighed Gypsy; "something real splendid and funny."

"I knew a girl once, and she drew a picture of the teacher on the board in green chalk," suggested Joy; "only she lost her recess for a whole week after it."

"That wouldn't do. Besides, pictures are too common; everybody does those. Boys put pins in the seats, and cut off the legs of the teacher's chair, and all that. I don't know as I care to tumble Miss Cardrew over—wouldn't she look funny, though!—'cause mother wouldn't like it. Couldn't we make the stove smoke, or put pepper in the desks, or—let me see."

"Dress up something somehow," said Joy; "there's the poker."

Gypsy shook her head.

"Delia Guest did that last term, 'n' the old thing—I mean the poker, not Delia—went flat down in the corner behind the stove—flat, just as Miss Melville was coming in, and lay there in the wood-pile, and nobody knew there was a single sign of a thing going on. I guess you better believe Delia felt cheap!—hark! what's that?"

It was a faint miaow down in the yard. The girls ran to the window and looked out.

"A kitten!"

"The very thing!"

"I'm going right down to get her."

Down they ran, both of them, in a great hurry, and brought the creature up. The poor thing was chilled, and hungry, and frightened. They took her up to the stove, and Gypsy warmed her in her apron, and Joy fed her with cookies from her lunch-basket, till she curled her head under her paws with a merry purr, all ready for a nap, and evidently without the slightest suspicion that Gypsy's lap was not foreordained, and created for her especial habitation as long as she might choose to remain there.

"Joy," said Gypsy, suddenly, "I've thought of something."

"So have I."

"To dress her——"

"Up in a handkerchief."

"And things."

"I know it."

"And put her——"

"Yes! into Miss Cardrew's desk!"

"Won't it be just——"

"Splendid! Hurry up!"

They "hurried up" in good earnest, choking down their laughter so that nobody downstairs might hear it. Joy took her pretty, purple-bordered handkerchief and tied it over the poor kitten's head like a nightcap, so tight that, pull and scratch as she might, pussy could not get it off. Gypsy's black silk apron was tied about her, like a long baby-dress, a pair of mittens were fastened on her arms, and a pink silk scarf around her throat. When all was done, Gypsy held her up, and trotted her on her knee. Anybody who has ever dressed up a cat like a baby, knows how indescribably funny a sight it is. It seemed as if the girls could never stop laughing—it does not take much to make girls laugh. At last there was a commotion in the entry below.

"It's the girls!—quick, quick!"

Gypsy, trying to get up, tripped on her dress and fell, and away flew the kitten, all tangled in the apron, making for the door as fast as an energetic kitten could go.

"She'll be downstairs, and maybe Miss Cardrew's there! Oh!"

Joy sprang after the creature, caught her by the very tip end of her tail just as she was preparing to pounce down the stairs, and ran with her to Miss Cardrew's desk.

"Put her in—quick, quick!"

"O-oh, she won't lie still!"

"Where's the lunch-basket? Give me some biscuit—there! I hear them on the stairs!"

The kitten began to mew piteously, struggling to get out with all her might. Down went the desk-cover on her paws.

"There now, lie still! Oh, hear her mew! What shall we do?"

Quick footsteps were on the stairs—halfway up; merry laughter, and a dozen voices.

"Here's the biscuit. Here, kitty, kitty, poor kit-ty, do please to lie still and eat it! Oh, Joy Breynton, did you ever?"

"There, she's eating!"

"Shut the desk—hurry!"

When the girls came in, Joy and Gypsy were in their seats, looking over the arithmetic lesson. Joy's book was upside down, and Gypsy was intensely interested in the preface.

Miss Cardrew came in shortly after, and stood warming her fingers at the stove, nodding and smiling at the girls. All was still so far in the desk. Miss Cardrew went up and laid down her gloves and pushed back her chair. Joy coughed under her breath, and Gypsy looked up out of the corners of her eyes.

"Mr. Guernsey is not well to-day," began Miss Cardrew, standing by the desk, "and we shall not be able to meet as usual in No. 1 for prayers. It has been thought best that each department should attend devotions in its own room. You can get out your Bibles."

Gypsy looked at Joy, and Joy looked at Gypsy.

Miss Cardrew sat down. It was very still. A muffled scratching sound broke into the pause. Miss Cardrew looked up carelessly, as if to see where it came from; it stopped.

"She'll open her desk now," whispered Joy, stooping to pick up a book.

"See here, Joy, I almost wish we hadn't——"

"We will read the fourteenth chapter of John," spoke up Miss Cardrew, with her Bible in her hand. No, she hadn't opened her desk. The Bible lay upon the outside of it.

"Oh, if that biscuit'll only last till she gets through praying!"

"Hush-sh! She's looking this way."

Miss Cardrew began to read. She had read just four verses, when—

"Miaow!"

Gypsy and Joy were trying very hard to find the place. Miss Cardrew looked up and around the room. It was quite still. She read two verses more.

"Mi-aow! mi-aow-aow!"

Miss Cardrew looked up again, round the room, over the platform, under the desk, everywhere but in it.

"Girls, did any of you make that sound?"

Nobody had. Miss Cardrew began to read again. All at once Joy pulled Gypsy's sleeve.

"Just look there!"

"Where?"

"Trickling down the outside of the desk!"

"You don't suppose she's upset the——"

"Ink-bottle—yes."

Miss Cardrew was in the tenth verse, and the room was very still. Right into the stillness there broke again a distinct, prolonged, dolorous—

"Mi-aow-aow!"

And this time Miss Cardrew laid down her Bible and lifted the desk-cover.

It is reported in school to this day that Miss Cardrew jumped.

Out flew the kitten, like popped corn from a shovel, glared over the desk in the nightcap and black apron, leaped down, and flew, all dripping with ink, down the aisle, out of the door, and bouncing downstairs like an India-rubber ball.

Delia Guest and one or two of the other girls screamed. Miss Cardrew flung out some books and papers from the desk. It was too late; they were dripping, and drenched, and black. The teacher quietly wiped some spots of ink from her pretty blue merino, and there was an awful silence.

"Girls," said Miss Cardrew then, in her grave, stern way, "who did this?"

Nobody answered.

"Who put that cat in my desk?" repeated Miss Cardrew.

It was perfectly still. Gypsy's cheeks were scarlet. Joy was looking carelessly about the room, scanning the faces of the girls, as if she were trying to find out who was the guilty one.

"It is highly probable that the cat tied herself into an apron, opened the desk and shut the cover down on herself," said Miss Cardrew; "we will look into this matter. Delia Guest, did you put her in?"

"No'm—he, he! I guess I—ha, ha!—didn't," said Delia.

"Next!"—and down the first row went Miss Cardrew, asking the same question of every girl, and the second row, and the third. Gypsy sat on the end of the fourth settee.

"Gypsy Breynton, did you put the kitten in my desk?"

"No'm, I didn't," said Gypsy; which was true enough. It was Joy who did that part of it.

"Did you have anything to do with the matter, Gypsy?" Perhaps Miss Cardrew remembered that Gypsy had had something to do with a few other similar matters since she had been in school.

"Yes'm," said honest Gypsy, with crimson face and hanging head, "I did."

"What did you do?"

"I put on the apron and the tippet, and—I gave her the biscuit. I—thought she'd keep still till prayers were over," said Gypsy, faintly.

"But you did not put her in the desk?"

"No'm."

"And you know who did?"

"Yes'm."

Miss Cardrew never asked her scholars to tell of each other's wrong-doings. If she had, it would have made no difference to Gypsy. She had shut up her lips tight and not another word would she have said for anybody. She had told the truth about herself, but she was under no obligations to bring Joy into trouble. Joy might do as she liked.

"Gypsy Breynton will lose her recesses for a week and stay an hour after school tonight," said Miss Cardrew. "Joy, did you put the kitten in my desk?"

"No, ma'am," said Joy, boldly.

"Nor have anything to do with it?"

"No, ma'am," said Joy, without the slightest change of color.

"Next!—Sarah Rowe."

Of course Sarah had not, nor anybody else. Miss Cardrew let the matter drop there and went on with her reading.

Gypsy sat silent and sorry, her eyes on her Testament. Joy tried to whisper something to her once, but Gypsy turned away with a gesture of impatience and disgust. This thing Joy had done had shocked her so that she felt as if she could not bear the sight of her face or touch of her hand. Never since she was a very little child had Gypsy been known to say what was not true. All her words were like her eyes—clear as sunbeams.

At dinner Joy did all the talking. Mrs. Breynton asked Gypsy what was the matter, but Gypsy said "Nothing." If Joy did not choose to tell of the matter, she would not.

"What makes you so cross?" said Joy in the afternoon; "nobody can get a word out of you, and you don't look at me any more than if I weren't here."

"I don't see how you can ask such a question!" exploded Gypsy, with flashing eyes. "You know what you've done as well as I do."

"No, I don't," grumbled Joy; "just 'cause I didn't tell Miss Cardrew about that horrid old cat—I wish we'd let the ugly thing alone!—I don't see why you need treat me as if I'd been murdering somebody and were going to be hung for it. Besides, I said 'Over the left' to myself just after I'd told her, and I didn't want to lose my recess if you did."

Gypsy shut up her pink lips tight, and made no answer.

Joy went out to play at recess, and Gypsy stayed in alone and studied. Joy went home with the girls in a great frolic after school, and Gypsy stayed shut up in the lonely schoolroom for an hour, disgraced and miserable. But I have the very best of reasons for thinking that she wasn't nearly as miserable as Joy.

Just before supper the two girls were sitting drearily together in the dining-room, when the door-bell rang.

"It's Miss Cardrew!" said Joy, looking out of the window; "what do you suppose she wants?"

Gypsy looked up carelessly; she didn't very much care. She had told Miss Cardrew all she had to tell and received her punishment.

As for her mother, she would have gone to her with the whole story that noon, if it hadn't been for Joy's part in it.

"What is that she has in her hand, I wonder?" said Joy uneasily, peeping through a crack in the door as Miss Cardrew passed through the entry; "why, I declare! if it isn't a handkerchief, as true as you live—all—inky!"

When Miss Cardrew had gone, Mrs. Breynton came out of the parlor with a very grave face, a purple-bordered handkerchief in her hand; it was all spotted with ink, and the initials J. M. B. were embroidered on it.

"Joy."

Joy came out of the corner slowly.

"Come here a minute."

Joy went and the door was shut. Just what happened that next half hour Gypsy never knew. Joy came upstairs at the end of it, red-eyed and crying, and gentle.

Gypsy was standing by the window.

"Gypsy."

"Well."

"I love auntie dearly, now I guess I do."

"Of course," said Gypsy; "everybody does."

"I hadn't the least idea it was so wicked—not the least idea. Mother used to——"

But Joy broke off suddenly, with quivering, crimson lips.

What that mother used to do Gypsy never asked; Joy never told her—either then, or at any other time.

"And I know another thing, too."

"You do? A whole thing?"

"Yes, I do. I know you're just as proud as you can be, and I've heard more'n one person say so. All the girls think you're dreadfully stuck up about your dresses and things—so there!"

"I don't care what the girls think, or you either. I guess I'll be glad when father comes home and I get out of this house!"

Joy fastened the gaudy silver pins with a jerk into the heavy white chenille that she was tying about her throat and hair, turned herself about before the glass with a last complacent look, and walked, in her deliberate, cool, provoking way, from the room. Gypsy got up, and—slammed the door on her.

Very dignified proceedings, certainly, for girls twelve and thirteen years old. An unspeakably important matter to quarrel about—a piece of white chenille! Angry people, be it remembered, are not given to over-much dignity, and how many quarrels are of the slightest importance?

Yet the things these two girls found to dispute, and get angry, and get miserable, and make the whole family miserable over, were so ridiculously petty that I hardly expect to be believed in telling of them. The front side of the bed, the upper drawer in the bureau, a hair-ribbon, who should be helped first at the table, who was the best scholar, which was the more stylish color, drab or green, and whether Vermont wasn't a better State than Massachusetts—such matters might very appropriately be the subjects of the dissensions of young ladies in pinafores and pantalettes.

Yet I think you will bear me witness, girls, some of you—ah, I know you by the sudden pink in your cheeks—who have gone to live with a cousin, or had a cousin live with you, or whose mother has adopted an orphan, or taken charge of a missionary's daughter, or in some way or other have been brought for the first time in your life into daily and hourly collision with another young will just as strong and unbending as yours—can't you bear me witness that, in these little contests between Joy and Gypsy, I am telling no "made-up stories," but sad, simple fact?

If you can't, I am very glad of it.

No, as I said before, matters were not going on at all comfortably; and every week seemed to make them worse. Wherein lay the trouble, and how to prevent it, neither of the girls had as yet exerted themselves to think.

A week or two after the adventures that befell that unfortunate kitten, something happened which threatened to make the breach between Gypsy and Joy of a very serious nature. It began, as a great many other serious things begin, in a very small and rather funny affair.

Mrs. Surly, who has been spoken of as Gypsy's particular aversion, was a queer old lady with green glasses, who lived opposite Mr. Breynton's, who felt herself particularly responsible for Gypsy's training, and gave her good advice, double measure, pressed down and running over. One morning it chanced that Gypsy was playing "stick-knife" with Tom out in the front yard, and that Mrs. Surly beheld her from her parlor window, and that Mrs. Surly was shocked. She threw up her window and called in an awful voice—

"Jemima Breynton!"

Now you might about as well challenge Gypsy to a duel as call her Jemima; so—

"What do you want?" she said, none too respectfully.

"I have something to say to you, Jemima Breynton."

"Say ahead," said Gypsy, under her breath, and did not stir an inch. Distance certainly lent enchantment to the view when Mrs. Surly was in the case.

"Does your ma allow you to be so bold as to play boys' games with boys, right out in sight of folks?" vociferated Mrs. Surly.

"Certainly," nodded Gypsy. "It's your turn, Tom."

"Well, it's my opinion, Gypsy Breynton, you're a romp. You're nothing but a romp, and if I was your ma——"

Tom dropped his knife just then, stood up and looked at Mrs. Surly. For reasons best known to herself, Mrs. Surly shut the window and contented herself with glaring through the glass.

Now, Joy had stood in the doorway and been witness to the scene, and moreover, having been reproved by her aunt for something or other that morning, she felt ill-humored, and very ready to find fault in her turn.

"I think it's just so, anyway," she said. "I wouldn't be seen playing stick-knife for a good deal."

"And I wouldn't be seen telling lies!" retorted Gypsy, sorry for it the minute she had said it. Then there followed a highly interesting dialogue of about five minutes' length, and of such a character that Tom speedily took his departure.

Now it came about that Gypsy, as usual, was the first ready to "make up," and she turned over plan after plan in her mind, to find something pleasant she could do for Joy. At last, as the greatest treat she could think of to offer her, she said:

"I'll tell you what! Let's go down to Peace Maythorne's. I do believe I haven't taken you there since you've been in Yorkbury."

"Who's Peace Maythorne?" asked Joy, sulkily.

"Well, she's the person I love just about best of anybody."

"Best of anybody!"

"Oh, mother, of course, and Tom, and Winnie, and father, and all those. Relations don't count. But I do love her as well as anybody but mother—and Tom, and—well, anyway, I love her dreadfully."

"What is she, a woman, or a girl, or what?"

"She's an angel," said Gypsy.

"What a goose you are!"

"Very likely; but whether I'm a goose or not, she's an angel. I look for the wings every time I see her. She has the sweetest little way of keeping 'em folded up, and you're always on the jump, thinking you see 'em."

"How you talk! I've a good mind to go and see her."

"All right."

So away they went, as pleasant as a summer's day, merrily chatting.

"But I don't think angels are very nice, generally," said Joy, doubtingly. "They preach. Does Peace Maythorne preach? I shan't like her if she does."

"Peace preach! Not like her! You'd better know what you're talking about, if you're going to talk," said Gypsy, with heightened color.

"Dear me, you take a body's head off. Well, if she should preach, I shall come right home."

They had come now to the village, where were the stores and the post-office, the bank, and some handsome dwelling-houses. Also the one paved sidewalk of Yorkbury, whereon the young people did their promenading after school in the afternoon. Joy always fancied coming here, gay in her white chenille and white ribbons, and dainty parasol lined with white silk. There is nothing so showy as showy mourning, and Joy made the most of it.

"Why, where are you going?" she exclaimed at last. Gypsy had turned away from the fashionable street, and the handsome houses, and the paved sidewalk.

"To Peace Maythorne's."

"This way?"

"This way."

The street into which Gypsy had turned was narrow and not over clean; the houses unpainted and low. As they walked on it grew narrower and dirtier, and the houses became tenement houses only.

"Do, for pity's sake, hurry and get out of here," said Joy, daintily holding up her dress. Gypsy walked on and said nothing. Red-faced women in ragged dresses began to cluster on the steps; muddy-faced children screamed and quarreled in the road. At the door of a large tenement building, somewhat neater than the rest, but miserable enough, Gypsy stopped.

"What are you stopping for?" said Joy.

"This is where she lives."

"Here?"

"I just guess she does," put in a voice from behind; it was Winnie, who had followed them on tiptoe, unknown to them, all the way. "She's got a funny quirk in her back, 'n' she lies down pretty much. That's her room up there to the top of the house. It's a real nice place, I tell you. They have onions mos' every day. Besides, I saw a little boy here one time when I was comin' 'long with mother, 'n' he was smokin' some tobaccer. He said he'd give it to me for two napples, and mother just wouldn't let me."

"Here—a cripple!" exclaimed Joy.

"Here, and a cripple," said Gypsy, in a queer tone, looking very straight at Joy.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" broke out Joy, "playing such a trick on me. Do you suppose I'm going into such a place as this, to see an old beggar—a hunch-backed beggar?"

Gypsy turned perfectly white. When she was very angry, too angry to speak, she always turned white. It was some seconds before she could find her voice.

"A hunch-backed beggar! Peace? How dare you say such things of Peace Maythorne? Joy Breynton, I'll never forgive you for this as long as I live—never!"

The two girls looked at each other. Just at that moment I am afraid there was something in their hearts answering to that forbidden word, that terrible word—hate. Ah, we feel so safe from it in our gentle, happy, untempted lives, just as safe as they felt once. Remember this, girls: when Love goes out, Hate comes in. In your heart there stands an angel, watching, silent, on whose lips are kindly words, in whose hands are patient, kindly deeds, whose eyes see "good in everything," something to love where love is hardest, some generous, gentle way to show that love when ways seem closed. In your heart, too, away down in its darkest corner, all forgotten, perhaps, by you, crouches something with face too black to look upon, something that likewise watches and waits with horrible patience, if perhaps the angel, with folded wing and drooping head, may be driven out. It is never empty, this curious, fickle heart. One or the other must stand there, king of it. One or the other—and in the twinkling of an eye the change is made, from angel to fiend, from fiend to angel; just which you choose.

Joy broke away from her cousin in a passion. Gypsy flew into the door of the miserable house, up the stairs two steps at a time, to the door of a low room in the second story, and rushed in without knocking.

"Oh, Peace Maythorne!"

The cripple lying on the bed turned her pale face to the door, her large, quiet eyes blue with wonder.

"Why, Gypsy! What is the matter?"

Gypsy's face was white still, very white. She shut the door loudly, and sat down on the bed with a jar that shook it all over. A faint expression of pain crossed the face of Peace.

"Oh, I didn't mean to—it was cruel in me! How could I? Have I hurt you very badly, Peace?" Gypsy slipped down upon the floor, the color coming into her face now, from shame and sorrow. Peace gently motioned her back to her place upon the bed, smiling.

"Oh, no. It was nothing. Sit up here; I like to have you. Now, what is it, Gypsy?"

The tone of this "What is it, Gypsy?" told a great deal. It told that it was no new thing for Gypsy to come there just so, with her troubles and her joys, her sins and her well-doings, her plans and hopes and fears, all the little stories of the fresh, young life from which the cripple was forever shut out. It told, too, what Gypsy found in this quiet room, and took away from it—all the help and the comfort, and the sweet, sad lessons. It told, besides, much of what Peace and Gypsy were to each other, that only they two should ever exactly understand. It was a tone that always softened Gypsy, in her gayest frolics, in her wildest moods. For the first time since she had known Peace, it failed to soften her now.

She began in her impetuous way, her face angry and flushed, her voice trembling yet:—

"I can't tell you what it is, and that's the thing of it! It's about that horrid old Joy."

"Gypsy!"

"I can't help it—I hate her!"

"Gypsy."

Gypsy's eyes fell at the gentle word.

"Well, I felt just as if I did, down there on the steps, anyway. You don't know what Joy said. It's something about you, and that's what makes me so mad. If she ever says it again!"

"About me?" interrupted Peace.

"Yes," said Gypsy, with great, flashing eyes. "I wouldn't tell it to you for all the world; it's so bad as that, Peace. How she dared to call you a beg——"

Gypsy stopped short. But she had let the cat out of the bag. Peace smiled again.

"A beggar! Well, it doesn't hurt me any, does it? Joy has never seen me, doesn't know me, you must remember, Gypsy. Besides, nobody else thinks as much of me as you do."

"I didn't mean to say that; I'm always saying the wrong thing! Anyway, that isn't all of it, and I did think I should strike her when she said it. I can't bear Joy. You don't know what she is, Peace. She grows worse and worse. She does things I wouldn't do for anything, and I wish she'd never come here!"

"Is Joy always wrong?" asked Peace, gently. Peace rarely gave to any one as much of a reproof as that. Gypsy felt it.

"No," said she, honestly, "she isn't. I'm real horrid and wicked, and do ugly things. But I can't help it; Joy makes me—she acts so."

"I know what's the matter with you and Joy, I guess," said Peace.

"The matter? Well, I don't; I wish I did. We're always fight—fighting, day in and day out, and I'm tired to death of it. I'm just crazy for the time for Joy to go home, and I'm dreadfully unhappy having her round, now I am, Peace."

Gypsy drew down her merry, red lips, and looked very serious. To tell the truth, however, do the best she would, she could not look altogether as if her heart were breaking from the amount of "unhappiness" that fell to her lot. A little smile quivered around the lips of Peace.

"Well," said Gypsy, laughing in spite of herself, "I am. I never can make anybody believe it, though. What is the matter with Joy and me? You didn't say."

"You've forgotten something, I think."

"Forgotten something?"

"Yes—something you read me once out of an old Book."

"Book? Oh!" said Gypsy, beginning to understand.

"In honor preferring one another," said Peace, softly. Gypsy did not say anything. Peace took up her Bible that lay on the bed beside her—it always lay on the bed—and turned the leaves, and laid her finger on the verse. Gypsy read it through before she spoke. Then she said slowly:

"Why, Peace Maythorne. I—never could—in this world—never."

Just then there came a knock at the door. Gypsy went to open it, and stood struck dumb for amazement. It was Joy.

"Auntie said it was supper-time, and you were to come home," began Joy, somewhat embarrassed. "She was going to send Winnie, but I thought I'd come."

"Why, I never!" said Gypsy, still standing with the door-knob in her hand.

"Is this your cousin?" spoke up Peace.

"Oh, yes, I forgot. This is Peace Maythorne, Joy."

"I am glad to see you," said Peace in her pleasant way; "won't you come in?"

"Well, perhaps I will, a minute," said Joy, awkwardly, taking a chair by the window, and wondering if Gypsy had told Peace what she said. But Peace was so cordial, her voice so quiet, and her eyes so kind, that she concluded she knew nothing about it, and soon felt quite at her ease. Everybody was at ease with Peace Maythorne.

"How pleasant it is here!" said Joy, looking about the room in unfeigned astonishment. And indeed it was. The furniture was poor enough, but everything was as neat as fresh wax, and the sunlight, that somehow or other always sought that room the earliest, and left it the latest—the warm, shimmering sunlight that Peace so loved—was yellow on the old, faded carpet, on the paperless, pictureless wall, on the bed where the hands of Peace lay, patient and folded.

"It is pleasant," said Peace, heartily. "You don't know how thankful it makes me. Aunt came very near taking a room on the north side. Sometimes I really don't know what I should have done. But then I guess I should have found something else to like."

I should have found something else. A sudden thought came to the two girls then, in a dim, childish way—a thought they could by no means have explained; they wondered if in those few words did not lie the key to Peace Maythorne's beautiful, sorrowful life. They would not have expressed it so, but that was what they meant.

"See here," broke out Gypsy all at once, "Peace Maythorne wants you and me to make up, Joy."

"Your cousin will think I'm interfering with what's none of my business," said Peace, laughing. "I didn't say exactly that, you know; I was only talking to you."

"Oh, I'd just as lief make up now, but I wouldn't this morning," wondering for the second time if Peace could know what she said, and be so gentle and good to her; "I will if Gypsy will."

"And I will if Joy will," said Gypsy, "so it's a bargain."

"Do you have a great deal of pain?" asked Joy, as they rose to go, with real sympathy in her puzzled eyes.

"Oh, yes; but then I get along."

"Peace Maythorne!" put in Gypsy just then, "is that all the dinner you ate?" Gypsy was standing by the table on which was a plate containing a cold potato, a broken piece of bread, and a bit of beefsteak. Evidently from the looks of the food, only a few mouthfuls had been eaten.

"I didn't feel hungry," said Peace, evasively.

"But you like meat, for you told me so."

"I didn't care about this," said Peace, looking somewhat restless.

Gypsy looked at her sharply, then stooped and whispered a few words in her ear.

"No," said Peace, her white cheek flushing crimson. "Oh, no, she never told me not to. She means to be very kind. I cost her a great deal."

"But you know she'd be glad if you didn't eat much, and that was the reason you didn't," exclaimed Gypsy, angrily. "I think it's abominable!"

"Hush! please Gypsy."

Gypsy hushed. Just then the door opened and Miss Jane Maythorne, Peace's aunt, came in. She was a tall, thin, sallow-faced woman, with angular shoulders and a sharp chin. She looked like a New England woman who had worked hard all her life and had much trouble, so much that she thought of little else now but work and trouble; who had a heart somewhere, but was apt to forget all about it except on great occasions.

"I've been talking to Peace about not eating more," said Gypsy, when she had introduced Joy, and said good-afternoon. "She'll die if she doesn't eat more than that," pointing to the plate.

"She can eat all she wants, as far as I know," said Aunt Jane, rather shortly. "Nobody ever told her not to. It's nothing very fine in the way of victuals I can get her, working as I work for two, and most beat out every night. La! Peace, you haven't eaten your meat, have you? Well, I'll warm it over to-morrow, and it'll be as good as new."