Gypsy's cousin Joy.

Front matter

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Chapter I. News

second arithmetic class had just come out to recite, when somebody knocked at the door. Miss Cardrew sent Delia Guest to open it.

<‘It’s a — ha, ha! letter — he he! for you,” said Delia, coming up to the desk. Exactly wherein lay the joke, in the fact that Miss Cardrew should have a letter, nobody but Delia was capable of seeing ; but Delia was given to seeing jokes on all occasions, under all circumstances. Go wherever you might, from a prayer-meeting to the playground, you were sure to hear her little giggle.

gypsy’s cousin joy.

“A letter for you,” repeated Delia Guest. “ He, he I ”

Miss Cardrew laid down her arithmetic, opened the letter, and read it.

“ Gypsy Breynton.”

The arithmetic class stopped whispering, and there was a great lull in the school-room.

Why I never ! ” giggled Delia. Gypsy, all in a flutter at having her name read right out in school, and divided between her horror lest the kitten 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 ploughed 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 I Is any body sick. Miss Cardrew?”

“She doesn’t say, — she gives no reasons. You’d better not stop to talk, Gypsy.”

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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 ! ”

“ Of der ! ” said Miss Cardrow, in a loud voice. The girls stopped whispering, and Gypsy in nowise reassured by their sympathy, hmTied 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 gypsy’s cousin joy.

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 Grypsy> 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 I believe you’re gone clear crazy, — Gypsy ! ”

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‘‘ 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 gaterpanting 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?”

gypsy’s cousin joy.

“ Oh, no matter. Iknow.’’

“ Winnie Breynton I ”

“ 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 I 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 I Is any body 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.

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Her mother called her from over the banisters, and she ran up stairs. 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 I” 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.

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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 sometime 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 jsober now in earnest.

‘ < Why mother ! How can you ? What if you catch it?” *

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“There is very little chance of that; one possibihty 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, Mor 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 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 travellers’ luncheon. When Gypsy felt badly, she always hunted up something to do ; in this gypsy’s cousin joy.

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 up stairs and help your mother baste for the machine, or into the dining-room to help Bridget set the table, or into the corner wheye 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 lamp-light, 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 travellers stood in the entry with bag and baggage, all ready to start, the

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smiles had come back to her lips, and the twinkle to her eyes.

“ Good-by 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 up stairs and she won’t be there, and there’ll be nogypsy’s cousin joy.

body 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.”

“mat?”

“ S’posin’ when they’d got Aunt ^Miranda all nailed into her coffin — tight in, she should be

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«w-cleacled, and open her eyes, and begin •*— begin to squeal, you know. S’pose they’d let

Just four days from the morning Mrs. Breynton left, Tom came up from the office with a very sober face and a letter.

Gypsy ran out to meet him, and put out her hand, in a great hurry to read it.

“ I’ll read it to you,” said Tom, “ it’s to me. Come into the parlor.”

They went in, and Tom read : —

** My dear Son : —

I write in great haste, just to let you know that your Aunt Miranda is gone. She died last night at nine o’clock, in great distress. I was with her at the last. I am glad I came — very ; it seems to have been a comfort to her ; she was so lonely and deserted. The funeral is day after to-morrow, and we shall stay of course. We hope to be home on Monday. There has been no time yet to make any plans ; I can’t tell what gypsy’s cousin joy.

the family will do. Poor Joy cannot bear to be left alone a minute. She follows me round like a frightened child. The tears come into my eyes every time I look at her, for the thoughts of three dear, distant faces that might be left just so, but for God’s mercy to them and to me. She is just about Gypsy’s age and height, you know. The disease proved not to be contagious, so you need feel no anxiety. A kiss to both the children. Your father sends much love. We shall be glad to get home and see you again.

Very' lovingly.

Mother.”

Inside the note, was a slip for Gypsy with this written on it : —

“ I must stop to tell you Gypsy, of a little thing your aunt said the day before she died. She had been speaking of Joy in her weak, troubled way, — of some points wherein she hoped she would be a different woman from her mother, and had then lain still awhile, her eyes closed, some-

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thing — as you used to say when you were a little girl — very sorry about her mouth, when suddenly she turned and said ‘ I wish Td made Gypsy^s visit here a little pleasanter. Tell her she must think as well as she can of her auntie, for Joy^s sake now/ ”

Gypsy folded up the paper, and sat silent a moment, thinking her own thoughts, as Tom saw, and not wishing to be spoken to.

• Those of you who have read ‘ ‘ Gypsy Breynton ” will understand what these thoughts mi^ht be. Those who have not, need only know that Gypsy’s aunt had been rather a gay, careless lady, well dressed and jewelled, and fond enough of dresses and jewels ; and that in a certain visit Gypsy made her not long ago, she had been far from thoughtful of her country niece’s comfort.

And this was how it had ended. Poor Aunt Miranda !

“Well,” said Gypsy, at last, with something dim in her eyes, “ I dare say I was green and gypsy’s cousin joy.

awkward, and it was half my fault. I never could understand how people could just turn round when anybody dies, and say they were good and perfect, when it wasn’t any such a thing, and I can’t say I think she was, for it would be a lie. But I wont say anything more against her. Poor Joy, poor Joy ! Not to have any mother, Tom, just think ! Oh, just think ! ”

Chapter II. Shall She Come ?

S UPPER was ready. It had been ready now for ten minutes. The cool, white cloth, bright glass, glittering silver, and

^ delicate china painted with a primrose and an ivy-leaf, — the best china, and very extravagant in Gypsy of course, but she thought the occasion deserved it, — were all laid in their places upon the table. The tea was steeped to precisely the right point ; the rich, mellow flavor had just escaped the clover taste on one side, and the bitterness of too much boiling on the other ; the delicately sugared apples were floating in their amber juices in the round glass gypsy’s cousin joy.

preserve-dish, the smoked halibut was done to the most delightful brown crispness, the puffy, golden drop-cakes were smoking from the oven, and Patty was growling as nobody but Patty could growl, for fear they would “ slump down intirely an’ be gittin’ as heavy as lead,” before they could be eaten.

There was a bright fire in the dining-room grate ; the golden light was dancing a jig all over, the walls, hiding behind the curtains, coquetting with the silver, and touching the primroses on the plates to a perfect sunbeam ; for father and mother were coming. Tom and Gypsy and Winnie were all three running to the windows and the door every two minutes and dressed in their very ‘ ‘ Sunday-go-to-meeting best ; ” for father and mother were coming. Tom had laughed well at this plan of dressing up — Gypsy’s notion of course, and ridiculous enough, said Tom ; fit for babies like Winnie, and girls. (I wish I could give you in print,

SHALL SHE COME?

the peculiar emphasis with which Tom was wont to dwell on this word.) But for all that, when Gypsy came down in her new Scotch plaid dress, with her cheeks so red, and her hair so smooth and black ; and Winnie strutted across the room counting the buttons on his best jacket, Tom slipped away to his room, and came down with his purple neck-tie on.

It made a pretty, homelike picture — the bright table and the firelight, and the eager faces at the window, and the gay dresses. Any father and mother might have been glad to call it all their own, and come into it out of the cold and the dark, after a weary day’s journey.

These cosey, comfortable touches about it — the little conceit of the painted china, and the best clothes — were just like Gypsy. Since she was glad to see her father and mother, it was imperatively necessary that she should show it ; there was no danger but what her joy would have been sufficiently evident — where everything gypsy’s cousin joy.

else was — in her eyes ; but according to Gypsy’s view of matters, it must express itself in some sort of celebration. Whether her mother wouldn’t have been quite as well pleased if her delicate, expensive porcelain had been kept safely in the closet; whether indeed, it was exactly right for her to take it out without leave, Gypsy never stopped to consider. When she wanted to do a thing, she could never see any reasons why it shouldn’t be done, like a few other girls I have heard of in New England. However, just such a mother as Gypsy had, was quite likely to pardon such a little carelessness as this, for the love in it, and the welcomim? thoughts.

o o

“They’re cornin’, cornin’, cornin’,” shouted Winnie, from the door-steps, where, in the exuberance of his spirits he was trying very hard to stand on his head, and making a most remarkable failure, “they’re cornin’ lickitycut, and I’m five years old ’n’ I’ve got on my best jacket, ’n’ they’re cornin’ slam bang I ”

SHALL SHE COME?

‘ ‘ Coming, coming, coming ! ” echoed Gypsy, about as wild as Winnie himself, and flying past him down to the gate, leaving Tom to follow in Tom’s own dignified way.

Such a kissing, and laughing, and talking, and delightful confusion as there was then ! Such a shouldering of bags and valises and shawls, such hurrying of mother in out of the cold ; such a pulling of father’s whiskers, such peeping into mysterious bundles, and pulling off of wrappers, and hurrying Patty with the tea-things ; and questions and answers, and everybody talking at once, — one might have supposed the travellers had been gone a month instead of a week.

“My kitty had a fit,” observed Winnie, in the first pause he could find.

“ And there are some letters for father,” — from Tom.

“ Patty has a new beau,” interrupted Gypsy.

“ It was an awfully fit,” put in Winnie, undisgypsy’s cousin joy.

couraged, “ she rolled under the stove V I tell you she squealed, and — ”

“ How is uncle? ” asked Tom, and it was the first time any one had thought to ask.

“ Then she jumped — splash ! into the hogshead,” continued Winnie, determined to finish.

“ He is not very well,” said IVIr. Breynton, gravely, and then they sat down to supper, talking the while about him. Winnie subsided in great disgust, and devoted himself, body, mind, and heart, to the drop-cakes.

“Ah, the best china, I see,” said Mrs. Breynton, presently, with one of her pleasantest smiles, and, as Mrs. Brenton’s smiles were always pleasant, this was saying a great deal. “ And the Sunday things on too, — in honor of our coming ? How pleasant it all seems ! and how glad I am to be at home again.”

Gypsy looked radiant, — very much in fact, like a little sun dropped down from the sky, or a jewel all ablaze.

SHALL SHE COME?

Some mother’s would have reproved her for the use of the china ; some who had not quite the heart to reprove, would have said they were sorry she had taken it out. Mrs. Breynton would rather have had her handsome plates broken to atoms, than to chill by so much as a look, the glow of the child’s face just then.

There was decidedly more talking than eating done at supper, and they lingered long at the table, in the pleasant firelight and lamp-light.

“ It seems exactly like the resurrection day for all the world,” said Gypsy.

‘ ‘ The resurrection day ! ”

‘ ‘ Why yes ; when you went off I kept thinking everybody was dead and buried, all that morning, and it was real horrid, — Oh, you don’t know ! ”

“ Gypsy,” said Mrs. Breynton, awhile after supper, when Winnie had gone to bed, and Tom gypsy’s cousin jc^y.

and his father were casting accounts bj the fire, “ I want to see you a few minutes.”

Gypsy wondering, followed her into the parlor. Mrs. Breynton shut the door, and they sat down together on the sofa.

“ I want to have a talk with you, Gypsy, about something that we’d better talk over alone.”

“ Yes’m,” said Gypsy, quite bewildered by her mother’s grave manner, and thinking up all the wrong things she had done for a week. Whether it was the time she got so provoked at Patty for having dinner late, or scolded Winnie for trying to paint with the starch, (and if ever any child deserved it, he did,) or got kept after school for whispering, or brought down the nice company quince marmalade to eat with the blanc-mange, or whether —

“You havn’t asked about your cousin Joy,” said her mother, interrupting her thinking.

“Oh, — how is she?” said Gypsy, looking somewhat ashamed.

SHALL SHE COME?

“ I am sorry for the child,” said Mrs. Breynton, musingly.

“ What’s going to become of her? Who’s going to take care of her ? ”

‘ ‘ That is just what I came in here to talk about.”

“ Why, I don’t see what I have to do with it ! ” said Gypsy, astonished.

“ Her father thinks of going abroad, and so there would be no one to leave her with. He finds himself quite worn out by your aunt’s sickness, the care and anxiety and trouble. His business also requires some member of the firm to go to France this fall, and he has almost decided to go. The only thing that makes him hesitate, is Joy.”

“ I see what you mean now, mother, — I see it in your eyes. You want Joy to come here.” Gypsy spoke in a slow, uncomfortable way, as if she were trying very hard not to believe her own words.

gypsy’s cousin joy.

“ Yes, ’ said Mrs. Breynton, “ that is it.”

Gypsy’s bright face fell.

“ Well ? ” she said, at last.

“ I told your uncle,” said her mother, “ that I could not decide on the spot, but would let him know next week. The question of Joy’s coming here will affect you more than any member of the family, and I thought it only fair to you, that we should talk it over frankly, before it is settled.”

Gypsy had a vague notion that all mothers would not have been so thoughtful, but she said nothing.

“ I do not wish,” proceeded Mrs. Breynton, “ to make any arrangement in which you cannot be happy; but I have great faith in your kind heart, Gypsy.”

“ I don’t like Joy,” said Gypsy, bluntly.

“ I know that, and I am sorry it is so,” said her mother. “ I understand just what Joy is. But it is not all her fault. She has not been

SHALL SHE COME?

trained just as you have, Gypsy. She was never taught and helped to be a generous, gentle child, as you have been taught and helped. Your uncle and aunt felt differently about these things ; but it is no matter about that now, — you will understand it better when you are older. It is enough for you to know that Joy has great excuse for her faults. Even if they were twice as great as they are, one wouldn’t think much about them now ; the poor child is in great trouble, lonely and frightened and motherless. Think, if God took away your mother, Gypsy.”

“ But Joy didn’t care much about her mother,” said honest Gypsy. “ She used to scold her, Joy told me so herself. Besides I heard her, ever so many times.”

“ Peace be with the dead, Gypsy ; — let all that go. She was all the mother Joy had, and if you had seen what I saw a night or two before I came away, you wouldn’t say she didn’t love her.”

gypsy’s cousin joy.

“ What was it? ” asked Gypsj.

“ Your auntie was lying all alone, up stairs. I went in softly, to do one or two little things about the room, thinking no one was there.

“One faint gas-light was burning, and in the dimness, I saw that the sheet was turned down from the face, and a poor little quivering figure was crouched beside it on the bed. It was Joy. She was sobbing as if her heart would break, and such sobs — it would have made you cry to hear them, Gypsy. She didn’t hear me come in, and she began to talk to the dead face as if it could hear her. Do you want to know what she said ? ”

Gypsy was looking very hard the other way. She nodded, but did not speak, gulping down something in her throat.

“ This was what she said — softly, in Joy’s frightened way, you know. ‘ You’re all I had, any way,’ said she. ‘ All the other girls have got mothers, and now I wont ever have any,

SHALL SHE COME?

any more. I did used to bother you and be cross about my practising, and not do as you told me, and I wish I hadn’t, and — ’

“Oh — hum, look here — mother,” interrupted Gypsy, jumping up and winking very fast. ‘ ‘ Isn’t there a train up from Boston early Monday morning? She might come in that, you know.”

]\Irs. Breynton smiled :

“ Then she may come, may she?”

“ I rather think she may,” said Gypsy, with an emphasis. “ I’ll write her a letter and tell her so.”

‘ ‘ That will be a good plan , Gypsy. But you are quite sure ? I don’t want you to decide this matter in too much of a hurry.”

“ She’ll ^leep in the front room of course? ” suggested Gypsy.

“ No ; if she comes, she must sleep with you. M^ith our family and only one servant, I could hardly keep up the extra work that would cause, for six months or a year.”

gypsy’s cousin joy.

‘ ‘ Six months or a year ! In my room ! ”

Gypsy walked back and forth across the room two or three times, her merry forehead all wrinkled into a knot.

“ Well,” at last, “ I’ve said it, and I’ll stick to it, and I’ll try to make her have a good time, anyway.”

“ Come here, Gypsy.”

Gypsy came here, and one of those rare, soft kisses — very different from the ordinary, every day kisses — that her mother gave her when she hadn’t just the words to say how pleased she was, fell on her forehead, and smoothed out the knot before you could “ say Jack Robinson.”

That very afternoon Gypsy wrote her note to Joy : —

** Dear Joy ;

I’m real sorry your mother died. You’d better come right up here next week, and we’ll go chestnutting over by Mr. Jonathan Jones’s. I tell you it’s splendid climbing up. If you’re

SHALL SHE COME?

very careful, you needn’t tear your dress very badly. Then there’s the raft, and you might play base-ball too. I’ll teach you.

You see if you don’t have a nice time. I can’t think of anything more to say.

Your affectionate cousin,

Chapter III. One Evening

it was settled, and Joy came. There was no especial day appointed for the journey. Her father was to come up

T with her as soon as he had arranged his affairs so that he could do so, and then to go directly back to Boston and sail at once.

Gypsy found plenty to do, in getting ready for her cousin. This having a room-mate for the first time in her life, was by no means an unimportant event to her. Her room had always been her own especial private property. Here in a quiet nook on the broad window-sill, she had curled herself up for hours with her new story-books ; here she had locked herself in to