Gypsy's Cousin Joy

The 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.

"A letter for you," repeated Delia Guest. "He, he!"

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 schoolroom.

"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 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 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?"

"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 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 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 a while, her eyes closed, something-as you used to say when you were a little girl-very sorry about her mouth, when suddenly she turned and said, 'I wish I'd 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 might be. Those who have not, need only know that Gypsy's aunt had been rather a gay, careless lady, well dressed and jeweled, 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 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 won't say anything more against her. Poor Joy, poor Joy! Not to have any mother, Tom, just think! Oh, just think!"

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