Gypsy Breynton Part 5

"I guess I wouldn't!" said Gypsy, with an emphasis.

"What you can do one time, you can another," said Miss Melville.

Gypsy was silent.

"There's one other thing about it," continued her teacher, "besides the impropriety of playing such a trick in school hours--that is, that it was very unkind to me."

"Unkind!" exclaimed Gypsy.

"Yes," said Miss Melville, quietly, "unkind."

"Why, Miss Melville, I wouldn't be unkind to you for anything!--I love you dearly."

"Nevertheless, Gypsy, it was very unkind to deliberately set to work to annoy me and make me trouble, by getting the school into a frolic.

Anything done to break the order of study-hours, or to withstand any rule of the school, is always an unkindness to a teacher. There is scarcely a girl in school that might help me more than you, Gypsy, if you chose."

"I don't see how," said Gypsy, astonished.

"I do," said Miss Melville, smiling, "and I always think a little vote of thanks to you, when you are quiet and well-behaved. An orderly scholar has a great deal of influence. The girls all love you, and are apt to do as they see you do, Gypsy."

There was a little silence, in which Gypsy's eyes were wandering away under the apple-boughs, their twinkling dimmed and soft.

At last she turned quickly, and threw her arms about her teacher's neck.

"Miss Melville, if you'll give me one kiss, I'll never be an old woman again, if I live as long as Methuselah!"

Miss Melville kissed her, and whispered one or two little loving words of encouragement, such as n.o.body but Miss Melville knew how to say. But Gypsy never told what they were.

"I believe there's a bolt left out of me somewhere," she said, as they left the school-house together; "what do you suppose it is?"

"It is the strong, iron bolt, '_stop and think_,' Gypsy."

"Um--yes--perhaps it is," said Gypsy, and walked slowly home.

CHAPTER IV

GYPSY HAS A DREAM

"Come, Tom--do."

"Do what?"

"You know as well as I do."

"What did you observe?"

_"Tom Breynton!"_

"That's my name."

"Will you, or will you not, come down to the pond and have a row?"

"Let's hear you tease a little."

"Catch me! If you won't come for a civil request, I won't tease for it."

"Very good," said Tom, laying aside his Euclid; "I like your s.p.u.n.k. Rather think I'll go."

Tom tossed on his cap and was ready. Gypsy hurried away to array herself in the complication of garments necessary to the feminine adventurer, if she so much as crosses the yard; a continual mystery of Providence, was this little necessity to Gypsy, and one against which she lived in a state of incessant rebellion. It was provoking enough to stand there in her room, tugging and hurrying till she was red in the face, over a pair of utterly heartless and unimpressible rubbers, that absolutely refused to slip over the heel of her boot, and to see Tom through the window, with his hands in his pocket, ready, waiting, and impatient, alternately whistling and calling for her.

"I never _did_!" said Gypsy, in no very gentle tone.

"Hur--ry up!" called Tom, coolly.

"These old rubbers!" said Gypsy.

"What's the matter?" asked her mother, stopping at the door.

"It's enough to try the patience of a saint!" said Gypsy, emphatically, holding out her foot.

"Perhaps I can help you," said Mrs. Breynton, stooping down. "Why, Gypsy!

your boots are wet through; of course the rubbers won't go on."

"I didn't suppose that would make any difference," said Gypsy, looking rather foolish. "I got them wet this morning, down at the swamp. I thought they were dry, though: I sat with my feet in the oven until Patty drove me off. She said I was in the bread."

"You will have to put on your best boots," said her mother.

"Oh, Tom!" called Gypsy, in despair, as the shrillest of all shrill whistles came up through the window. "Everything's in a jumble! I'll be there as soon as I can."

She changed her boots, tossed on her turban, whisked on her sack, and began to fasten it with a jerk, when off came the b.u.t.ton at the throat, and rolled maliciously quite out of sight under the bed.

"There!" said Gypsy.

"Can't wait!" shouted Tom.

"I mended that sack," said Gypsy, "only yesterday afternoon. I call it too bad, when a body's trying to keep their things in order, and do up all their mending, that things have to act so!"

"I think you have been trying to be orderly," said her mother, helping her to pin the offending sack about the throat, for there was no time now to restore the wandering b.u.t.ton. "I have noticed a great improvement in you; but there's one thing wanting yet, that would have kept the b.u.t.ton in its place, and had the boots properly taken off and dried at the right time."

"What's that?" asked Gypsy, in a great hurry to go.

"A little more _thoroughness_, Gypsy."

This bit of a lesson, like most of Mrs. Breynton's moral teachings, was enforced with a little soft kiss on Gypsy's forehead, and a smile that was as unlike a sermon as smile could be.