Gypsy's sowing and reaping

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GYPSY'S SOWING AND REAPING.

GYPSY'S
SOWING AND REAPING,

,

E. STUART PHELPS,

AUTHOR OF "GYrSY BREYNTON," " GYPSY'S COUCIX JOY/' MERCY

GLIDDON'S WORK," ETC.

For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather,

To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,

To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands."

WARD, LOCK, EOWDEN & CO,
LONDON, NEW YORK, MELBOURNE, AND SYDNEY.

CON TEN TS.

CHAPTE3 T.

THE NEST IN THE HAY ................

CHAPTEB II.
GONE ..................................................................... 12

CHAPTER III.
THE FIRST LETTER ................................................... 27

CHAPTER IV.
THE OUTLINE OF A SHADOW ......... . ............................. 44

CHAT TEE Y.
THE SHADOW DEEPENS ..................................... ......... Cl

CHAP TEE VI.
T1 E WATCH UPON THE STAKIS .................................... 76

CHAPTER, VIT.
SOMETHING NEW..., ............... ... .................. ....... ....

M150475

IV.

Contents

JIIAPTER VIII.

V.vr.z
-OWlSGl TIIK Rl ' ............................................... I'M

CHAPTER TX.
STGNV PEACES .......................................................... Ill

CHAPTER X.
VARIOUS MATTZIIS .................................................... 122

CHAPTER XL
A STAMP i.\ xna WRONG Couxca .............................. 1G5

CHAPTER XII.
QUIET EYES ................... . ......................................... 142

CHAPTER XIII.
TUB VOICE urox THE Siu::z .................................... 151

CHAPTER XIV.

TnOUBLES NEVER COME SlNGLE .................................... 162

CHAPTER XV.
ONLY A WIHSPEE ................................................... 170

CHAPTER XVI.
THE Rs.vriNa.... 17 J

GYPSY'S SOWING AND REAPING.

CHAPTER I.

THE NEST IN THE HAY.

"GYPSY, Gypsy!"

Nobody answered.

" Gypsy ! "

Asocial younp- rooster, thinking himself personally
addressed, replied to the name by a cheerful crow,
and the cat, roused from her nap in the sunny
corner by the hogshead, came up purring to rub
herself against Tom's boot. Otherwise, the yard
was quite still ; so was the lane, and he had searched
the chaise-house thoroughly. Of twenty or more
places, any one of which Gypsy was as likely to be
in as in any other, it was by no means easy to know
which to choose. Tom decided on the barn, and push
ing open the stable door, he walked in — as Tom
walked in everywhere — with his hands in his pockets,
whistling.

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

There was a stir of the warm, clover-scented air,
and a faint rustling somewhere overhead.

"Gypsy, is that yon?"

" Ye— s. What do you want ? "

<; Why didn't you answer a fellow before ? I've
been calling joupost hominum memoriam."

" He might show off his Latin, — so he might ! "
interrupted the voice from overhead.

"Didn't you hear me?" demanded Tom, sub
limely ignoring the thrust. Gypsy did not answer,
and he climbed up into the loft to see about it.

" Well done ! If you don't look as much like the
brown pullet as any other simile that presents itself
to the vivid imagination ! "

Down in the sweet, warm hay, among the dried
clover and buttercups and feathered grass, a great
hollow was scooped like a nest, and out of it rose a
round, nut-brown face, with brown eyes and ripe, red
lips, and hair as black as a coal. As one climbed up
the ladder, that was all that could be seen.

" Oh, thank you," said Gypsy, looking up care
lessly, " you're always complimentary, but I'm afraid
you're outdoing yourself. The brown pullet's a hand
some hen, anyway."

" I really should like to know whether you
heard me or not," said Tom, sitting down on the
hay beside her.

Gypsy arched her pretty eyebrows.

" Can't you give a fellow a civil ar.swer ? "

" Certainly ; but I'm afraid you won't think it's

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

very civil after I've given it. Will yon. have it, or
won't you ? "

"I'll have it,"

" Well, then, I — suppose I did hear yon. I didn't
mean yon should know it, bnt ' I can'fc tell a lie, pa,
I can't tell a lie.' "

" Why didn't you have the politeness to answer
then?" said Tom, with a genuine, elder-brotherly
frown.

"It was impolite, I know, but you see 1 wanted
to get through."

" Through ? "

" Yes. I knew if you came I shouldn't do a stitch,
and I came up here to mend, — don't you tell ?

"No."

" Well, I tore my dress, my bran new Fall delaine,
and the very first morning I've had it on, — down the
placket, clear away to the hem, running after Mrs.
Surly's puppy, and the horrid little thing stood and
barked at me just as if he were glad of it. Then you
see she does so much mending for me."

" The puppy ? "

" Of course."

" Ob, Mrs. Surly ? "

" Exactly. Mother sends the clothes over to he?
every Wednesday night, and brings them back m a
wheelbarrow Saturdays. I'm astonished you didn't
know that without asking. Any more remarks ? "

"Well, not just at present. If I think of any
more, I'll let you know."

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping,

"Very well, I'll go on tlien. You see, mothe*
is for ever sewing for me, and so I thought it
was too bad in me, and I'd come up here and gefc it
all mended without anybody's knowing. Besides,
I'm in a terrible hurry to go to Sarah Howe's. Ow !
there goes my needle ! Move away a little, please,
and let me hunt."

"Well, that's the first time I -ever saw anybody
seriously set to work to ' hunt for a needle in a hay
mow.' If it isn't just like you ! I hope you expect
to find it."

" Here it is," said Gypsy, in triumph, picking it
out from her boot-lacing where it had stuck. Toin
Subsided.

" There ! " said Gypsy, after a moment's silence,
'in which her needle had been flying fast, — so fast that
I would not undertake to say anything about the size
of the stitches, " I think that will go. To be sure it's
all puckers, and I don't know what mother'd say to
sewing it with gr^en thread, but it doesn't deserve
any better, — the old thing ! it needn't have torn any
way. Now I am going to Sarah's."

"My company's not wanted then," said Tom,
beginning to descend the ladder. " I'll make myself
scarce."

" Why, I didn't mean to send you off. Did you
want anything particular ? "

"Oh, nothing, only I felt kind of social. You'll
be rid of me soon enough, when I'm gone to college."

0 1 don't want to be rid of you, Tom. I'd love to

and Reaping.

stop and talk now, only you see Sarali she's got a
mud-turtle as big as a dinner-plate, swimming round
in a hogshead, and I promised I'd come over and
see it."

" Oh, well, run along."

Tom was out of the barn by this time.

" Do you care ? " called Gypsy, going down the
ladder as nimbly as a monkey. Bat Tom was out of
sight and hearing.

Gypsy walked slowly out of the yard and up
the street. She had not gone far before her bright
face clouded, and she stopped, standing irresolute ;
then turned round and ran back as fast as she could
go, which was pretty fast.

She found Tom sitting on the back-door steps,
whittling and whistling.

" Well," said Gypsy.

" Well ? " said Tom.

"I've come back."

" So I perceive."

" I thought I'd rather see you than Sarah. What
did you want to talk about ? "

" Oh, nothing in particular. You needn't have
doubled yourself."

Gypsy saw at once that there had been something
in particular, and that she had thrown away the
chance of hearing it. She thought, too, how soon
Tom was going away, and how few mere talks they
ehould have together. She felt sorry £*id vexed ; but
vexed with herself only.

6 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

Tom whittled his pine stick to a point, and looked
ont of the corners of his ejes at her as she sat on the
step beside him, her face half turned away, her merry
lips saddened a little. After his genuine boy's fashion,
Tom was not quite ready to yield his point and his
pride with it. Whatever he had meant to say, he pre
ferred that Gypsy should tease for it ; or come at it
by some extra touch of humility. Gypsy did not
see the sidelong look, and no one could have inferred
from Tom's cool, obstinate silence, and the remarkably
absorbed manner with which he was devoting him
self to his whittling, that he really appreciated the
little sacrifice that she had made in coming back to
talk with him ; that he was thinking of just that and
nothing else ; that it had pleased and surprised him.
You remember the old Bible story of the seed dropped
into good ground ? Just such a seed was that little
sacrifice ; the first of many others with which this
year just now begun, should be filled; the forerunner
of much toilsome planting and wearying watch, — the
promise of a golden harvest. Both brother and sister
had in that moment, when they were sitting there in
silence, a vague, half-conscious thought like this ;
and both the thought and the circumstance which led
to it were of more importance to them than either
supposed.

" Tom," said Gypsy presently, " I wish you'd
come down to the Basin and take a row.'

" I don't know as I care much about it. Better go
and see your turtle."

Gypsy' ]s Sowing and

" I don't want to go and see the turtle. Please,
*om, do."

It went very much against the grain for Gypsy
to tease. Tom knew that she never did it without
i">rae unusual object in view, and he understood what
the object was in this case. So, throwing away his
pine stick, he said, with somewhat less of his lordly
style —

" Well, I don't care if I do. Come along."

Gypsy came along with a brighter face.

The lane was looking somewhat seared and browti
in the late August sun ; but the hazel-nuts were ripe
on the long row of bushes that grew by the wall, so
that one could pick and eat as one walked ; then the
sunlight was cool, and the wind was sweet and strong,
— so that on the whole, the half-mile walk to the pond
was quite as pleasant as in the earlier summer. Upon
the water it wras much more comfortable than it would
be under a burning July sun.

Tom and Gypsy took each an oar, and pushed off
into the shade of the Kleiner Berg. Then they let
the Dipper float idly to and fro at the foot of the
mountain, framed in by the shadow and coolness and
stillness.

" I wish you'd tell me what you. were going to
say," said Gypsy, leaning over the side of the boat
to let her hand fall in the water.

" Oh, nonsense ! let that go. I wasn't going to
tay anything, and if I was, I've forgotten it now.
Bee here, do you know I go week after next ? "

8 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

" Week after next ! So soon ! Why, I'd for-
gotten."

" Week after next Monday, at six A.M., ma'am."

" Tom, what do you suppose I'm going to do
without you ? "

" Mend your dresses and run after puppies."

"No, but," said Gypsy, laughing in spite of her-
self, " I mean really. I shall miss you terribly,
Tom.''

" I'll risk it."

" Thorn- as Breynton ! "

She pulled her hand up suddenly out of the
water, and jumped into his lap, throwing both her
arms around his neck, her soft, brown eyes looking
into his.

" Tom, don't you know I shall miss you ? Don't
you know I lovo you better than anything on this
earth but mother ? And I haven't been away from
you more than a fortnight in all my life. Oh,
Tom!"

" You'll tip the boat over," said undemonstrative
Tom. Nevertheless, he kissed her.

" I do believe you're glad to go," said Gypsy,
putting up her red lips reproachfully.

" Yale College is a jolly place. Swe-de Je-we-
tchu-hi-ra-sa ! " sang Tom. " Can't say I'm sorry.
I expect to have a gay time. Swe-de-le-we-dum-

" I believe it's you that are glad to get rid of me,
Tom."

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

lt Oh, no," said Tom, coolly, " not at all. I've no
desire to get rid of you. You do very well for a
girl."

" Well," said Gypsy, half mollified, for this was
Tom's way of saying how much he loved her, " any
way, I don't think you ought to be glad to go»"

Tom snapped a hazel-nut into the water, took off
his cap, put it on, and then said, his manner suddenly
changing —

"I say, Gyp, it's rather queer work, a chap's end
ing everything up so all at once, and starting out
fresh."

" Ending everything np ? *'

" The old high school clays, — there were a jolly
set of boys there, Gypsy, no mistake — and home and
mother and all together."

" Yes," said Gypsy, musingly, " it seems as if
you needed something to start on, doesn't it ? '*

"What do you mean ? "

"Why, I don't know exactly; something to
make you know what to do and not make mistakes."

" I don't believe you know what you're talking
about," said Tom. But Gypsy did know very well.
She had a thought which it was hard for her to
express, and which Tom's manner of receiving it
stopped short. But she did notforgeti^; it came
up another time.

" Let's go ashore ; I'm tired of this," said Tom,
suddenly. Gypsy took her oar, and they rowed
ashore in silence.

io Gypsy's Sowius and Re aping.

" Gypsy ! " said Tom, when they had walked a
little way.

" Tom ! "

14 How much do you suppose father's going to put
me on a year ? "

Gypsy felt at once that she had come to the root
of matters ; this was what Tom had come out into
the barn to talk about.

" I don't know, I'm sure. How much ? "

" Only six hundred."

" On ly six hundred ! Why, Tom, I think that's
ever so much."

" That's because you're a girl," said Tom, with
his superior smile, " and that's all you know."

" Why, if I had six hundred dollars ! " began
Gypsy. But Tom interrupted.

" I'd as lief be put on rations and kept in a guard-
house while I'm about it. I call it mean."

"Mean! Why, Tom, father wouldn't be mean
for anything! He'll give you every cent he cau
afford, and you know it. Why, Tom ! "

" Well," said Tom, rather abashed by the flash in
Gypsy's eyes, " I didn't mean exactly that, I suppose,
I think he means to do about right by me ; but 1
call it pretty small potatoes. Why, Gypsy, there
are fellows there who grumble and ' swear at beiug
cut off with two thousand, Frank Rowc says."

" But you can't do everything the other boys do,"
eaid Gypsy ; " some of them are a great deal richer
than you, you know. Besides, 1 don't see how you

>A> Sowing and Reaping. 1 1

could use more than six hundred dollars if you tried
to. If I could get a hundred, I shouldn't know how
to spend it."

" My dear child," said Tom, patronizingly, " you
cost father three hundred a year, if you cost him a
cent."

" Three hundred ? Oh, I don't believe it ! "

"You do, every bit of it. In the first place,
there's your board isn't a copper short of a hundred
and fifty ; then, you don't get your shoes, and dresses,
and alpacas, and bonnets, and feathers, and nonsense,
and things, under a hundred more ; then — oh, school-
books, and dentistfi' bills, and windows you break,
and plates you smash, and lamp-chimneys, and
nobody knows what not, — you can put it up as
much higher as you choose."

" How fanny ! " said Gypsy. " I didn't suppose
it was more than seventy-five dollars."

" Of course you didn't. Girls never know any-
thing about business ; give them a bank bill and an
account book, and they're just* like fish out of water.
So you see, what with board, clothes, tuition, and
various other little necessaries of life, I could make
way with six hundred."

" But they wouldn't take it all ? "

" Then there are the taxes, — Sigma Eps., and all,
my dear."

" But taxes and Sarah Eps. — would they take it
all ? "

*' Well, a fellow wants something to get drunk on."

2

12 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

" Ob, Tom ! ''

" Well, for sprees— galas — good times — anything
you call it."

" But father thinks it's enough, doesn't he ? "

" I suppose so ; ye-es."

"He must know. I don't exactly understand/'
said Gypsy, slowly.

They had ren-hed the house by this time, and
she passed on ahead of him and went upstairs with
a sober face. She was puzzled and a little troubled
by this talk with Tom.

CHAPTER II.

GONE.

THE twilight was falling into a pleasant room, — a
very pleasant room ; there were pictures upon the
walls, and flowers and knick-knacks upon the
mantel, and books npon the shelves ; there were
bright curtains at the windows, and bright flowers
upon the carpet, and bright figures upon the paper
ing; there was also — a little— dust upon the table:
but then, that was an old story, and one became
used to it. The window was open, and beyond it
hung a sky of flame, golden and ruddy and quivering
deepening and paling, shut in with low, grey clouds.
By this window sat the pleasantest thing in the
room, and that was Gypsy ; her figure and face in
bold relief against the west, her head bent, her

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 13

bright black hair falling against her cheeks. She
looked flushed and excited and tired ; she held some
bit of fancy work in her hands, on which she was
sewing very fast, straining her eyes to catch the last
of the lingering light; scraps of ribbon, and silk,
rtnd tinsel were scattered about her on the floor. I{
was evident that something very mysterious and
important was going on; for her door was locked,
and nobody was allowed to come in.

Somebody thought he ought to come in, though,
and that was Winnie. This young gentleman having
a constitutional inability to comprehend why any
privilege anywhere, under any circumstances, should
be denied to him by anybody, stamped upstairs, and
hammered on the door, and demanded entrance.

" Can't come in."

" Yes, I can come in too. I'm five years old."

" I can't help it if you are. I'm busy. Go away.'"7

(Thump, thump, thump !)

" Winnie, stop making such a noise, and go down
stairs."

" I want (thump, thump !) to come in " (thump !)

" No, you can't ; and when I say so I mean it.
Run away like a good boy."

"You don't (bang!) mean it neither, and I airi'fc
goin' to run away (hammer !) to be a good (bang !) boy."

No answer. Thump ! hammer ! bang ! thump \
Then the enemy changed tactics.

" I say, Gypsy, Delia Guest wants you/'

14 Gypsy's Sowing and Reap'mg.

" Yes, slie does, and I was a-goin' to tell you so at
the beginning only it — well, it gives me a sore throat
to holler through the key-hole. She wants to see
you like ev9rything."

" I don't believe it." But there was a rustle as if
Gypsy had dropped her work and were becoming
interested.

" Well, she does, 'n she says she's got the funniest
thing to tell you. Let me come (thump !) in,"

" Oh, Delia always thinks she has something funny
to say. I don't believe this is anything. Tell her
I'm too busy to come."

" Yes, it is anything too. She says it's something
or nuther 'bout George Holraan driving tack-nails
into Mr. Guernsey's chair. I want to come in !"

" Tack-nails into Mr. Guernsey's chair ! — why, I
wonder — no, I can't, though. I can't go, Winnie.
Tell her I'll hear about it to-morrow. I'm doing
something for Tom now, and I can't leave it. Be a
good little boy, and go away and let me finish."

" Tom— Tom— Tom ! It's nothing but Tom all
the time ! " called vanquished Winnie, through the
£ey-hole. " Anyways, I see what you're doin' — so ! "

"What?"

" You're makin' a skating-cap out of green ribbing.
I'm going to tell him."

" Do, dear. Run right along quick. Bo sure you
get it right." And Winnie stamped down-stairs in
good faith.

It was very much aa Winnie had said—" nothing

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 15

but Tom all the time." It is a great day when the
first boy goes to college, and Tom suddenly found
himself of unheard-of and very agreeable importance
in the eyes of all the family. His father must be so
busy and worried over his fitting-out, — afraid he had
given the boy too much money ; then afraid he had
not given him enough ; wishing he had more for him ;
wishing he were a rich mnii like the children's Undo
George ; afraid Tom would never keep his accounts
straight ; half afraid to trust him ; anxious to teach
him properly; wondering if he would be ruined by
college Jife like young Rowe; anxious, too, to arrange
all his plans pleasantly for him ; bringing up nobody
knew how many ledgers and diaries, pens and ink-
bottles, and specimens of paper from the store, that
Tom might take his choice ; changing any and every
arrangement at Tom's suggestion a dozen times a
day ; spoiling him by indulgence one minute, and
worrying him by anxiety the next; behaving, gene
rally, very much like Mr. Breynton. Tom was used
to his father, and, though often worried out of good
temper by his nervous peculiarities and particularities,
yet he undoubtedly loved him, and loved him more
than ever in these last days of home-life. He would
have been a very ungrateful boy if he had not.

As for his mother, who could tell what there was
that she did not do ? For weeks she had scarcely
been seen without her thimble. No one but herself
knew exactly how much sewing she had done. So
many shirts to be cut, button-holes to make, wrist-

f 6 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

bands to stitch ; so much mending and mating over}
so much planning and contriving to make a little go
a great way j so much care to sponge up old coats and
re-bind old vests, that might save the new a little, and
yet never make the boy ashamed of them. Such pies
and dough-nuts, such cookies and stray bunches of
jrapes, and mellow, golden pears, as she had collected
on the pantry shelf, to adorn the table during Tom's
" last days," or to tuck into corners of his trunk.
Such scraps of gentle lessons about this strange life
into which he was going as she gave him sometimes,
when they sat together in the twilight; such soft
kisses as fell on his forehead whp.n she said good-night
at last, — these were best of all ; and so Tom thought,
though he never said so. Was there ever a boy of
seventeen who did ?

Neither was Winnie by any means inactive. For
ten days before Tom went, had he not spasmodic
attacks of " popping corn for Tom, sir, and you might
just let him alone, sir? " And did he not collect just
twenty-five corns, of which twenty were burnt, and
three had never " popped " at all, tie them up in an
old lace bag, and carry them in his pocket morning,
noon, and night, to say nothing of sleeping with
them under his pillow ? And is it not recorded that
the bag burst, and the contents one by one grew
** small by degrees and beautifully less," but that
Winnie didn't mind that in the least; how he finally
pinned it with a rusty pin on the cleanest collar ho
'luuld find in the trunk, and how he believes to this?

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 1 7

day that Tom ate every one of those corns, with a faith
that amounts to sublimity ?

Even Patty must contribute her mite, and, having
a vague idea that a collegian was always glad of an
addition to his library, what should she do but pur
chase a Biography of the Blessed Mary, profusely
illustrated in gamboge and vermilion, and hope
." Misther Tom would take it kindly and be a good boy
poor fellow ! "

But to no one in the family was Tom's going away
just what it was to Gypsy. Even his mother could
not miss him as she should. Tom was very much to
her. Since they were little children it had been just
so. They had rolled hoop, and played marbles, and
played horse, arid b^ked mud pies together. As they
grew older, no boating, riding, skating, and base-ball
were quite complete unless they could share them
together. Tom was very proud of Gypsy, — " she
didn't scream or faint; and if he had any particular
abhorrence it was a screaming, fainting girl. Sho
could handle her oar very well — really very well —
under his teaching. She was always on hand for any
run, and never spoilt things by ' being nervous.'
Besides, she mended a fellow's gloves without scolding,
and if you put her in a parlour she was as much of a
lady as anybody."

Gypsy was very proud of Tom. " Tom was so
tall. Tom was handsome. All the girls liked Tom.
Tom was so generous, too, and good, and let her go
about with him. Tom. never scolded. Make fun of

i8 Gypsy9 s Sowing and Reaping.

her ? Oh, yes, he did that, but she didn't care ; sho
should miss that as ran oh as anything. To have Tom
gone, — gone hour after hour, day in and day out,
week upon week, — why, it seemed like cutting a piece
of her life right out."

Some such thought as this was in her mind as
sho sat alone in the twilight which had gathered and
deepened, her work lying idly in her lap — it was
quite too dark to sew now — and her eyes looking
sadly off into the dying west. In the midst of the
thought there came a great noise; a banging and
pounding and scraping on the garret floor; then a
banging, and pounding, and scraping, and jouncing,
arid bouncing down the stairs. Gypsy jumped up,
wondering what had happened, and opened the door
to see. A huge brown trunk, and Tom behind it.

" Oh, Tom ! "

"Oh, Gypsy!"

" Not the trunk, so soon?"

" Yes, the trunk, so soon. Going to begin to
pack to-morrow morning, so I thought I'd have her
on hand, as I hadn't anything else to do this particular
minute."

" Pack to-morrow !"

" Couldn't pack Sunday very well. Don't you
remember what the catechism says about it ?"

" But it seems so — so — "

"So what?"

" So — why, so exactly as if you were going off."

Tom sat down on the trunk to fan himself with

' 3 Sowing and Reaping. 19

his bat and laugh. Gypsy did not join in the laugh;
she slipped away, and when Tom had carried the
trunk down, and dusted it out (with a clean hand
kerchief), and put in his blacking-box on top of his
shirt, "just to see how things were going to look,"
he missed her. After a long and fruitless hunt, he
went up to the garret.

" Gypsy, are you here ? "

Something stirred faintly in an old trunk that
stood under the eaves, and there sat Gypsy all in a
heap, with something very suspiciously bright in both
eyes. Tom stared.

"If 'you could inform the inquiring mind what
you are supposed to be doing ? "

" I believe — I came up to — cry," said Gypsy.

" My dear, I would not be such a goose."

" On the whole, I don't think I will," said Gypsy,
ami jumped out of the trunk, rubbing both fists into
her eyes.

As they went past her room —

" What were you locked up so long for to ni^ht- ?"
asked Tom.

" Oh, something, I'll let you know— let me see
— Sunday night, I think."

" You needn't bother yourself so much about me,*'
said Tom, looking a little surprised. " You're always
doing something. I should like to know how many
shirts you helped mother make. Haven't seen you
for three weeks but that you've had your fist stuck
into one of my stockings, darning it,"

so Gypsy*s Sowing and Reaping.

" The fist ? Well, you needn't talk about it, Tom-
I like to do things for you."

Tom walked off whistling. But Tom looked
pleased.

The next day came the packing, and this was, as
packings always are, rather doleful work for every
body. Poor Gypsy thought it was a little more than
she could stand.

" Oh, Tom, how bare the closet looks — where did
I put your brown woollen stockings ? — and there's the
table with the cloth off, just as if you'd really gone !

" Here's your box of paper collars, — oh, what will
you do without anybody to make you new neck-ties;
you always did wear them out so fast ! Here's your
Virgil. Don't want it ? Do you remember how you
used to sit up in the hay and read me stories out of
it ? We shan't do that any more !

" Oh, Tom, what shall I do on nights when I come
home from school, and you're not here? — here's your
little clothes-brush — and when I go boating — Mother,
did you put that cologne-bottle down in the corner ?
— and when I come into your room and sit down and
look- oh, Tom!"

This was rather forlorn work for Tom, and at last
he broke out —

" I say, Gyp, you'll make a fellow homesick be
fore his time. Say something sort of gay and festive,
can't you ? "

Gypsy's face flushed as she bent over to wrap up
a picture and put it in the trunk. Her good sense

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 21

told her that she had been doing a thoughtless thing.
Her good heart taught her how to bring back the old
merry Gypsy at a moment's notice. Tom heard no
more sighs.

" I'm glad your last night is Sabbath night," said
nis mother, when it came.

" I wonder what's the reason people always love
each oilier 'more Sunday nights," said Gypsy, pushing
her footstool a little nearer to Tom. " It's funnyt
isn't it?"

"It's Tom's last night," said Winnie to Patty,
" and you can just give me some of that rharboob
preserve. Mother's in the parlour. I had two flab-
jacks for supper. Don't you wish Tom would go off'
to college every night ? "

" Did yon put your wallet in your inside vest
pocket, Tom, as I advised ? " asked Mr. Breynton,
several times in the pauses of the evening. And the
last time he asked to- see it, and slipped in an extra
five-dollar bill.

The sieging, and the quiet talk, and the hymns
they said, and most of all, his father's prayer, made
Tom very still. Towards the end of the evening he
slipped away for a few minutes, and Gypsy followed
him. She found him out on the doorsteps, with his
hat pushed down over his forehead.

"Want me, Tom?"

"Yes, sit down."

She sat down beside him, and putting up her hand
on his shoulder, began to stroke him in a comical,

12 Gypsy1 s Sowing and Reaping.

demure way, very much as she would a kitten, —
Gypsy never did things exactly like other people.
But Tom liked it.

" Homesick, Tom ? "

" No," growled Tom, pushing his hat savagely
over his eyes.

" Not a bit, dear ? "

The hat went nearly down to his chin.

" Homesick before I'm out of the house ? What
nonsense you talk, Gypsy ! "

Tom got up and strode severely up and down the
yard several times. Then he came back and seemed
to feel better.

" I wonder if you'll ever think about us Sunday
nights," said Gypsy, indiscreetly.

Tom began to cough. It was some time before
he thought it necessary to make any reply. When
he did, he said —

" My dear Gypsy, you don't understand about
these things. You are a girl. Fellows at college
have plenty to think of, but then I don't expect to —
forget you exactly — no." And the wonderful part of
it was that Tom had to get up and walk down the
yard again.

" I hope you won't get hazed," said Gypsy, pre
sently. Tom's young eyes flashed.

" I should like to see them try it, that's all. I'd
shoot the first man that touched me. The only thing
is, father won't let me have a revolver, which I think
is rruorh on the Trojans."

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 23

•' Can't ho afford it ? "

" Oh, I think so. Bat he's afraid I should shoot
myself, or something, I don't know what. As if I
weren't old enough to take care of myself! "

" I hope you'll have a nice time," said Gypsy,
thinking best to change the subject.

" Of course I shall ; a regular jolly. I haven't
looked forward to college all my life for nothing. I
mean to get all the fan I can out of it."

" How splendid it'll be ! I wish I could go. Bat
then you go to study, you know, father says, and
mother too."

" Oh, stady, yes, of course/' said Tom, carelessly ;
" but I mean to have a good time anyway"

Gypsy looked a little troubled. She knew how Tom
felt, and she was so sure that she should feel exactly
the same way if she were in his place that she had
not the conscience to scold him ; at the same time,
she doubted if he were quite right about it. She had
a dim idea that when people went to college "just
for fun," they did not come out of it quite as good as
they went in ; a flitting thought of Francis Howe ; a
shudder at the bare possibility that her brother
should ever be like Sarah's. This may have had
something to do with her answer; for she said,
speaking low and earnestly —

" Tom, do you remember my saying, out in the
boat, that I wished you had something to start on ? "

" 1 think so."

44 Well, I do wish just that, I can't explain, — T

24 Gypsy's Sowi?ig and Reaping.

never can explain tilings, you know, Tom ; but I've
got an idea there somewhere, now really." This with
a curious, piquant look, half laughing, half sober. Tom
saw the sober part of it, and answered accordingly.

" I suppose you mean what people call principle,
only you don't know what you are driving at. You
don't think I'm such a horrible sinner, do you,
Gypsy?"

"No, Tom, -why no!"

" Well, I think I'm about as good as most fello^ws,
am I not ? "

** Better ! " said Gypsy, vehemently ; " ever so
much better. Why, I don't know any other boy in
Yorkbury half as good as you ! "

"Well, then, I think you needn't trouble about
me," said Tom.

Gypsy looked puzzled and made no reply. Pre
sently she pulled something out of her pocket.

"Tom dear?"

Tom looked up and saw a broad blue ribbon,
studded at each end with heavy silver crosses ; in
the centre a strip of silver card-board on which was
the one word " Gypsy " sowed in Gypsy's own bright
hair.

" I don't know that you'll care anything about it,
but it was all I could make that was all my own. I
tried a lot of things, and spoilt them. That's my
Jiair, and if you see liny little frizzled ends, you
needn't look, — such a time as I had with thorn, and
they would keep sticking out."

Gypsy's So ving and Reaping. 25

" That's prime," said Tom, turning it about in his
fingers as if he were hunting for a handle to take
hold by. " What is it— a necktie ? "

" Neck-tie ! Tom Breynton ! Don't you know
book-marks when you see them ? "

" Oh, a book-mark, is it? Very good. Thanks
are due. Where shall I put it, in my Homer or
Latin Prose ? "

" It's for — your Bible," said Gypsy, hesitating.
She wanted to add, " And if you would only pleaso
to read it every night, Tom." Bat she did not. Can
you guess why, girls ? Because she could not ask of
him what she did not do herself? Exactly. I
wonder if you think she felt just then a little sorry —
or not.

What she did not say, I am inclined to think that
his mother did ; for after he had gone to his room,
they had a long talk together, and when it was over
and Tom was left to himself, he hid his head under
the bed-clothes and was still a marvellously long
time.

The cold grey light of Monday morning woke
Gypsy from a dream that President Woolsey had
expelled Tom from college for not reading the Bible.
She started up to find that it was a quarter past five,
and Tom was already up and eating his breakfast.

How short that breakfast seemed ; how strange
the early light; how odd the merry singing of the
birds ! Gypsy wondered if they did not know that
Tom was going, and what they could possibly find to

i6 Gypsy's Soivmg and Reaping.

be so happy about. Going — really going ; it seemed
like part of her night's dream ; she sat watching
Tom's face, his merry lips and faint moustache, his
handsome eyes and curling hair, just as one would
look at a picture that one was going to burn up.
Half laughing, half crying, she packed up his
luncheon, and stuffed his pockets with golden pears,
arid jumped on his trunks while he strapped them
down, and listened to the coach rumbling up, and
then she ran out into the yard and turned her back
to everybody.

" Good-bye, mother. Yes, my money's all right,
father, Here, Winnie, give us a kiss, sir. Patty,
you there ? Good-bye to you all. I'll write as soon
as I get there. The small trunk, John, in the entry
— all right ! Now, Gypsy, Gypsy ! Where is the
child ? "

Her arms were round his neck, and her head was
on his shoulder ; she followed him out to the gate,
kissing and clingicg to him, quite determined not to
cry, and making up by the means a series of horrible
faces.

" Oh, Tom, what shall I do without you ? what
shall I do ? "

"Shake Winnie and break lamp-chimneys," began
Tom, after his usual style ; but choked and stopped
short.

" I don't know what a fellow's going to do with
out you, Gypsy," — gave her a great hug, jumped oa
tho boy with John, and never looked buck.

Gypsy9 s Sowing and Reapmg. 27

Gypsy watched the coach rumble away, grow dim
in the clouds of dust, grow small, grow less, become
a speck, vanish utterly. Then she went into Tom's
desolate room, bare of its familiar pictures, books, and
clothes, strange and cold for want of the merry
eyes, the ringing laugh, the eager step that had be
longed to it and been a part of it since the boy was a
baby. She locked the door, sat down on A heap of
old newspapers in the middle of the floor, and did
what Gypsy very seldom did, — cried as hard as she
could cry.

CHAPTER III.

THE FIRST LETTER.

TOM took two days to reach New Haven, stopping
over Monday night at an uncle's in Springfield.
On Tuesday night at seven o'clock, he was sitting
in his room alone, feeling, to tell the truth — well,
we won't say homesick, but something very much
like it. His chum was gone out, though that was no
great loss, for the boy was a comparative stranger to
him ; they had seen each, other for the first time,
when they came to be examined in the summer, and
had engaged rooms together because it happened to
be convenient ; Hall took, as every one did, a fancy
to Tom at first sight, and both being tired out with
tramping after boarding-places, they had met in Elm
Street, found just such rcoms as they wanted, and

3

28 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

were glad enough to unite their fortunes for the
eake of getting them.

Tom had reached New Haven in the afternoon,
unpacked his trunks, put away his clothes and books,
hung his pictures, bargained with his landlady for
the luxury of a chair with four legs (there being none
in the room possessed of more than two or three),
gone to supper at his club and come home again ;
he had read a newspaper, and duwted his table,
arranged and re-arranged his books, eaten some of
his mother's pears, looked his photograph album
through three times from beginning to end, rather
wished he could look into the windows at home and
see what they were all doing, and now he was tipped
back in his chair, — the four-legged one, — against the
wall, wishing that he knew what to do next, and
that it would not have such a way of growing dark
early.

For some reason, — whether there could have
been any homesickness about it or not we will not
undertake to decide, — the solitude and the gathering
twilight grew at last intolerable. He brought his
chair down with a jerk, tossed on his cap, and started
out for a walk. He strolled along past the colleges,
and under the elms, hanging somewhat yellow and
sere now in their tossing, netted arches, tried to look
at the Sophomores as if he thought them no better
than himself, did not succeed very well, wished he
were through Freshman year, and finally, by way of
something to do, decided to run down to the office,

's Sowing and Reaping. 29

Not tli at there would bo anything there for him ; of
course there was no chance of that, though he wished
there were, sadly enough ; but he would go down
just for the fun of the thing. So he went, and care
lessly ran his eye over the list of advertised letters,
through the A's and B's, and was just turning away
when, lo and behold ! — " Breynton, Thomas. '

" Not from home so soon, surely," thought Tom.
t5ut it was from home, directed in Gypsy's hand,
— and the hand, by the* way, was very much like
Gypsy ; sharp and decided, and adorned with various
little piquant flourishes, but with a remarkable
tendency to run over the line and under the line,
and everywhere but on the line, and not entirely
guiltless of blots, — to Thomas Breynton, Esq., Fresh
man, Yale College, New Haven, Conn., U. S. A.,
North America, Western Hemisphere."

" The rogue ! " said Tom between his teeth, as
he took it from the hand of the laughing clerk ; " I
think she'll get her pay for this."

Hall met him on the steps as he passed out tear-
yig open the envelope in a great hurry :

"I say, Breynton, hilloa! That you? Come
Aver to the Tontine with a fellow."

The Tontine was no place fur Tom, and he knew
it. Whether he would have preferred it to his
lonely room and the dreary, gathering twilight, if it
had not been for that letter, I cannot say. But at
any rate, Hall had t'his for an answer;

M No, thank you. I have something else to do.

30 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

Don't you wish you had a sister to write to you the
day you leave, sir ?"

" Don't know but I do," said Hall, looking on
rather wistfully. Tom walked off radiant.

The dreary twilight was dreary no longer ; the
dark and lonely rooms seemed all at once like home.
He lighted his lamp, tipped back his chair, and read
as fast as most college boys read their first letter
from home, I fancy : —

" MONDAY, September the something or other,
One o'clock P.M., in my room, on the bed.

" BEST BELOVED OF THOMASES : —

" Here you've been gone only seven hours, and I
have so much to say I can't begin to say it and it
isn't of any use and I don't know what I'll do when
you've been gone a week only I've asked father to
bring me up a ream of paper from the store because I
know I shall use as much as that before you get home.

"Oh, dear ! I haven't put in a scrap of punctua
tion in that long sentence, only one funny little comma
that looks exactly like a pol — polly — how do you spell
polliwog ? — at the beginning ; and I never could cor
rect it in the world, for I shouldn't have a sign of an
idea what belonged where. I'm going to put in a lot ;
of semi-colons ; along here to ; make up ;

" What do you suppose ? — Miss Cardrew asked
Fanny French to-day what a semi-colon was, and she
said she believed it was a place where ministers went
to school. Did you ever ? I laughed till I choked

Gypsy's Solving and Reaping. 31

and was just as red in the beet as a face — I meaii —
well, you change it round right yourself; I can't
stop. Then Miss Cardrew told me I'd laughed
enough, and that made me laugh all the harder, and
Delia Guest, she went into a coniption, — you know
she always does when anything happens, anyway, —
and we had the greatest time you ever knew.

" But, then, this isn't the beginning, and I meant
to commence there. I always do jump at things so.

" You see, aftsr you'd gone, I just went into your
room, and — don't you tell, will you? but I did — I
cried like a little goose. You'd better believe your
table looked homesick enough, and your closet with
nothing but your linen coat hanging up. I banged
the door to, I got so mad looking at it.

"Ow ! look at that blot. I was only just shaking
my pen round a little to get off some of the ink. 1
never : if it hasn't gone all over the led-quilt! I got
up here to write because it's easier, and then — well,
Fornehow, my chairs are always filled up with things.
What do you suppose mother'll say ? Isn't it a
shame ?

" Well, after I thought I'd cried enough, you
know, Winnie 'd been banging at the door so long I
thought I'd let him in, and you ought to have seen
him ! He had on . one of your old coats that mother
gave to Patty to give to her cousin's husband that
has the consumption, and he^d corked a moustache
that went clear out to his ears, and then he had a,
Mother Goose under his arm ; said he was going to

32 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

be Tom now, and have his room, and study Aunt
Abbieses (I suppose he meant Anabasis) ; he didn't
wish to be disturbed; I might go away so he could
lock the door.

" Well, you see, that made me laugh, only it would
have been just as easy to cry again, and mother was
wiping her eyes, and father was coughing and look
ing round, and so I went out doors to see if I
couldn't laugh some way. It is so horrid not to feel
like laughing, isn't it ?

" Then Sarah Howe came over, and she didn't seem
:o mind it a bit because Francis was gone ; but then
she says he's been gone so much, now it's Sopho
more year. I wonder if I shan't mind it by the time
you're a Soph. She says I shan't, but I don't believe
any such a thing. Then, you see, I just felt as if I
must have a good time somehow, and the kitty came
out, and we all went to playing, and I got into Mrs.
Surly's yard before I thought. You know I never do
think, anyway. So, you see, the puppy he came out,
and he went at the cat, and she put up her back and
ran off mewing, and he after her, and I after both of
them. TLat dog he wrung a cat's neck once, and I
wasn't going to have him wringing ours, so I never
thought, and she went down into the cellar kitchen,
and I went too, and I never looked nor anything, and
I went splash ! into Mrs. Surly's tub of starch, and
i»ver it went, all on me, and the floor, and the cat, and
the puppy, and Mrs. Surly.

" Well, it wasn't very hot, and we weren't any-

Gypsy's Soiling and Reaping. 33

body burnt very much but the puppy, and good
enough for him, but I thought I should go off laugh
ing, and you ought to have heard Mrs. Surly scold.
She should like to know if iliat was the way iny ma
brought me up, and if I didn't know children ought
to be at their book instead of tumbling down their
neighbours' cellars and upsetting their neighbours'
starch, and .burning their neighbours' dogs, and she
should tell my ma of me and my conduct before the
Bun went down.

" So what should she do but come marching over
just before dinner, with the longest lingo, but of
course I'd told mother all about it beforehand, and
she tried to look sober and tell me I must be careful,
but I could see her laughing right out of her eyes the
whole time.

" We had mince-pie for dinner, and I missed you
more than ever. How you did use to pull out the
raisins ! We had some tomatoes too.

" Oh, Tom, I do miss you ! Everybody sends a
world of love. I've been counting the weeks till you
come home. You have the nicest part of it. It's
always harder to stay at home and think about it,
than it is to go off and do it, I think.

" It does seem to me as if I thought about you all
the time pretty much. If you were to be such a boy
as Francis Rowe, I believe I shouldn't know anything
what to (lo.

" How horrid it would be if you were to learn to
swear ! Please don't. But of course you wouldn't.

34 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

" Write me all about the Sophs, atid who gets
hazed, and everything. I should think it would bo
perfectly mag, to go to college. I think it's real
mean girls can't.

" Wouldn't it be nice if you could peep in the door
now, and let me hug you ?

'•' Your very loving

" GYPSY.

" P.S. — I send a blue neck- tie. I meant to get it
done before you went, but I didn't. I sewed on it
some in school, and Miss Cardrew made me lose my
recess for it— just like her ! Blue is real becoming
to you, you know. You used to look dreadfully hand
some in the other ; something like — well, like Haroun
Alraschid, I think ; then sometimes like Major Win-
throp. The girls used to go crazy over his photo
graph, because it did look so much like you. They
haven't any of them got sucli a brother, and I guess
they know it. Why, if there isn't another blot, and I
haven't any more idea how it came there than Adam.

" G."

On Friday night, as Gypsy was passing her father's
store on the way home from school, Mr. Simms, the
clerk, came to the door and called her.

" Here's a letter for j ou, Miss Gypsy ; it caine in
with the rest after your father had gone up to the
house. It's a — really a very peculiar-looking letter.
But then there always is something peculiar about
you, you know, my dear."

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 35

" Oh, thank you, Mr. Simms— yes, I know I'm
always doing things out of the way, but — dear me !
I never did ! Did you ever ? That old Tom ! Why
what did the postman say r* "

Tom had certainly " paid her " richly. The letter
was enclosed in a flaring crimson envelope, con
spicuous anywhere, especially so at Yorkbury where
crimson envelopes were few and far-between, and it
bore this inscription : —

"To Miss Jemima Breynton, B. B. Terror of
puppies and elderly ladies. Enemy-in-especial to
starch-tubs and study-hours. Enemy-in-general to
the peace and order of society in

Yorkbury, Vermont."

" 1 have been wondering what B. B. could possibly
stand for, my dear," oberved Mr. Simms, mildly.

" Oh, that's a secret between Tom and me," said
Gvpsy, between her shouts of laughter, and started
for home on the run, to show the letter to her
mother.

If any reader should share Mr. Simms's curiosity
to such an extent as to suffer seriously from loss of
sleep or appetite, he is hereby confidentially referred
to the first volume of Gypsy's history for a solution
of the mystery.

I think it necessary to say, however, for the sake
of my reputation as a historian, that this misdirecting
of letters is a sorry joke, with about as much wit in
it as there is apt to be in young people's fun, and

3 6 Gypsy's Sowing arid Reaping.

that I am not giving my sanction to any such lawless
proceedings.

The letter, though so obviously directed to
Gypsy, contained only a slip for her ; the note itself
was for her mother.

" A letter from Tom ! a letter from Tom ! a
letter from Tom /" shouted Gypsy, rushing into the
house. " Mother, do come and read it, for I'm in
such a hurry to hear. Mother, father, all of you ! "

And all of them came, down to "Winnie with his
hands and mouth full of bread and butter, and Patty,
with broom and duster.

" How soon he has written — the dear boy ! '*
eaid his mother, flushing with pleasure, and read
a)»md to a breathless audience : —

•' MY DEAR MOTHER,

"I reached here safely Tuesday, P.M.; had a jolly
time Monday night at Uncle Jeb's; he has a
decidedly pretty daughter, and I want her asked up to
Yorkbury some vacation,

u Old Yale seems to conduct herself with pro
priety, and is not, inirabile dictu (' His old Latin ! '
put in Gypsy), quite as much impressed by the
arrival and presence of your distinguished son as
might naturally be expected, and would certainly be
becoming in her. It's rather a jump from graduating
at Yorkbury and feeling yourself of some importance,
to being nothing but a 'little Freshy,' and being
treated by those unutterable Sophs as if you were a

Gypsy's Sowing and Rea/iirig. 37

lower order of animal, somewhere in the region of
the oyster; at any rate, something to which the
gorilla would be a Milton. I met Francis Rowe in
Chapel Street last night, and he cut me dead ; took
DO more notice of me than if he'd never heard of such
a being. That's the way they all do. You'll say it's
ridiculous and ungentlemanly, and I suppose it is ;
but boys will be boys, and college boys never think
about being gentlemen, as far as I see. It doesn't
strike me now that I shall do so when I'm a Soph ;
but there's no telling.

"They're hazing like every thing this year. Nobody
has touched me, and I should like to see them try it,
though a lot of them came into our house last night.
We had all of us sat up till midnight expecting them,
and were all ready. They banged open the door,
and went into one of the fellows' room, and set him
up on a stove, and made him make a speech. Then
they broke open his trunk, and tossed out all his
things, and made him drink about half a pint of
vinegar and pepper. That's very mild treatment,
however ; in the proper sense of the word, it isn't
* hazing ' unless you have your head shaved, or are
ducked to death under a pump, or taken out of bed
and thrown out of a second-story window into a
snow-bank.

" Hall and I have each of us bought a good- sized
billy, and we haven't the slightest objections to using
them if occasion requires. I don't believe wo shall
be touched.

38 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

" Am having a jolly time ; study comes a little
rough at first, though. I should like to look in at
home a minute, well enough. Love to father and
Winnie and all. My respectful regards to Patty
Will write to father next week.

" Your pears and dough-nuts taste good, I tell
you. I say, little mother, I wonder if there aro
many fellows have just such a mother as you."

" TOM."

" P.S. While I write, some Sophs going by aro
holloing — ' Put out that light, Freshy ! Fresh, put
out that light, I say — quick ! ' Freshy does not put
it out, and there come two stones bang against my
window. You're pretty good-looking, but you can't
come in, — the blinds are shut."

" What's on your slip of paper, Gypsy ? w
thoy all asked, after the letter was read and dis
cussed.

" Oh, nothing much," said Gypsy, folding it up
and putting it in. her pocket. This was what was
on it: —

" DEAR GYP,

" Since you are interested in the fancy depart
ment, I hope you will be pleased with the accom
panying envelope.

" Thankfl for the neck-tie : it is becoming, of
course. Do I ever wear anything that isn't, my dear ?
Your letter was prime, and came in the nick of

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 39

time. (N.B. I am aspiring to the position of class
poet, and this is by way of practice.)

" Don't you tell, it will bother father, and mother
will look so sober, but I made a pretty bad fizzle in
Homer to-day ; don't know how it came about
exactly, but it was too warm to study, and last night
there were some fellows in. A fizzle you know isn't
as bad as a flunk ; that's when you can't say anything.
I stumbled through some, and made up some more ;
but somehow it didn't hang together very well.
Mean to make a rush to-morrow, and make up for it.
Be a good little girl. Try Mrs. Surly's puppy with
a lucifer match — light it right under his nose, and

see if he doesn't jump."

« iji »»

Awhile after the letter came, Gypsy silently stole
away and out of the house.

"Where are you going?" called her mother;
" it's almost tea-time."

" I'll be back soon," said Gypsy. "I'm going to
ran down to Peace Maythorne's a minute."

" I suppose she's gone to tell her about Tom's
letter," observed her mother, smiling ; " it is strange
how that child goes to Peace when anything happens ;
if she's very glad or very sorry, Peace must know all
about it."

"It is strange, and Peace is so poor, and has
no education either, Mary," said Mr. Breynton,
musingly : " you're not afraid of her getting any
harm, my dear ? "

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

His wife laughed.

" Harm from Peace Maytliorne ! She's one of
Gypsy's greatest blessings ; she acts like a balance-
wheel on all the child's fly-away notions. Besides,
she is not exactly uneducated ; suffering teaches
deeper and better than books, sometimes. Poor
thing ! "

" The doctors can never do anything for her, I
suppose ? "

"Oh, no."

Gypsy meantime was making her way as Gypsy
almost always made her way — on the hop, skip, and
jump — down through the crowded, wretched streets
which led to Peace Maythorne's home. It seems
rather hard, perhaps, to talk about a Jwme, when one
has nothing but a weary bed in one bare room, and a
slow life of pain and utter dependence. \7ery hard,
Gypsy used to think it was ; the mournfulness and
the pity of it grew into her love for this crippled
girl, and made of it something very tender, very
reverent ; quite unlike her love for any of the strong,
Comfortable, happy girls at school. Unconsciously,
too, she grew herself more gentle, more thoughtful,
the more she saw of Peace.

The very door of that hushed and lonely room she
opened as Gypsy never opened doors anywhere else,
—softly.

Peace turned her quiet face over on the pillow in
surprise that afternoon, at the sight of her standing
by the bed.

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping, 4 1

•' Why, how still you must have been ! I didn't
hear you come m at all."

" Do you want me ? I suppose I do tire you to
death."

" Want you ? Oh, I am so glad ! "

" That's nice," said Gypsy, in her honest fashion ;
" I do so love to have people glad to see me."

The sunlight which flooded the room fell all over
Peace ; her face in it looked pitifully thin and pale ;
paler than usual, though smiling as it. always was,
and quiet.

" What's the matter ? " said Gypsy, abruptly,
looking down on it.

" Matter ? Oh, nothing. Did I say anything
was the matter ? "

" No, you never do. But something is. What has
happened ? "

" I didn't sleep much, — well, not any, last night,
that's all. Come, Gypsy, let's not talk about
me."

" But what kept you awake ? " persisted Gypsy.
Peace made no reply.

" Peace, I do believe it was your aunt ! "

Peace coloured painfully, but she would not speak.
Just what the girl had to bear in her orphaned,
dependent life, probably no one ever knew. This was
sure, — the physical suffering was the least of it. Yet
the woman to whose charge her weakness and her
pain were left, was never consciously unkind to her
brother's child ; she was one of those people — and

42 Gypsy* s Sowing and Reaping.

their name is Legion—who "mean well," but "don't
know how"

" What has she been saying to you ? " said Gypsy,
in a savage undertone.

" Oh, nothing much ; she came home tired, and of
course she couldn't help wishing I could work, and —
Gypsy, I don't want to talk about it. She didn't
know I cared. She is very good. She put my tea
back on the stove this morning because it was so weak
the first time ; she did, really, Gypsy."

" She'd have been a heathen if she hadn't ! M ex
ploded Aunt Jane's sworn enemy. Peace understood
that it was all for love of her, but it gave her more
pain than help when Gypsy talked like this. She
laid her hands down in Gypsy's in a weak, appealing
way, and said —

"Gypsy — please!" and Gypsy stopped short
only tapping her foot angrily on the floor.

"If you would only talk about yourself !" said Peace.

*' That's what I always do when I get with you.
Then if I say anything else, I say it all wrong, and I
don't see that I'm any good any way. I believe I'll
get a piece of court plaster and paste it over my
mouth, and then the world will be so much the safer."

" But you had something to say when you came
in," said Peace, smiling ; "I saw it in your eyes. What
is that, — from your brother ? "

Gypsy answered by unfolding the slip of paper
and giving it to Peace. Whether it was quite right
to show to any one else what Tom was not willing

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping . 43

that his mother should see, she never stopped to
think. She had no secrets from Peace Maythorne.
If this were to be, as she vaguely felt that it might
be, the first of many others like it, she felt sure that
she never could keep them from her. Fortunately,
Peace was the very model of a confidante — as kindly
and inviting as a spring sunbeam j as dumb as a
fetafne.

Peace read it and laid it down.

" Well?'' said Gypsy.

" I don't know ; ought you to show me this ? "

" Oh, Tom wouldn't care ; you're not like anybody
else. He knows I tell you everything. What do you
think ? "

" I am a little sorry. But then all boys will have
bad lessons sometimes, you know."

" Tom ought: not to," said Gypsy, with a little
flash of pride. " He might have been the first scholar
in his class here, instead of the sixth ; Mr. Guernsey
said so. There's no need of his doing so ! "

Peace twisted the paper about her fingers, thinking.

"You see I felt sort of sorry," said Gypsy, "and
eo I thought if I came and told you I'd feel better.
Bat there, I don't see that I can help it."

"You might say something about it \vhon you
write."

" What ? He's so much older, I can't play grand
mother and preach to Tom. If I do, he catches me
up in his arms and runs all round the house with me,
and as likely as not leaves me up on a closet-shelf or

4

44 tZypsy'8 Sowing and Reaping.

out on top of the wood-pile, and that's all the
answer I get ! "

"You needn't preach. Say just what you said to
me, and no more, — I'm sorry."

" Um — well, I don't know but you're right. I'll
think about it."

CHAPTER IV,

THE OUTLINE OF A SHADOW.

ONE gets used to anything, and after a while Gypsy
became used to Tom's being away. It took a few
weeks to be sure ; the first twilights were very dreary
without him, the first bright mornings empty and cold,
the first few Sunday nights it was exceedingly easy to
cry ; then all the fun seemed to have dropped out of
boat-rides and nutting-parties ; hay-cocks and wood
piles were a mockery ; there was a sting iu the sight
of the very cat, now that there was no one to tie tin
dippers to her tail and make her walk through stove
pipes. But after a while, it came to seem a matter
of course that there should be no Tom about;
strange, sometimes, to think that it had ever beer,
otherwise; though his handsome, merry face was just
as often in 1'ier thoughts, he himself just as dear.
Then there were the letters. And such letters ! Eight,
t«n. twelve pages twice a week, from Gypsy to Tom.
A full sheet hurried over in study hours, cnce a week,

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

from Tom to Gypsy, which was more than she ex
pected, and certainly, considering how many letters
Tom bad to write, was a great deal. This was for
the first three weeks. The fourth week Sarah Howe
had a birthday party, and Gypsy was so busy festoon
ing a new white dress with little knots of blue ribbon
that she only wrote to Tom once, and a scrap of a
note at that. The fifth week Tom did not write at all.
Somehow or other it came about after this that
Gypsy — " well, she meant to send off her letters
regularly, of course ; but something was always hap
pening just at the time she wanted to write, and
then she was always losing the mails, and one time
she had her letter all written and ready, and Winnie
dropped it into the well, and — well, you needn't laugh ;
she wourid write three times next week and make up.
But writing letters was horrid work, and there wasn't
half as much to say as there was at first ; besides,
she always blotted her fingers so."

Indeed she had — like a few other sisters — been
more negligent about it than she supposed. She had
occasion afterwards to be very sorry.

Tom said little about himself to any one in hia
letters home. They all noticed that as the term went
on. His letters were very short, very funny, very
much like Tom ; they gave accounts of the hazing, hia
last quarrel with his landlady, the Tutor's Latest, how
the Sophs were beaten at the last " rush," how hard
the seats were at the Chapel, what a pretty girl he
saw out Temple Street yesterday, how many weeka

46 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

there wfcre to the end of the term, and how glad he
should be when it was over. But they heard little
about his studies ; scarcely anything of the friends he
made. His chum was referred to often, but it was
usually " Hall was out late last night and woke mo up
coming in; " or, "Hall is waiting for me to go out
with him ;" or, " Hall is bothering me to translate his
Homer for him, and I don't know any more about it
than he does ;" sometimes, " Hall is a jolly fellow, but
he isn't your style exactly, mother." His mother's
face saddened sometimes as she folded the letters, but
ehe never said why.

So the term passed on, and all thoughts of Tom
merged at last into a happy looking to its end. Ho
would be here in five weeks; he would be here in four;
the four slipped into three ; the three slided into two;
the two were one before they knew it. Ah, it was
pleasant enough to have only days to count.

"I feel precisely like an India-rubber ball," said
Gypsy, confidentially, to Peace.

" An India-rubber ball ! "

" Yes : I want to be on the bounce all the time, and
I can't keep still to save me. I've upset three tumblers
of water, two ink-bottles, and a milk-pitcher, to-day,
jumping round, besides throwing a snow-ball smash !
through Mrs. Surly'e kitchen window. Just think,
Peace, of having your brother come homo to bo
hugged and kissed, in just four days ! "

Peace thought perhaps more than Gypsy meant
her to. She did aot say, " I haven't anybody to kiss.

Gypsy9 s Sowing and Reaping. 47

Oh, Gypsy ! God has given you so much — so much,
and me so little." She did not say this. Peace nevet
complained ; seldom talked about herself. Gypsy's
joy was her joy, and she answered with her bright,
still smile, and eyes that were glad for Gypsy's sake.
But something in the 01uiet eyes — a faint, flitting
shadow, — Peace could not help it — made Gypsy stop
with some merry words unspoken on her lips, and
throw her arms around her neck, and say : —

" Oh, Peace, I never thought ! JUayn't I love you
enough to make up ? "

And a while after, knotting her merry brows as if
over a great new puzzle that she should be much
obliged to anybody for answering —

"I should like to know, Peace Maythorne, what
makes all the good people have the troubles, and
horrid, ugly, wicked people like me, that scold and
get mad, and forget their prayers, and all, live along
just like one of those funny little round sunbeams
coming in there through the hole in the curtain ! "

" Sometimes I can't see anything but a piece of grey
cloud through the curtain,*' said Peace, half tu
herself.

" Sunbeams don't last for ever — no," said Gypsy,
musing a little. " I wonder how they feel rainy
days."

At this she jumped up with a shiver and ran
home.

They were busy days, — these last before Tom
carae. " We must have some lemon pies ; Tom likes

48 Gypsy9 s Sowing ana Reaping.

them," said his mother. "I'm going to make him a
neck-tie," said Gypsy, " and put it in his bureau
drawer, and let him find it." " Tom's comin' home,
and I'm going to hang his room up with lots of pic
tures," said Winnie, and one day, when nobody was
there, in he went with mucilage and scissors, and
pasted a bewilderment of mad dogs, passenger
cars, steamboats, hair-oil advertisements, and other
interesting selections from the newspapers, all
over the pretty pink rosebuds that covered the
walls.

But the last day came, as all last days come, and
the early December twilight fell in upon as pretty
and cosy and eager a group as any college boy need
desire to find waiting for him on his first coming
home. The fire — a wood-fire, for it had such a
cheerful look, Mr. Breynton said — was flaring and
snapping and crackling in the parlour grate ; the
bright curtains were drawn aside so that Tom could
see the light shining far down the road ; the door
open into the dining-room where the tea-table was
set and the silver was flashing ; a tempting odour o/
unknown deliciousness — drop-cakes, perhaps, or
creamy Jenny Lind — stealing in from the kitchen
They were all gathered in the parlour now, listening
for the coach; the mother sitting quietly by the fire;
the father pacing the room a little nervously ; Gypsy
perched on one window-sill and Winnie on the other,
with their noses flattened on the glass ; and Patty's
head pushed in every now and then through the

Gypsy's Soii'ing and Reaping. 49

Jining-room door to keep a sort of angelic watch
over things iri general.

" I should like to know how you can ! " brok
out Gypsy all at once, turning her eyes away fr-»m
the window to snap them at her mother.

" How I can what ? "

" Sit still, — in a chair, just as if Tom we^iA
coming, and — knit ! "

" When you get to be as old as I am, perh&D»
you will find out," said her mother, smiling.

"It's time for the boy to be here," said Mr.
Breynton, making a third at the windows, shading
his eyes from the light.

"I hope he won't get chilled riding up; il'"1 *
cold night."

" I would have taken Billy and gone down ftx
him, only the coach is so much warmer. There's a
fire in his room, I suppose ? "

" Oh, yes ; Gypsy built it herself."

" I guess I did. I filled the stove almost to the
top with pine knots ; Tom always likes pine knots."

" I stuffed in free newspapers," put in Winnie,
anxious for a share of the honours ; " free gre-at big
newspapers 'n some shavings. Besides, I frew in
lots of matches, — they make such funny little blue
blazes. You can play Fourth o' July as well as any
thing."

" Hark ! " said Gypsy. They all tried to listen,
but Gypsy jumped down from the window-sill,
knocked over three chairs and a cricket, and was

50 Gypsy's Solving and Reaping.

out of the door and down the yard before they knev?
what she was about.

" Sleigh-bells, sleigh-bells! The coach! He's
coming, coming, coming ! I see the top of his head,
and the trunk, ana — Oh, Thom-as Breynton ! "

And 'her head was on his shoulder, her arc: a
about his neck, before the rest were down the steps.

" This is something like," said Tom, when supper
was over and they were all sitting around the parlour
fire ; " haven't seen a wood-fire since I went away."

"How does your stove work ?" asked his father.

" Oh; well enough, — when it doesn't smoke, and
I don't forget to put the coal on."

" I used to think sometimes how you were sit
ting down evenings and looking into the fire," said
Gypsy, climbing into his lap ; she thought she should
never be too large to climb into Tom's lap.

" Did you ? " said Tom, with a queer laugh
" well, you had your trouble for Bathing. I was out
with Hall mostly evenings."

" What about the study-hours ? " asked Mr
Breynton.

" Oh, we don't have study-hours at college. I
did the studying round generally when I felt like it
Some jolly good times I had though ! "

His father and mother exchanged glances,

" I do believe you've grown tall," saict Gypsy,
nestling closer to him.

" You have, you mean. People of my age don't
grow tull in three months."

Solving and Reaping. 51

" Grandfather 1 0-oh, just look at your mous-
iache!"

" I should be happy to oblige yoo, but owing t<i
a natural inability to see my mouth -- "

" But how it has grown ! I never saw it till just
this minute, in the light. I never ! I guess the York-
bury girls will rave about your coming back with it."

Handsome Tom drew his forefinger complacently
across the ambitious silky line of darkness which
just escaped looking like a crock, and seemed to
think this very likely.

" Conceited fellow ! You don't deserve a sister
to praise you up. But then it is so becoming ! "
giving him a little squeeze to emphasize her words.

" Gypsy, Gypsy ! you will certainly spoil him."

" Not I. He's past that. Now, Tom, you may
just begin and tell me ail about that funny little
fellow with red hair they hazed so, and that time
you grabbed Tutor somebody or other in the rush,
and then — Oh, what did your landlady's daughter dc
about the brass ring, and - "

" Thomas," interrupted his father, who had been
pacing the room uneasily ever since the remark about
study-hours, "you Laven't told us anything about
your rank. You know I wrote a great many times
about it, but you never took th'e least notice. You
took oration stand at least, I hope ? "

" Confound it ! " said Tom, reddening suddenly,
" do let the studies alone, please, father. A fellow
gets enor gh of them in term-time."

Gh/psy's Sowing and Reaping.

Torn was easily vexed by his father, but very
seldom disrespectful to him. At Mr. Breynton's
reproof everybody was still, and at the silence Tom
coloured again for shame.

" Well, I didn't mean just that, sir ; but I don't
suppose I took the stand you expected of me, and I've
been so bored with books and lessons, I can't bear the
sound of them."

"I don't think you've done right, Tom, not to
keep me acquainted with your rank through the
term," began Mr. Breynton, but was stopped by a
quiet, appealing look from his wife. If Tom deserved
a reprimand, she felt that this was no time to give it.
Her way would have been to wait till she was alone
with him, and he was willing to enter into a quiet,
reasonable talk. But her husband, worried and
nervous, kept on, as worried and nervous people will,
making a bad matter very much worse, because he
had not the self-control or the tact to let it drop.

" No, my dear, the amount of it is, he has been
idling away his time, and he ought to be told of it;
and after all the care and expense we've been to "

Just there, there was a shriek from Winnie, which
the power fails me to describe.

" Ow ! oh ! ugh ! the old thing ! Le' go of me-e-e !
Gypsy's tickliri' me; 'she's dropped a cent down my
neck, and it's co-old ! "

" Couldn't help it, dear, possibly, — such a chance !
Stand up and jump till it drops out, — there! Now,
Tom, tell us about the goose they shut up in Professor

Gypsy's Son ing and Reaping. 53

Hadley's desk ; wasn't it Professor Hadley ? Come5
father, 1 know you want to hear about it, and then
you know you can tell about the Euclid proposition
you tried to make up when you were in college ; I
always do like to hear that."

Gypsy's mother looked up over her knitting with
a quick, searching glance. She did not quite under
stand. Was this a bit of childish fun and chatter and
hurry to get away from a grave subject ? Or was it
a piece of womanly strategy, new and strange in
Gypsy, sprung out of a perception of trouble as new
and strange ? She had not seen Tom's eyes flash, and
his lips shut while his father spoke, — she had not quite
dared to look ; neither had she seen Gypsy start and
quiver in his arms ; but she drew her own conclusions.

The college stories filled up the rest of the evening,
and there was no more trouble. To see Gypsy's eyes
twinkle, and the dimples dance all over her face, and
to hear her laugh ringing out above all the rest
(Gypsy's laugh always reminded one of fountains,
and cascades, and little brooks), one would never have
guessed what she had found out that evening. It had
come in the flash of a moment ; in a moment she
seemed to understand, and wondered that she had not
understood before, all the rubs and jars that were
coming between Tom and his father, all the misery of
them and the wrong. More than this, and worse
than this, came a dim, doubtful suspicion of Tom.
Could it be that he had not done just right in this long
college term ? Could Tom be to blame for anything ?

54 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

This was the first faint outline of the £rst shadow*
of Gypsy's life.

Tom was tired with his journey, and started early
to bed.

" And not a thing unpacked ? " said Gypsy. " I'll
go up with you."

" That trunk isn't packed — well, not exactly after
the patterns/' said Tom, shutting the door. Gypsy
had the straps unfastened before he could get there
(.o help her, and threw open the trunk^ and uttered a
little scream.

" 0-oh ! Why, I never ! "Who ever saw such a
looking mess ? Why, Tom Breynton ! "

" Why, that's nothing," said Tom. " I smoothed
it all over on top so as not to frighten the soul out of
mother's body ; you ought to see the strata under
neath ; that's something like. You see I was in such
a thundering hurry "

"Tom!"

" Well, such a hanged hurry, if you like it
better."

" But I don't like it better. It isn't wicked, of
course, nor anything like that, only — well, you used
to talk like a gentleman before you went to college."

" And now I don't. Thank you, ma'am. Well,
the fact is a fellow doesn't have much time to be a
gentleman in college. If he gets through and saves
his soul, he does well."

TOJI did not say these words lightly, but in a
changed, serious tone, with a sudden flash of trouble

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 55

in his eyes. Gypsy turned to answer him, letting the
cover of the trunk fall in her haste, some eager words
upon her lips. Whatever they were, Tom saw them
coming.

" There ! look out. Didn't that go on your hand ?
I thought it certainly had ; you must be careful, or
you'll chop off all your fingers. As I was about to
observe, my dear, when you were so irapolito as to
interrupt me by criticising my syntax, I was in such
a — hem ! such a hurry that I tossed things in as they
came; and at that, I didn't get the trunk locked till the
porter was dragging it down the last stair. Look out
for the ink-bottles. My prophetic soul tells me there
pre several lying round loose there somewhere."

" I should think so ! Look here, — a pile of clean
shirts with two boots and a rubber, without any paper,
right on top of them, and — oh, a bottle of mucilago
tipped right into your box of paper collars ! Just seo
that jelly tumbler stuck on your best vest ! What's
this in the middle of the pile of handkerchiefs, — a
blacking -box ! Oh, Tom ! your Bible, — that's too
bad ! All scratched up with the clasp of your photo
graph album. Mother'!! be so sorry, and—oh, dear
MiG ! Look at the broken glass and the ink, and the

" Well," 6aid Tom, looking rather subdued, " most
of it's gone into that pasteboard box ; sponge it up
quick before mother sees. Bother it all ! If I were
fin ink-bottle, I shouldn't see any particular occasion
hi tipping over. Hand me the towel, or the pillow-

56 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

case, or something. Newspaper doesn't get it tip
half as quick ! — well, there, we're all right now."

" I should think you'd taken a great spoon and
stirred the trunk up like a hasty pudding," said
Gypsy, trying to look severe, but laughing from eyes,
mouth, and dimples. " Oh, what are those books ?
Greek Lexicon — Euclid ? What do you want of those
in vacation ? "

"To make little girls ask questions," Tom said
evasively.

" Oh, what a pretty dark-blue book, with Harper
down at the bottom, — let me see ; what's the name ? "

Tom took, — no, I am afraid he snatched it from
her.

"Let alone, Gypsy ! You bother me, touching my
things."

And at that he put it in his bureau drawer and
locked it up. Gypsy said nothing, but she thought
much.

Presently, in hunting for his dressing-case, they
came across something dark, ill-smelling, and ugly-
looking. Gypsy took it up with an exclamation.

"Oh," said Tom carelessly, "some of Hall's
cigars."

"Hall's?"

" Yes, — that is to say, they were his onco. Ho
gave them to me on a bet one clay."

" And you haven't used them. I am so glad
You don't smoke, of course."

" Where is that shaving-brush ? " said Tom,

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 57

When Gypsy left him for the night, she clung to
him a little, her face hidden : —

" Oh, Tom, it is so good to get yon back. And,
Tom, dear, if yon'd come back anything like Francis
Howe, I don't know what I should have done ! "

" Better go to bed," said Tom, and walked straight
over to the window, and stood twisting the curtain
cord till it broke.

The next morning Tom and his father were shut
up together for an hour and a half: nobody could get
in ; nobody knew what was going on. At the end of
the hour and half, Tom came out with a terrible
frown on his handsome forehead, a look, very unlike
Tom, about his mouth. He went directly to his room,
shut his door hard, and locked it. He did not como
down till dinner-time, and Gypsy did not dare to go to
him. About the middle of the afternoon she went up
and knocked. He did not hear, so she pushed open the
door softly and went in. He was sitting by his table,
with his books open before him, — the Greek and the
Euclid, and, Gypsy had time to see before she spoke,
the mysterious blue book which he had taken out of
her sight so roughly the night before.

" Why, Tom, what are you doing ? "

" Cramming."

" Cramming ? "

" Studying, then ; shut the door if you're going
to talk about it."

Gypsy shut the door, and came up and stood be
side him.

58 Gypsy's Sowing mid Rtnping.

" Studying in vacation ? Why, I don't under
stand."

" I don't suppose you do, and I wish you needn't.
I'm conditioned, that's all."

" Conditioned ! " Gvpsy sat down slowly, looking
at him. Tom took cut his knife and began to whittle
iho table in dogged silence.

" That means — why, it means yon didn't get your
lessons and they "

" It means I fell below average, and I've got to
make it up. There! you have it now," said Tom,
bringing his hand down heavily on the table.

" Oh, Tom," said Gypsy, " I am so sorry ! " And
that was every word she said, and the very best thing
she could have said. Tom winked, and coughed, and
turned over the leaves of his book, and threw it down
sharply.

" That's the worst of it. I suppose I might have
made you and mother proud of me. The tutors were
rough on me, all through, every one, just because
they said I might head the division if I chose to ; I
should like to know how they knew ! "

" Of course they knew ; everybody knows," said

Gypsy, sadly. " And I thought— we all thought "

She stopped, fearing that what she was going to say
would sound like a taunt. Tom's handsome faro
flushed.

" I know what you oil thought. And if ever a
fellow meant to behave, and get a rank, I did. But
you see there's always BO nancL fun going 011 at

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 59

college, and father doesn't make the least account of
that. He's given me a terrible blowing-up thif
morning."

" I was afraid so. About the rank ? "

" Yes ; that's all he knows to talk about yet.
He'll hunt up something else before long."

"Tom!"

" Well, he does put me out so, Gypsy. I suppose
I deserve a little of it, but he has such a way of hack
ing at you. It's Tom this, Tom that, Tom the other,
for ever reminding you that you've been acting like
a fool. He knocks out all the sorry there is in me."

Gypsy sat in silence, not wishing to say anything
disrespectful of her father, not daring or wishing to
throw all the blame on Tom. Presently, thinking
that she was in his way, she rose to go out of the
room. Tom called her back.

" See here, Gypsy, you've seen this pony of course,
and I don't know that I'm sorry. I hid it away from
you last night, and felt cheap enough. I suppose
you'll think I'm a horrible sinner, but I can't bear to
cheat about it."

" Pony ? " said Gypsy, bewildered, looking round
with some vague ideas of finding a rocking-horse, or
some stuffed zoological specimen.

" Here, this." Tom took up the blue book, and
Gypsy saw that it was a translation of Homer. She
looked up with a shocked, recoiling look that Tom
had never seen in his sister's eyes before, and thai
he did not very Foon forget.

60 Gypvfs Sowing and Reaping*

11 Tom, how can you? "

Tom's honest eyes quailed, looked doubtful, bright*
eued again.

" Gypsy, it isn't half as bad as you think. I only
use it in the worst places, after I've made my own
translation. All the fellows do that, and the Faculty
know it as well as we do. I don't use it as some
fellows do — learn all my lesson by it; I wouldn't bo
mean enough."

" But why use it at all ? " said Gypsy, doubtfully,
yet half relieved.

*' Then I shouldn't stand on an equal footing with
the rest^ to start with ; it's a perfectly understood
thing. Why, one time one of the tutors talked with
the class about it. To use it as I use it is no cheat;
I've not quite come to tlmt"

" Then why did you hide it away and keep it
secret? I don't see exactly."

" Just for the reason I hide away so many things,"
said Tom, half under his breath — " father. He would
make a terrible row."

Gypsy did not say anything.

" A fellow doesn't like to be looked afc with such
eyes as you had a minute ago," said Tom, moving
uneasily in his chair. " If you won't believe I use it
in honest ways, here — to show you how little I care
/"or it — take the thing and lock it up in your drawer,
and I'll come to you when I want it."

It is not my purpose to enter into a discussion of
the minov moralities of " ponying" here, or to decide

Gypsy9 s Sowing and Reaping. 61

*•- — ••• .•«. rw. . .... i. i— —,.... ,•—.,— , ! ,. ., ..- -^

whether or not Toin's view of the matter, which is by
no means an unusual one, was correct. Gypsy did
not; she followed her instinct; she kissed Torn,
seized the book, and ran away to her own room, feel
ing very thankful, and wondering what her eyes had
to do with it.

Into the dark outline Gypsy had scaftcrcd ore
little seed, perhaps. If she sowed her shadow full
Of such, it might prove to be no shadow at all, bub a
spot of bloom flashing white and golden in the light.

CHAPTER V.

THE SHADOW DEEPENS.

ONE sunny morning, a few days after Tom came,
Gypsy was sitting by the dining-room window, which
she had opened to let a breath of the fresh, sparkling
air into the heated room. She was very busy with
her work, which was of a sort unusual for a girl,
She was neither crocheting, nor netting, nor knitting
tidies, nor stringing beads, nor darning stockings ; — •
though I cannot say that there were not en abundance
up in her bureau drawers in sad need of darning; —
she was making a ball. Neither was it one of the
soft, pudding-like alfairs commonly and contemptu
ously styled " girls' balls ; " it was wound on a bullet,
with the finest, strongest twine, and almost as tight Iv
drawn as if her firm, pink fingers had been twice y0

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

large and brown as they were. She was now sewino
on the leather cover with stout, waxed twine and au
enormous needle, her face flushed, and her fingers
aching. Tom was the object of this, as he was now
of almost everything that she did. Tom liked to pas.s
ball with her, and it kept him at home.

Suddenly she started a little, and dropped her
•work, needles, thread, ball, and all. It was only a
sound that she had heard, but it sent the hot blood
flushing over her face, and her eyes grew dark and
troubled. It was the sound of voices, — two ; of
voices in loud and angry discussion. She could not
see the speakers, but they seemed to be approaching
the house behind the wood-pile; to avoid hearing
1?hat they said was impossible.

" I should like to know how long this has been
going on.**

There was no answer.

" I should like to know how long this has boon
going on, Tom."

" I don't know, sir, and I don't sec that it is any
thing so dreadful, if it had been going 011 all the term ;
there aren't fifteen fellows in the class that don't
do it."

" What other men do is no concern of yours. It
is a filthy habit, and I never thought a son of mine
•would come to it. Besides, it will ruin your health.
How much more of the stuff have you ? "

" A few of Hall's Havanae, and some I bought
myself."

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 61

" Well, sir, you will throw them away to-day. I
can't have it."

" I don't think it is a case in which you ought to
give me any commands, father. I'm too old to be
treated so."

" I can't help it, my son ; I can't help it. If
you're young enough to do such things, you're young
enough to be commanded. You don't know how you
have troubled and disappointed me. I lay awake all
last night worrying about you, and —

" Why couldn't you trust me a little then, father,
and say you didn't like it, and then leave the matter
to me ? Mother and Gypsy go at me different ways.
I might have given it up for them.'1 Just there the
voices stopped, and the speakers came in sight around
the wood-pile ; Tom flushed and angry, his father
with a troubled, helpless face.

Mrs. Breynton, too, had heard, it seemed, for she
came into the entry, and met them at the door.
She said nothing, but her eyes asked what was the
matter.

" I found him out behind the wood-pile, smoking,
and that's what's the matter!" said his father, ex
citedly.

" Mr. Simms sent over a message from the store
just now for you," said Mrs. Breynton, in her quiet
way. " Can't we talk about this at some other time ?
He said you were wanted very much — something
about the new hydraulic press, I believe."

" Oh, I wonder if it has come. Well, I must g«

64 Gypsy9 s Sowing and Reaping.

right, over. Tom, you can tell the story to your
mother yourself."

But she did not ask for it. She let him slip away
to his room unobserved ; he would be better alone till
that flash was out of his eye. Tom's mother always
comprehended him.

Gypsy was a little like her, for she, too, left Torn,
to himself, determined not to say anything about
what had happened this morning — if indeed she ever
spoke of it — until exactly the right time came. Tho
right time came that very afternoon.

She and Tom had been out together at Yorkbury'a
fashionable hour, on Yorkbury's fashionable prome
nade — down to the Post Office. Gypsy highly en
joyed — as what girl would not ? — putting on her best
hat and cherry ribbons, swinging her new cherry-
lined muff by its tassels, and walking up and down
among the girls and boys, with Tom, to " show him
off." A handsome brother fresh from college, with a
fancy cane and a Sigma Epsilon pin, and a moustache,
was a possession well worth having. All the girls
were sure to watch them, and inform her confiden
tially at recess the next day that they wished they
had a brother just exactly like him. Such a delight
ful little sense of airy importance there was, too, in
taking his arm, and trying to look as if she had been
used to taking gentlemen's arms these dozen years !

On this afternoon, after a little chatting and
Bkirrjshing and clustering around the office steps,
p,iter Gypsy had listened to the communications

Gypsy's Sowing ana Reaping. 65

of some half dozen girls, who all happened to have
something singularly important to tell her, they fell
in with Sarah Howe and Francis, and the four walked
home together. On the way, Francis took a cigar
from his pocket, and lazily lighted it.

" No offence to the ladies, I hope ? "

" Dear, no ! " cried Sarah. " Why I dote on
cigar-smoke, — when it's the real Havana, I mean, of
course. I think there's something so charming about
it, don't you, Gypsy ? "

"No," said Gypsy, bluntly.

"Why, really," said Mr. Francis, pausing with
the cigar half way to his lips. " I didn't know —
I »

" Oh, you needn't stop on my account," said
Gypsy, coolly. " Sarah asked what I thought, and \
told her."

"Well, since you don't care," said Mr. Francis,
and smoked all the way home. Grypsy was decidedly
too young to waste his gallantry upon ; especially
when such a stupendous sacrifice was involved.

" See here," said Tom, after the Howes had turned
off to go home ; " don't you really like tobacco smoke,
Gypsy?"

" I particularly dislike it," said Gypsy.

" Well, that's queer ! I thought all girls raved
over it, like Sarah there. So you think, as father
does, that it's wicked to smoke ? "

" Wicked ? no indeed. But I think it's horrid.'9

Gypsy's "horrid" was untranslatable. Tom

66 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

winced under it as he would never have done if she
had undertaken to treat him to an anti-tobacco
sermon.

" My dear, what a tone ! Anybody would think
you were talking to a cannibal or a Mormon. Well,
to be honest, Gyp, I wish there were a few other girls
like you; there'd be less smoking. Most of them
make their brother's cigar-cases and tobacco-bags, to
say nothing of teasing for cigarettes themselves, — at
least I've heard that done more than once. I rather
think you wouldn't make me a tobacco bag now, if I
asked you."

" Ask me if you dare, sir ! "

" Well, I shouldn't dare. Now you see, Gypsy, I
don't think there's anything so horrible about
smoking, nor disgusting, nor un gentlemanly, — that
is, after you get used to it ; but I do wish father had
a little more of your style. To tell the truth, I'm
not so fond of it but that I would have given it up
for you or mother, if I were asked in a proper way ;
bub to be talked to as if I had committed the seven
deadly sins, and then told I mustn't, on top of it, is
more than a fellow can stand. Now all the smoking
I do has got to be done on the sly."

" But you wouldn't do tliat?"

Gypsy said this with a little of the look that she
had when she took the " pony " from him upstairs.

Tom shrugged his shoulders and whistled.

They walked on in silence a few minutes, tie with
his handsome face working and changing.

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 67

" Gypsy," he said, suddenly.

" Well."

"You're sort of taken down, — blue,— cut up, —
about your revered and idolized brother's collegiate
course so f&r, — now own to it."

" Yes," said Gypsy, " a little, Tom."

" Well, to put it in black and white, so am I. I
did mean, on my word and honour, to take a rank,
and let the pomps and vanities alone. You don't
know the worst of me, either."

"The worst? Worse than this! Oh, Tom!
what will father "

Gypsy began so, but stopped, seeing that she had
said the wrong thing. There was an awkward
silence.

"Gypsy," said Tom, at length, "I wish you
would write to a fellow oftener."

"Why?"

"Well, it's something from home, and you have
more time than the rest. Besides, I tell you, Gypsy,
you haven't the least idea what sort of doings there
are going on all round a chap when he's away from
you, — not the least; and I hope you never will. It
is one thing to keep straight in York bury, and
another at Yale. And getting something from home,
and being reminded that there's somebody who would
be sorry, — well, every little helps. Pretty long
breathing spaces there were between some of your
letters last term ; you gave me plenty of time to
forget you."

68 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

Gypsy's cheeks burned for shame and sorrow, and
then and there she made a certain promise to herself
which, I arn glad to say, she never broke.

A clay or two after, she was out in the front yard
snowballing with Tom, when Francis Rowe lounged
up to the fence.

" Hilloa ! " said Tom.

"How are you?" nodded Francis. "Here a
minute."

Tom went, pursued by Gypsy's well-aimed balls.

" I have something to toll you," said Francis,
mysteriously, and then he lowered his voice, so that
Gypsy, from the door-steps where she was sitting,
could not hear what it was. She was incapable of
trying to listen, so she turned away, and began to
make statuettes out of the damp snow. Every now
and then, however, she caught a word : " East York-
bury." "Who'll be the wiser?" " But— I don't

know " " Prime fun." " Pshaw ! man ! where's

the harm ? There'll be " Then mysterious

whispers again, and at last Francis walked off
whistling, and Tom came back. He had forgotten
all about the snowballs ; he looked perplexed and
thoughtful, and sat down on the steps without saying
a word. Gypsy waited a minute, then kicked over
her statuettes and walked abruptly into the house, a
little disappointed, but too proud to ask for anything
that he did not choose to give her.

That night she went to singing-school with Sarah
Howe. Tom did not go. He said he was going to be

Sowing and Reaping. 69

busy ; afc which Gypsy wondered a little, but said
nothing.

" Erancis wouldn't come to-night either," said
Sarah, as they went in. together. " He's gone to a
billiard-match over at Easl Yorkbury, I believe, or
something of the sort. At least, I heard him talking
to Bob Guest about it, only he said I mustn't tell."

Gypsy stopped short, her face flushing.
"What time, do you know what time he was going?"

" I don't remember, exactly, — half -past seven, I
think. Anyway, I know he expected to be home
before it was very late. I suppose he thought father
would have something to say about it. That East
Yorkbury tavern is a horrid place. I should be
ashamed to be seen there if I were Francis. But
what's the matter ? Where on earth are you going ?"

" Home."

"Hornet"

" I don't believe I care to stay to the meeting,"
said Gypsy, hurriedly ; " it's twenty-five minutes
after seven now, and how few have come ! I don\
believe it's going to be much of a meeting. Besides
I've just thought of something I want to do."

"But there's the solo in ' Star of the Evening ;f
— what shall we do without you ? Oh, there's George
Castles up in the corner, looking at you like every
thing. I know he means to come home with you."

But Sarah suddenly discovered that she was talk
ing to the empty entry. Gypsy had slipped out and
down the steps.

70 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

She started homewards on a rapid walk, which
Boon broke into a run. The moon was full, and the
Bnow-covered hills and fields, bright in the light,
looked like a picture cut in pearl. At any other time
the beauty and the hush would have carried Gypsy
away into a world of delightful young dreams. To
night she had something elsa to think about. The
girls and boys, on their way to singing-school, stopped
and wondered as she ran past them, calling after her ;
she scarcely allowed herself time to answer, but flew
on, flushed and panting, till she had left them out of
sight, and was at last alone upon the moonlit road.

Not quite alone, though. The sound of sleigh-
bells broke suddenly on the air, and a dark bay horse
and slight cutter turned a near corner, and swept up
to her, and shot past her, and left her standing like a
statue.

Two men were in the sleigh, and the light as they
passed, struck their faces sharply. They were Francis
Howe and Tcm.

Gypsy stood a moment looking after them, shocked
and puzzled and helpless ; then a quick thought flashed
brightly over her face ; she started with a bound, and
sprang away towards home.

She was very near it, — nearer than she had
thought ; it took her but a moment to reach the end of
the garden, to climb the fence, to wade through the
snow that lay deeply en the flower-beds, and so come
out into the back yard. The house was still and dark-
Her father and mother wero both out to tea, and

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 71

Winnie was in bed. Patty's light glimmered from the
kitchen where she nodded, half asleep, over her
sewing.

Gypsy went directly to the barn, unlocked the
stable door, and peered into the dark stall where old
Billy was sedately dreaming over last summer's clover
tops. She untied his halter, pulled him out with a
jerk, and saddled and bridled him briskly. She had
done it many times before, when Tom and her father
were both away, but it was always opposed to Billy's
theories of the eternal fitness of things, and to be
called away from one's dreams and one's clover at
such an unearthly hour, by a girl, was certainly adding
insult to injury. His justifiable displeasure thereat
he signified — as I have no doubt I should have done
if I had been in his place— by backing into the stall,
tossing his head just one inch beyond her reach,
Bidling away when she was ready to mount, biting
her fingers and nipping her arms, and treading on her
dress, and otherwise playing the agreeable, till her
patience and temper were nearly exhausted. Finally,
by dint of threats, persuasion, and diplomacy, she suc
ceeded, to his intense mortification and disgust, in
mounting, and whipped him out into the cold night-
air.

There were two roads to East Yorkbury, a long
one and a short one which had been cut across for
farmers, through the fields. Tom and Francis would
take the long one, for there was no sleighing upon the
other. There was a chance, just a chance, that a

72 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

swift rider through the fields might intercept thera.
But the suo\v lay deep and drifted and roughly
broken ; and Billy was neither so young nor so free
as he might have been. However, Gypsy was not a
girl to give up very easily to obstacles. She could but
try at least ; trying would do no harm.

So she whipped and coaxed Billy into a canter
and swept away through the moonlight over tho
lonely road. It was very lonely. There was not a
sound to be heard but the heavy plunges of the horso
through the drifted snow, and the sighing of the wind
through the trees. Her own shadow took strangt
shapes as it leaped along beside her on the moonlit
bank and wall. The fields and woods stretched out
each side of her in fantastic patches of light and shade,
solitary and still. Gypsy was not afraid, she was too
much troubled about Tom to be afraid ; but she had
a bleak, cold, deserted feeling which made that
singular ride one long to be remembeied. She was
haunted by vague, half-formed fears for Tom, too ;
by new and horrible mistrust of him ; by a dread
that she should be too late. But if she were not too
late, what then? She hardly knew what then. She
had formed no plans as to what she should do or say.
ISlie had come because she could not help it ; she was
going on because she could not help it. Tom might
not listen to her; Jie might be very angry ; it might
do more harm than good that she had come. 15 iV
here she was, and she trusted to her own instinct to
guide her. Gypsy's instincts were, however, easf

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 73

blunders sometimes. Whether this one was a blunder
or something else, the event only would prove.

The event came very near not proving at all. Sbo
had ridden through the last patch of pine woods, and
come out into a broad stretch of light, level ground,
from which the main road was faintly visible, wind
ing away to East Yorkbury tavern. Billy, thoroughly
exhausted, was panting painfully, head hanging, and
ears lopped down ; his heavy plunges had changed
into a feeble trot; the trot was settling gradually to a-
walk, and when Billy made up his mind to walk, that
was the end of him. When hark ! — yes, the sound
of sleigh-bells, and the voices of unseen drivers upon
the winding road.

Gypsy uttered a little cry, and threw her arms
about the horse's neck, as if he had been human.

" Oh, Billy, please ! Can't you go a little faster ?
I don't want Tom to go." And Billy pleased.
Whether he understood what Tom had to do with it
I cannot state ; but, at the word, he jerked his droop
ing head with a snort, and broke away like a wild thing
under the touch of Gypsy's whip.

The sleigh with its fleet bay was just passing the
cart-road, when an apparition of a girl on a white
horse galloped up, and Francis reined in with a shout.

She made a picture ; her net had come off, and her
hair was blown back from her face in the strong
wind ; her chocks were scarlet, her lips a little pale,
and her eyes on fire. 1'or an instant she sat perfectly
gtill upon the horse, and Tom stared-

74 Gypsfs Sowing and Reaping.

*l Tom," she said then, softly.

"Gypsy Breynton — you!" Tom finished by a
word which I will not repeat; there was nothing
wrong about it, but it was not as elegant as it might
have been, and one gets enough of college slang in
real life without putting it into print when it can be
avoided.

" Yes, it's I. Please look here a minute."
Tom sprang out into the snow, and left Francit,
growling at the delay. Gipsy leaned clown over
Billy's neck, and put her hand npon Tom's shoulder.
It was almost purple from the cold, for in her haste
she had come off without her mittens, and had driven
all the way in cold, thin gloves.

" If you only wouldn't ! I don't want you to go
• — I mean — please, Tom clear, come home. Sarah
says East Yorkbury's such a dreadful place, and so
I harnessed Billy and came over on the cart-road, and
I do hope you won't be angry ! " blundered poor
Gypsy, her cheeks very red and her lips very pale.

Torn was angry — very angry. For a moment
he only shut up his lips and looked down at the
little purple hand that trembled on his shoulder,
as if he were trying to keep back some dreadful
words. If it had not been so very purple and little,
and if it had not been so strange a sight to see
Gypsy tremble, he might have said worse than he
did.

'' Who's been telling you I was going to East
Yorkbury ? '* he saiil, between his teeth.

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 75

" Nobody told me, Tom ; I guessed it. To think
of you over in that tavern, with all those drunken—
oh, Tom, I did hope you wouldn't be angry, and would
please to come back with me ! "

" Hurry up, Breyiiton," called Francis, from the
sleigh ; " don't keep a fellow waiting. Why didn't
Gypsy do her talking before you started ? I'm glad
<wy sister minds her own business, and lets mine
alone ! "

Tom pushed off the purple hand from his
shoulder.

*' Gypsy, you must go right straight home. I
am angry, and you've done a very silly thing. I
don't want you inquiring into my affairs and med
dling with them like this, and you may remember it
next time. Here, take my mittens, and get home as
laso as you can."

With that he sprang into the sleigh and left her.

If he had struck her, Gypsy could not have felt
worse. Never had Tom spoken so to her — never,
since she was a baby and used to stamp on his kites
and throw his boats down the well. It seemed as if
it were more than she could bear. Billy, glad to
turn his face homewards, started briskly away ; and
she just threw down the reins, and put her arms
about his huge, warm neck, and cried aa hard as if
her heart would break.

How far she had gone she d-ld not exactly know ;
she was still riding on with her face hidden in Billy's
wane, and she was still pobbinp a-f» Oypsy very seldom

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping,

sobbed, when the first she knew, there was a strong
hand on Billy's bridle and another about her neck,
and two arms lifted her right oft' the saddle, and
there was Tom.

" Oh, Tom, I didn't mean to — I didn't really mean
to make you angry. I felt so badly about your going,
and I thought - "

" Gypsy, look up here.*'

Gypsy looked up.

" I was a heathen, and the next time I speak so
to you, I'll give you leave to chop my tongue out
with a hatchet. Now let's go home."

CHAPTER VI.

THE WATCH UPON THE STAIRS.

" YOU'LL come over to-night, of course, Gypsy ? "

" Come over to what ? Oh, the candy-pull."

" Yes ; we're going to have just the best fun.
Francis knows a way of flavouring the candy with
lemon, and we're going to try it. Besides, Delia
Guest and Bob are coming, and the Holmans."

"Well, I'm afraid I can't. I should love to,
dearly, but "

" Not come ! Well, I should like to know ! M

" I think I'd better stay with Tom."

** Let Tom come too, of course."

MHe would liks tojbut he has a cold, and couldn't

Gypsy's Sowing and. Reaping. 77

go out in this snow-storm. He would miss me if I
went, and be lonely, — that is, I can play draughts
with him. Besides, I like to make it as nice as I can
for him when he is at home, so as to "

" To what?"

" Keep him in evenings."

Those four words had come to rule all Gypsy's
plans and words and thoughts. It seemed strange
that Tom's vacation, to which she had looked for
ward so long, and of which she had dreamed as if ifc
were some beautiful fairy tale, should end in that.
Into Gypsy's merry, thoughtless heart the new
anxiety and the new pain crept like a chill ; it took
time for her to get used to it ; but the queer thing
about it was, she thought, that when she had become
used to it, it seemed as if it had always been there.

Eor a while after the East Yorkbury undertaking,
Tom avoided Francis, kept very much at home with
his mother and Gypsy, and seemed so sober and sorry
and ashamed, -that Gypsy's heart ached for him.
Whatever the faults into which he had fallen at
college — and it was quite probable that she did not
know the worst of them — Tom was very far from
being a thoroughly bad boy. Until he went to New
Haven, he had known nothing worse than Yorkbury
temptations, and had been helped every day of his
life by the happiest home and the most patient love
that a boy could desire. To go out from such a homo
in all the eagerness and ignorance of seventeen young
j into Yale College, is very much like walking

78 Gypsy's Sowmg and Reaping.,

into a furnace. It needs what Tom had not— what
Gypsy had vaguely felb from the beginning that he
ought to have — principle, to come out of it unsinged.
Tom had no deeper principle than his own generous
impulses and quick sense of honour ; even these had
been severely put to the test ; the smell of the fire
had passed upon him. Although he was much given
to lecturing thoughtless Gypsy in his superior, elder-
brotherly way, yet in many respects he was much
like her. A little more reserved ; somewhat better
able to say the right thing, or not to say anything if
necessary ; by right of four years' seniority, making
fewer blunders, but like her, quick to do wrong or
right on a moment's impulse, sorry for his faults and
willing to say so, and very likely to do the same
hing over to-morrow ; especially — and herein lay
<fhe key to the worst of him — sufficiently determined
to get the fun out of life, come what might. Indeed,
Gypsy felt so much sympathy with him that it was
an effort to scold him sometimes.

" I hate to have you do such things, you know,"
she said one day when Tom had been confiding to
her the story of a certain escapade with his tutor,
which was, like a great many wrong things in this
world, undeniably funny ; " but it makes me want to
go to college terribly. How I should act ! I know
just as well I should go head first into all the games,
and put pins in the Prof. 'a chairs, and — no, 1
wouldn't do that, because that's mean ; but I should
rather go to an oyster supper than study, and I

Gypsy's Solving and Reaping. 79

should get suspended in three weeks, and then come
home and be sorry, and I suppose it is fortunate for
the institution that I'm not a boy ! "

Which certainly was not the wisest thing she
could have said, and she was sorry before the words
were off her lips.

As I said, for awhile Tom stayed at home, and
let Francis alone ; he threw away his cigars, studied
hard in the mornings, played draughts in the even
ing, took the children to ride in the afternoons,
pushed the cat through the stove-pipe, experimented
on Mrs. Surly's puppy, helped his mother stone the
raisins for her puddings, read " Guy Mannering "
aloud to Gypsy, helped his father at the store, be
came, in a word, the old merry, thoughtful, generous
Tom, and Gypsy was happy.

Not so happy, though, that she ceased to work
and plan to keep him with her, or ever lost the dull?
new sense of uneasiness and care. ]N"ot so happy as
to be thoroughly taken by surprise when restless
Tom, wearied of his quiet life and good resolves, and
something happened far worse than anything which
had happened yet ; far worse than anything that she
had ever thought could happen to Tom.

It was only two days before the short vacation
ended. Tom had gone to a Lyceum lecture that
evening with Francis Howe. He would be home at
ten o'clock, he said, or a quarter past ten at the latest
It was the family custom to break up early. Mr.
Breyntou was apt to be sleepy, his wife tired, aud

8o Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

Gypsy was always ready for bed ; so that, the house
was usually still soon after nine. On this night, Mrs.
&reyoton had a headache (it sometimes seemed to
Gypsy that her mother had a great many headaches
of late), and it was rather dull without Tom, so that
they separated even earlier than usual. By half-past
nine they were probably all asleep.

Gypsy had a remarkably unpleasant dream. She
thought that she was standing on the edge of a huge
circular chasm lined with winding stairs, which gave
back a hollow, ugly echo to the foot; they seemed to
be built of ancient wood, worm-eaten and moss-
grown ; to have stood there for centuries, crumbling
away and winding down into utter darkness. The
horrible thing about them was, that nobody knew
what was at the bottom. Another horrible thing
was that nobody who went down ever came up.
While she stood peering over the edge and shivering,
Tom pushed by her with a cry and sprang into the
chasm, and began to leap down the hideous stairway.
She stretched out her arms to him, calling him by
name, but he did not or would not hear her. Sho
leaped down after him, and impelled by the fearful,
dizzy motion, kept winding on and could not stop.
She called him, but he did not answer. He was
always just ahead of her, but never within her reach.
He shot on and down, and the hollow echo of his
leaping steps came back, and the daylight dimmed
and his form grew faint and faded out of her sight,
and darkness fell, and only the echoes were left,

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 8 1

which weakened and grew thin, and were lost in
utter silence.

She started up with a cry of terror which woke
her. A faint moonbeam was falling in upon the bed.
She remembered that the moon rose late that night,
and could not light her room till after ten. She was
just getting up to see what time it was, when she
heard the kitchen clock strike the half-hour. She
remembered Tom, and was wide awake at once. He
had undoubtedly come in while she was asleep — very
likely his steps coming up the stairs had given her
that ugly dream ; still she thought she should go to
sleep a little more comfortably to feel sure. So she
opened her door softly, and looked out into the
entry ; all was still. She stepped on tiptoe to Tom's
room; the door was open; the room was empty.

Well, only a quarter of an hour after time. But
it was a singularly late Lyceum lecture. And he said
he should certainly be at home.

She went back to her own room, and crept shiver
ing into bed, but she could not sleep ; she rose and
went to the window ; both yard and street lay hushed
and solitary in the moonlight ; no human being was
in sight ; not a sound was to be heard but the moan
ing of the wind. The lecture must be over long ago,
the lights were out in Mrs. Surly 's house, and her
boarders always went to the Lyceum. It must haTe
been over an hour ago. Where could he be ?

Gypsy began to be frightened. Her cheeks grew
bet and her hands grew cold ; she jumped up and

$2 Gypsy's Sowing arid Reaping.

began to walk across the room as fast as sha
could walk ; she came back and sat down again, and
looked again into the yard and up the moonlit
street, and jumped up and paced the room again.
Once a drunken singer in the street passed by tho
house* ; her cheeks grew hotter and her hands grew
older. She had grown too restless for the narrow
room, so she threw her dress and shawl about her,
went softly out, and sat down on the stairs whcro
she could watch the door.

If Tom only had not gone with Francis ? If she
could have got up a candy-pull and kept him at
home ? If she had gone to the lecture with him ?
If he should have gone to East Yorkbury ? If he
were playing billiards somewhere now, such wretched,
drunken faces all around him as she had sometimes
seen in the alleys on the way to Peace Maythorne'a
room ? If he should become a gambler, or worse ?
Jf he should grow up into such a man as Francis —
Tom ? What would her mother say ? — poor mother,
she had been looking so pale lately, and troubled.
Should she call her, and tell her that Tom had not
come home ? What would her father suj ?

And that was the worst of all. What wmtld he ?
No, she must not call them ; it would be so terrible
between him and Tom if anything had gone wrong.
There was nothing to be done bat for her to keep
awake till Tom came, and let him quietly in. Eleven
o'clock. Would he never come ?

She began to be very cold, sitting there, so she

Sowing and Reaping. 83

stole out to the kitchen stove, to try to warm hersolf
by the remains of the evening fire ; then, afraid that
Tom would come while she was out there, she went
back to her post upon the stairs.

The entry was dark, except for a dull patch of
moonshine that struggled in through the curtained
sidelights, and lay pale upon the floor. In the
corners the shadows were heavy. Under the stairs
the shadows were black. Now and then a board
creaked somewhere, or a mouse rattled past unseen
in the wall. It is dreary at best to be the only
waking thing at midnight in a silent house. The
vague sense of uneasiness about Tom, fearing she
knew not what, waiting she knew not why, the
dread that her father might come out and find her
there, the dread of what would happen if he should
meet Tom coming in — pictures of his stern, shocked
face and Tom's angry eyes— all this made that watch
upon the stairs about as miserable an hour as Gypsy
liad ever passed.

Half past eleven. How still it was ! Torn haJ
never been out so late as this before.

Twelve o'clock. Could some accident have hap
pened to him ? Was it possible ? Ought she to call
her mother ? Should she wait a little longer, or --
What was that ? Footsteps ? She crept softly down
the stairs, and peered through the sidelights.

Yes, footsteps — heavy, slow, irregular, shuffiing
blindly through the snow. But Tom walked like a
man, with a spring in his firm, strong tread. That

84 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

man with his hat pulled over his eyes, with his coat
turned wrong side out, who slouched up to the door,
and fumbled for the handle — was that Tom ?

Gypsy turned the latch without noise, and the
man muttered some incoherent words, and reeled in,
and fell heavily upon the stairs — and it was Tom.

Gypsy just dropped her hands and looked. If
some one had bayoneted her dead there against the
wall, she could not have stood more still. She could
feel the hot blood rush into her heart, and rush
away again ; her head BV\ am round dizzily, and for a
moment she had a fancy that sho was suffocating.
Whatever the feeling was, it passed in a moment,
and she stepped up and touched Tom on the shoulder.

He muttered that her hands were cold, and that
he wanted another glass.

"Tom," she said, under her breath, " Tom, dear,
come up to bed."

Tom looked at her stupidly, and tried to rise, but
staggered against the banisters. His heavy boots
hit the stairs loudly, and the old mahogany of the
banisters creaked from top to bottom.

" Oh, father will hear, father will hear ! " wins-
pered Gypsy, in an agony. " Lean on me, Tom —
so ; now try again."

Tom stood up and leaned upon her shoulder —
the strong fellow with his six feet of manliness — and
Gypsy helped him up the stairs. Sometimes she had
to stop to take breath and gather strength. Sometimes
the dizziness came back to her head, and she thought

Gypsy's Sowing and Ifeaping. 55

tliat she was falling1. Twice Tom reeled against the
wall, and she listened for her father's opening door,
and all the colour went out of her cheeks and lips.
Once Tom gripped her shoulder so that she nearly
cried out with the pain.

Bat they reached the top of the stairs, and
reached his room, and shut the door, and had wakened
no one. Tom threw himself upon the bed and asked
for water. Gypsy hurried to the wash-stand, filled
his mug, and brought it to him. But he had fallen
into a heavy, drunken sleep.

CHAPTEE VII.

SOMETHING NEW.

* You see, Peace, I used to be so proud of Tom."

Peace saw.

"I used to keep thinking how much better he
was than the other girls' brothers, and how good he
was, and that he never went with the wild boys, and
that he would stand so high at college, and make
mother so glad and all, and to have it come to —
tliat."

Peace did not know what " that " was ; Gypsy
had never told her ; she did not like to ask.

" I don't suppose you understand what I am
talking about," said Gypsy, with heightened colour,
** but the fact is, I can't bear to say it, — not so much

86 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

as to say it, Peace. It was so terrible, and I had
never known nor suspected, but, Peace Maythorne,
lie said it never happened but once before ; he said
so. He was sick after it the next morning, because
the whiskey was so bad — there ! I might have
known I couldn't help letting it out— just like me ! "

Peace gave her one of her own beautiful answers ;
she took her hand and held it softly, and did not say
a word. Tears sprang into Gypsy's eyes.

" Well, I knew you'd feel badly for me ; you
always do. I wish I'd told you before. It helps me
to have you sorry for me, somehow ; it goes all over
me. One little kiss ? there ! Now I'm going to
tell you about it. It won't bother you to death ?
Well, then, you see, Peace Maythorne, I lay awake
till two o'clock that night, I felt so. I wouldn't live
that night over again — why, not for anything in this
world. Well, the next morning he felt sick, but he
said he had a headache, which was true ; and he lay
in bed till after breakfast, and then got up, so that
father shouldn't suspect. You see that would be so
dreadful. Father loves Tom, and he's real good, but
he never knows how to go at him. He makes Tom
angry and never understands, and then Tom is dis
respectful, and mother looks, and I cry, and we have
an awful time. So Tom and I weren't either of us
going to tell him. But mother knows, I know, for
she's been up in her room crying ever so much, and
she and Tom had a long talk before he went back.
I guess he told her — he thinks the world of mother.

Gypsy9 s Sowing and Reaping. 87

and was so sorry, and hates to cheat so. Oh, he ivas
so sorry ! He didn't look any more like Tom the
next day, and kept by himself, and his eyes — you
know he has such beautiful eyes, Peace, and so bright
— well, his eyes were so ashamed, I thought I should
cry right out to look at them. I can't bear to have
Tom ashamed. Well, then it came night, and ho
had been alone all day, and I went up into his room,
and that's what I started to tell you about. You're
not tired of mo yet ? "

" Not a bit, dear."

" Well, I went up, and there he sat alone in the
dark and cold ; there was a little red sparkle of light
through the damper, but the fire was almost out.
So said I * Tom,' softly. He had his elbows on the
table and his head down. 'What do you want ?'
said he, and never looked up. ' I want to see you,
Tom. I haven't seen you all day hardly.' Then he
said something that I can't bear to think about,
Peace May thorn e, not even to think about. ' I
shouldn't think you'd ever want to see me again.
I wish I were out of the world and out of your way;'
that's what he said. I wouldn't have you think I'm
cryicg, though — where's my handkerchief, for pity's
sake? And what do you suppose I did? — like a
little goose ! Why, I just jumped into his lap. I
did, I jumped into his lap right off, and I had come
tip expecting to talk soberly at him and scold him,
and I had to go and do that, and that was the end
of me ! "

88 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

"What did he do?" said Peace, smiling, but
strangely enough, hunting for her handkerchief, too.

" Do ? Well, he had to lift up his head anyway ;
he couldn't help himself. So I saw his face in the
red sparkle from the damper, and it was just as
while, and I threw my arms straight around his
neck — I know I choked him dreadfully — and said he,
1 Gypsy, weren't you ashamed of me — ashamed to
have me for a brother ? '

" * Yes, Tom,' said I, * I was ashamed of you last
night,' for I couldn't tell a lie you see, anyway.
Down went his head again 011 the table, — only my
arms were in the way, and it hurt, and I squealed,
and so he had to take it up again. ' Why don't you
take your arms off, Gypsy? I'm not fit to have them
there. Why don't you take them off? ' I said I was
very comfortable, and I was going to keep them there.
' But you're ashamed of me/ said he, ' and you ought
to be!'

" ' No, Tom, I'm not ashamed of you now. I
was last night. I'm not a bit ashamed now, because
you are sorry.' And what do you suppose he said ? "

"I couldn't guess."

" He held up his head, and looked into my eyes.
' You don't mean to say that you're going to love me
as much as you did before ? ' And, Peace, I did ; I
couldn't help it if I couldn't, you know, only don't
you ever tell, but said I, ' Tom Breynton, I love you
a great deal more.' That's what I said, like a little
gimpletoa "

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

" What did he say ? "

" Say ? He didn't say a word for so long I was
frightened half out of my wits. He just hid his face
up against my hair (my net was coming off — yon
know it always is), and, Peace Maythorne, I do be
lieve he was crying. I don't know. I never saw
Tom cry. He didn't make any noise about it, the
way girls do, though. At last said he, all of a sud
den, ' Gypsy, I am sorry. I never got drunk but
once before ; that was one night when I went out
with Hall. I don't see how I ever came to do it,
but E-owe kept filling up my tumbler. The worst of
it is, mother and you. I wish you wouldn't be so
good to a fellow.' And then, Peace, he coughed so,
that I thought he was going to have a consumption.
So by-and-by I began to pat him on the back (he
always says I treat him as if he were a great Maltese
cat), and I said I was going to be good to him, as
good as I could be; terribly good; a, cherub — a
pretty pink cherub with wings ; would he give me a
kiss ? So he gave me a kiss, and I smuggled up in
his arms, just as if nothing had happened, and we
had the nicest little talk, and he told mo ever so
much, Peace, that I can't tell you — about college,
and how hard it was to do right, and how sorry he
felt afterwards, and how he did thiogs and didn't
think — just like me, for all the world ; and I don't
suppose I should be half as good as he if I went to
college — and how sometimes he thought about me,
tmcl didn't go off with Hall because I should b© sorry,

90 Gypsy's Sowing mid Reaping.

Now, Peace Maythorne, I wonder if you know how
thafc made me feel."

" I think I do."

"Well, I hope you do, for I couldn't tell you,
possibly. Anyway, it made up for that dreadful
night out on the stairs, and for going to East York-
bury, and for doing things when I wanted to do
something else, and for all the worry and trouble.
And I shall write him a few more letters this term
than I did last, if I know myself intimately.

"Well, after we had talked awhile, father began
to call downstairs to know why we didn't come down
(mother didn't, because she knew what we were
about well enough ; she always knows things with
out having to be told), so I started to go.

" Then I stopped. ' Tom,' said I, * I told you I
loved you more than ever, and I do. But there's
another thing. I used to be — proud of you.' You
ought to have seen his eyes! 'Well, you shall be
proud of me again some day.' I told him that was
just what I meant to be ; but that I did wish I could
be real sure. Then he fired up like everything, and
wanted to know if I thought he meant to get drunk
again ? Of course, he shouldn't ; he hadn't any
thoughts of it ; he shouldn't have this time, if the
whiskey hadn't been so bad. Well, you see, I knew
he might, for all that ; so I told him I wished ho
would promise mo something. 'What is it?' said
he. I told him it was that he shouldn't ever touch
the old thing, nor any other old thing that nmde

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. gi

people drnnk — not a bit, not a drop, ever. He didn't
like that very much; and he drew up his head, and
put on all his grown-up brother airs, just as he looks
when he scolds me for tearing my dresses, and said
he never made promises. But I looked at his face
in the little red sparkle from the damper, and stood
stock-still. 'What are you waiting for?' said he.
I said I was waiting for that promise. He said I
shouldn't have it, and it was of no use waiting ; I
ought to trust him better than that. He wasn't
going to demean himself by promising. I didn't
know exactly what ' demean ' meant ; so I looked ii
out in the dictionary before I went to bed."

" But you didn't go ?"

"No, I guess I didn't. I just stood. I guess I
stood there almost ten minutes. ' You'd better go,'
said he, by and by ; and I never said a word. Pretty
soon I thought it was getting about time to tease — I
do hate to tease, though. So I jumped into his arms
again before he knew it, and began to say, ' Please,
Tom,' as hard as ever I could. ' Please what ? ' said
he. I wasn't going to answer such a silly question
as that; so I pulled his head down into the red
sparkle, so as to see his face. It was red one minute
and white the next, and I saw the promise ccming
all over it; so I waited. 'Well,' said he, 'I don't
see but I shall have to, to get rid of you. I
promise.' "

"What did you do?"

"Strangled him. Just strangled him with my

7

92 Gypsy*s Sowing cu.d Reaping.

two arms. And then — let me see — Oh, then I got
up, and jumped up and down j and, after that, we
went downstairs and popped corn."

"How glad you ought to be !" said Peace.

" Well, I suppose I am. I don't believe he will
drink any more. Tom never breaks his word, never.
Besides, he has been back now two weeks ; and he
wrote me yesterday that he hadn't touched a drop.
I don't trouble about that any more ; but, Peace, I
never feel quite safe."

"I see."

"Tom means to do right, and is so good, and
then forgets — just like me, yon know, only I'm not
good ; and then, he is so handsome ! College is a
dreadful place, and I wish he were through and home
again. Then, I wish he and father got along better;
and I'm always afraid something will go wrong be
tween them. Then, lately, there's mother."

"What about her?"

" She has so many headaches, I can't go to her
about Tom nor anything, as I used to, for fear of
making her feel worse. If I didn't have you, I don't
know what would become of me. I always must
have somebody to talk to. There aren't any girla
here that I ever say anything sober to. There's Joy,
to be sure; but she is off in Boston, and 1 can'fc
write things out in letters ; besides, I shouldn't want
to tell her about Tom. I love Joy dearly, but she
wouldn't do for that. Peace, I'm sort of troubled
about mother."

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 93

" I'm real sorry ! " said Peace, in her gentle way ;
and the three simple words seemed to mean a great
deal more than they would if anybody else said
them. " Perhaps she will be better when the spring
comes."

Gypsy said that she hoped so, rather absently ;
and then there was a silence.

" Do you know," said Peace, at last, " that you
are growing different, Gypsy — older ? "

"Am I ? How funny ! Well, I have a great
many more thoughts to think than I used to. I
wonder if you remember the sunbeam that came
through the hole in the curtain one day before Tom
came home ? "

" Oh, yes ; very well."

" So do I. I suppose I'm beginning to find out
how they feel rainy days."

Peace smiled, and Gypsy thrummed on the win
dow-sill a moment.

"And you have never had anything but rainy
days!"

" The sun is there, you know, all the same —
whether it rains or not," said Peace, half to Gypsy,
half to herself.

" It's there because you make it. If I were in
your place, I shouldn't make any. My ! how horrid
and wicked I should be ! "

"Why," said Peace, "I am sure I have plenty
of things to be thankful for."

" Annt Jane, for instance ?"

94 Gyp$y*s Sowing and Reaping.

Peace coloured, for at that very moment Aunt
Jane opened the door. She said, good afternoon
curtly enough. She felt instinctively that Gypsy did
not like lier — which was by no means strange, for
Gypsy was not apt to take the greatest pains to con
ceal her opinion of people.

" Would it trouble you too much to fix the fire a
little?" said Peace, gently. "I have been so cold
somehow, since this change in the weather."

" I don't know as it makes any difference whether
it troubles me or not," said Aunt Jane, in her hard
way — tripping over the coal-hod, and rattling the
poker with what she was pleased to term an
* energy' that went through the nerves of Peace
like a knife. " There ! I'm terrible hurried over that
dress of Miss Guest's, and I can't stop to bother over
it any longer. I should think that will do. I can't
see, for the life of me, what makes you so shivery."

Miss Jane had just been to the store for a spool
of thread, and the rapid walk and bracing air had sot
her healthy blood to circulating freely. To look frorq
her to the shrunken, pallid figure on the bed, one
would not, perhaps, wonder that she did not see.

" Peace May thorne ! " broke out indignant Gypsy,
determined to say something this time ; " you haven't
but one comforter on your bed besides the quilt."

Peace answered only with a quick hand on
Gypsy's mouth.

" One comforter ?" spoke up Aunt Jane. "Well,
it's thick enough for me; and what is enough for

Sowing and Reaping. 95

me has got to be enough for her, for all I see, as
long as there's no hands but mine to support the two
of us. I should like to know who thinks I can afford
new ones for her, with cotton-battin' the price it is
nowadays, and all my old pieces sold to the paper-
man — to say nothing of where's the time £o come
from to patch one up."

Probably Aunt Jane could not afford materials
or time for a comforter. There were the rents, and
food, and clothing, and fuel to take her hard-earned
money. "While Gypsy's eyes flashed with anger at
her way of expressing it, yet she could not doubt
that she had spoken truth, and perplexed her brain
with plans to supply the need. Peace must have a
comforter. But Peace could not bear to have things
given to her. She decided to talk it over with her
mother ; she always found ways to do things when
other people failed. Nobody knew how she managed
it; but, a few days after, Peace had the comforter
on her bed, and her eyes thanked Gypsy, though
she did not say a word about it.

Peace Maythorne's room, with its golden sunlight
and its quiet face, was a sort of tabernacle to Gypsy.
It hushed her and helped her, as nothing else ever
did. It reduced all her wild plans to order. It re-
Luked her mad impulses and thoughtless words. It
taught her how best to work and hope for Tom. It
made the newness and the strangeness of her trouble
easier to bear. Most of all, the pitiful contrast of it
with the pleasant places into which her her own linen

g6 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

had fallen silenced all grumbling, made her very
thankful. She had depended more on Peace of late,
since she had been troubled for Tom, and since those
headaches of her mother's had begun to be so fre
quent. Almost all of her anxiety and perplexity had
been shared with Peace ; as she said, she could not
very well help it. But when Tom had been back at
college a few weeks, something new came up, which
she did not tell her nor any one. The reasons for
this she could hardly have explained ; but she felt
eery sure that she preferred to keep it to herself.

It was a letter from Tom. A short letter, very
pleasant, like all Tom's letters, and at first sight a
very unimportant one.

"DEAR GYPSY —

" Am hurried to death over my Euclid, and can't
tvrite much this morning. My stand is better than
last term, but it might be decidedly higher yet. I
fell through in Euclid yesterday, and that is why I
mean to study to-day on it.

" How is it about those headaches of mother's ?
Father sent me a package of new-style French enve
lopes from the store the other day ; very good in him,
and I am, his affectionately, T. Did you see Winnie's
letter to me that mother wrote for him? It con
tained the extraordinary information that you had
smashed potatoes for dinner, and I couldn't have
any ; that he was five years old, and that Tom had
gone to college. Hall's sister hasn't written to him but

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 97

onco since he lias been back. Your two letters a
week are jolly. Sometimes, when I haven't anything
to do, I take them out and read them all over. WG
had a tip-top rush with the Sophs, yesterday — beat
them, of course. A fellow in our house has got into
a row with one of the Profs., and will be rusticated
to pay for it.

" Love to all. I must go to cramming now on that
Euclid. Hall opened a bottle of Old Yriarte last night,
and it was tough work looking on and being laughed
At ; but a promise is a promise.

"Very respectfully, your ob't servant,

" T. BKEYNTON."

" P.S. — See here. I wonder if you have a little
money you could lend a fellow for a few weeks ? Tlio
'^tate of my finances is somewhat precarious, and I
don't dare to go to father just yet j he won't expect
me to need more before the middle of the term. I
hate to ask you, but the truth is, there was a little bet
with Hall — about four dollars ; it was about a girl
we met on Chapel Street, and I said if he bowed to
her without an introduction, she wouldn't return it,
and I felt sure of winning (only I wouldn't have
taken the money), but she wasn't the lady she looked,
and she bowed, and I lost. Now, the bother of it is,
Hall wants his money, and I haven't it to give him ;
I have some left, but it is due at the hatter's this
week. I feel real mean asking you, and you shall
have your money back just as soon as father hands

98 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

over. It is mean to bet — yes, I know it without
your telling me. I don't very often do it. I shall
keep clear of it after this. If you will help me out
of tLn's scrape and keep dark about it to father, you
will be as good a sister as ever luckless scamp was
blessed with. Fleaso send as soon as possible."

Gypsy locked up the letter in her desk where no
one could see it, and sat down and thought about it.

Tom had done wrong — yes. But he was sorry,
and the money must be paid in some way She did
not care in the least about keeping her money, if she
could get him out of the difficulty, and perhaps pre
vent his doing the same thing again. Certainly, if
she refused it, it would seem selfish and mean, and
Tom would be vexed, and there would be an end of
her influence over him. Moreover, her money was
her own, and she was always allowed to spend it as
Bhe chose.

But was it quite right to do it and tell nobody ?
To tell her father was out of the question. Her mother
was locked in her room with a violent sick-headache.
There was no one to tell. It seemed to be quite right,
she thought. Poor Tom ! If he only would not get
into so much trouble !

That very night a note was on its way to him.

" PEAK TOM—

" Here are four dollars. It is all I have, and you
are welcome to it, only I'm so sorry. I hate bets.

y'* Solving and Reaping. 99

Mother would feel badly, I'm afraid, if she knew,
She's real sick to-day.

" Your loving

" GYPSY."

By return of mail came Tom's answer.

" DEAR G.—

"You're a diamond. I did not mean to take all
you had. I promise you this is the last of my heavy
betting. You are a good girl, and treat me better
than I deserve, and make me ashamed of myself.

And did she do just right? Perhaps one can
hardly judge without being exactly in her place.
Certainly the cases are rare in which it would be best
for a girl to pay her brother's wrongfully-contracted
debts without her parents' knowledge. The circum
stances were peculiar, and whether she acted pru
dently or not, her motive was a noble and generous
one. It was the nobleness and the generosity which
touched Tom ; which roused in him a fresh throb of
love for her, and another good resolve.

Two seeds worth sowing, certainly.

Joo Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

CHAPTER VIII.

FOLLOWING THE BUT.

ONE day Gypsy was walking homo from school with
Sarah Howe and Delia Guest, after the fashion of
very young ladies — with their arms interlaced about
each other's waists, chatting in the most confidential
manner (it sounded very much like canary birds
chirping) about blue ribbons and pink ribbons, bead
nets and magic ruffles, flounces and tucks and spotted
veils, and a bewilderment of other abstruse subjects
— when a buggy, drawn by a white horse, drove
furiously by. All at once the chirping stopped.

"Why, Gypsy, that's your father!"

" My father ? Where ? What ? I didn't see."

"No, she was looking the other way. There — in
ill at buggy ; he's 'most out of sight now. I wonder
what he was driving so for.'*

"Why, that is our buggy, sure enough; and
Billy — I can always tell Billy because his tail is so
nhort. Well, I never did see father drive like that
before. I guess Tom would laugh."

" Why, look ! he's turned off High-street.**

" You can see him through the trees."

" Why ! He's stopped at "

" TJie doctor's ! "

Gypsy turned first red and then pale, and before
the girls could say another word to her, she had

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 101

sprung away from them, and was running up the
street, and was out of sight around the corner.

She flew away like a bird, and reached the garden
fence and climbed it, and bounded through the drifts,
and rushed into the house, her hat hanging down
her neck, her breath gone. In the entry she stopped
The house was very still.

" Mother ! "

Nobody answered.

" Mother ! Mother ! Winnie ! "

But nobody answered that. She sprang up the
stairs two at a time, and into her mother's room.
Winnie was curled up in the corner, looking very
much frightened ; Patty was stepping about the
room, doing something with blankets and hot water.
Mrs. Breynton was lying on the bed ; she was heavily
muffled in the clothing, but she was shivering from
head to foot ; her cheeks were scarlet, and her eyes
looked wild and unnatural.

Gypsy stood still, very much frightened.

" It's the chills she's got," said Patty, in a whis
per ; she was took sudden, and yer fayther's gone for
\he docther ; may the Houly Mother presarve her,
for it's the sisther of me as was took the like o' that,
and was buried in a week, an' tin small childern lift
widout a mither till their fayther married 'em one
nixt month ; may the saints rest her soul ! "

Gypsy took off her things softly, sent Winnie
downstairs, quieted Patty's heavy tread, and busied
herself in doing what she could until the doctor came.

IO2 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

She knew nothing about sickness, and she was tho
roughly frightened by her mother's looks. Mrs.
Breynton scarcely noticed her, but tossed feverishly
upon the pillow, asking now and then what could
make the room so cold, and why the doctor did not
come. Gypsy concluded that she must be kept quiet
as well as warm ; so she finally dispensed with Patty,
who was doing her noisy best, and had knocked over
the washstand and three chairs within five minutes.
When Mr. Breynton came in with the doctor, they
found Gypsy sole nurse. " She had arranged things
with a womanliness and tact that were wonderful,"
her father said afterwards. " She must have been
very much frightened, but she certainly did not show
it. She was as gentle and thoughtful about the room
as her mother might have been herself. I am sure I
never supposed Gypsy capable of it, she is such a
fly-away child."

Fever — yes, the doctor said. He could not tell
with certainty of what sort— typhus, very likely ; it
had been in the system a long time. Had the patient
been subject to headaches of late ? Yes ? He
thought so. Yes, yes, he understood matters.
Aconite once every half hour till the pulse was
brought down.

" Is she going to be very sick ? " asked Gypsy,
following him down to the door.

The doctor shook his head mysteriously, and
said that it was impossible to tell. He had seen
enough of typhus fevers in his day, and he did

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 103

not care to see any more. He hoped she would get
through it.

He was a thin little man, with a melancholy voice
and lugubrious whiskers, and a remarkable way of
smiling as if he had been telling her some excellent
joke. Take him altogether, he in no wise enlivened
Gypsy's spirits.

Plard days came after that. Mrs. Breynton grew
worse and grew worse. The doctor shook his head
find folded his powders, and called it an obstinate
case, and meantime she kept growing worse. Gypsy
came out of school, put away her books, put on her
slippers and a white apron, and went into the sick
room. She became the most delightful little nurse
one could desire to have about — gentle, quiet,
thoughtful, quick to see what was wanted before it
was asked for, a perfect sunbeam, keeping all her
terrible fear to herself, and regular as a clock with
the medicines. It was really curious. People looked
on, and said, " What has become of blundering
Gypsy ? " But after all, it was not hard to explain,
Her love for her mother, like her love for Tom,
sobered her. When Gypsy was very much in earnest,
she could think.

The best thing about her was her cheery way of
hoping for the best ; it is doubtful if her father once
suspected that it was any more than the trustful
ignorance of a light-hearted child, or that she had
the least comprehension of the danger. But once,
when she had been sent out to get the air, and had

104 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

stolen away — a very quiet and pale little Gypsy — to
Peace Maythorne, it all came out in a sudden, low
cry: —

" Peace Maythorne, don't I know how sick she
is ? And not to dare to think I know, not to dare,
Peace ! "

And Peace drew her right down into her aims
and let her cry.

Oh, yes, the days were hard. The douht and sus
pense of them, the terrible helplessness, and idle
watching, the fears of one day brightening into hopes
the next, and fading into fears again — there lay the
sting. " She is better to-day — surely she is a little
better." " Not so well to-day, and the doctor's face
is grave. But she will have a better night, and to
morrow — yes, she must be better to-morrow." And
to-morrow would come, and she would be no better.
It used to seem to Gypsy that if they were going to
lose her, it would be far easier to know it and
face it.

There was once that her courage gave way, and
in genuine Gypsy fashion she blundered into saying
something which might have led to serious conse
quences.

It was just at twilight of one of Mrs. Breynton's
worst days. Her husband had been called away to
the store, Mrs. Howe, who had been with her a part
of the day, had gone home to supper, and the night
watcher had not yet come. Gypsy was left alone
with her, and she was sitting silently on a footstool

Gypsy9 s Sowing and Reaping. 105

by the hearth, waiting for any sound or motion from
the bed. She thought that her mother was asleep,
and was startled by hearing her speak suddenly, and
in a more quiet and natural voice than she had had
all day.

" Gypsy, what is the matter ? "

Gypsy drew back into the shadow, vexed with
herself for having let the firelight fall on her tear-
stained face.

" Come here a minute, Gypsy."

Gypsy wenc up to the bed, and knelt on the floor
beside it, laying her face down by her mother's
hand.

" Now tell me what you were crying about, my
child." .

" Oh nothing, mother ; that is to say, nothing
that — I mean, nothing you ought to know," began
Gypsy, choking down the sobs.

"Were you crying about me ? "

Mrs. Breynton's voice had that weak, appealing
accent so often heard in the voices of the sick, and
which it is so hard to hear in the voices of those we
love ; and when she spoke, she laid her hand — it had
grown pitifully thin and white — softly upon Gypsy's
bowed head. It was too much for Gypsy. She
broke into a sudden cry, and the bitter, incoherent
words tumbled forth one upon another, half-drowned
in her sobbing.

" Oh mother, mother, I was afraid — I was think
ing — what shall I do if you don't get well? Oh

io6 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

mother, mother, mother ! " Gypsy instantly knevf
what she had done. She sprang to her feet in
terror. What would her father say ? and the
doctor? How could she have done it ? How could
she?

But the quiet, natural voice spoke up again, very
quietly and very naturally, and her mother drew her
face down upon the pillows, and triod to hush her sobs.

"Never mind, Gypsy; you ha?e done no harm.
I know better than any one else how sick I am. And
I am glad this has happened, for there is something
I have wanted to say to you. Only, my child, please
don't cry so hard."

Gypsy understood that it was time for her to stop?
and she stopped.

" If the end is coming," said her mother, gently,
— " I don't seem to feel that it is yet, — but if it
should, Gypsy, there is Tom."

Gypsy nestled closer to her on the pillow for
answer.

" Gypsy, Tom must grow up a good man. I can
not have it any other way. But it will depend more
on you than any other human being. A sister who
will always love him, be gentle with him, be patient
with him, be womanly and generous for him, teach
him that he is a great deal dearer to her than she
is to herself — if he has no mother, Gypsy, he must
have that sister."

Gypsy raised her head, her tears quite gone, and
eaid, speaking very solemnly —

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 107

" Mother, whether you live or whether you die, I
will be that sister."

That promise, made in the dim light of the sick
room, with the shadows nodding on the walls, and
the shadow of the poor, thin face beside her on the
pillow, Gypsy will never forget.

But God was merciful, and she did not die ; and
if she had, He would have been merciful still. To no
one in the family was the experience of those fe;v
weeks what it was to Gypsy. For the first time in
her life she had looked into an open grave ; for we
never know nor can know what the words mean
antil we see one waiting for us or ours ; — for the first
time in her life she had felt that any one very dear
to her could die and life go on, and the future come,
with always a face in it to be missed, and a touch to
be longed for. For the first time in her life, too,
she had found out what it was to be very thankful ;
to fall on her knees with hidden face, the happy words
dying on her lips, for wonder that God should choose
her for such rich blessing.

Many times in these days she thought of her cousin
Joy and her motherless life. She thought that she
had understood it before, but now she found that she
never had. She wrote to Joy once and told her so.

Bat the fever had done its work thoroughly, and
Mrs. Breynton did not recover as fast as they had
hoped. She seemed to be very much shattered by
it, and it was many weeks before she was able to
»eave her bed. After the watchers had been

8

io8 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

np, and the nurses had gone, and the neighbours
began to come in less frequently to offer help, Gypsy
was busy enough. And ifc was then that there came
the trial to her patience and good temper. She must
be nurse, and she must be housekeeper; she must
look after Winnie — and it did seem as if that young
gentleman made it a serious study to require looking
after at least once in every five minutes; she must
try to make things pleasant for her father, and she
must write to Tom. Here lay the rub. It was
almost impossible to get time to do it. Her mother's
toast must be made, and her father's stockings must
be darned ; Patty, driven with the extra work, must
be helped to set the table and wash the dishes;
Winnie must be picked out of the hogshead and the
flour-barrel and the coal-bin, cajoled away from the
molasses-jug, washed, and brushed, and mended,
respectfully entreated not to stamp through the
garret-floor while mother was sleeping, and coerced
into desisting from pounding Patty with the broom-
handle and two pokers. Arid writing to Tom was
obviously more pleasant.

We cannot always do our sowing where we like
and as we like; Providence sometimes ploughs a rut
for us, and all we have to do is to walk in it ; Gypsy
found this out before her mother had been sick a
month.

Eut there is almost always a gust of wind or a
bird to scatter the grain a little.

Several years after, Gypsy was one day looking

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 109

over Tom's desk for an envelope, when she came to
some bits of paper carefully folded by themselves.
Seeing the handwriting she pulled them out.

" Why, Tom Breynton ! you never kept these all
this time!"

" Rather think I did, and I wouldn't part with
them for a good deal ; I'd rather lose all your other
Jotters first. Didn't I know well enough how you
used to write them when you ought to be abed,
and how tired you were, and hurried and bothered ?
Well, I think I did; here, put them back where you
found them, Miss! "

They were the tiny notes and scraps of messages
which Gypsy had written while her mother was sick.

" Gypsy," said Winnie, one day, stamping into
the room, slamming the door, upsetting two chairs
and a table, just as Gypsy had drawn the shutters
for her mother's afternoon nap, — " where's my
shaving-brush, I'd like to know ? I didn't shave
this week, nor last month, and father shaves every
day, and you don't know anything about it 'cause
you're a girl. Now where is it, sir ? "

" Oh, dear," said Gypsy, hushing him up, " I did
hope that you'd forget that brush. You've brushed
your teeth, and your shoes, and your hair with it,
besides using it to paint the looking-glass with flour
paste, and rub vinegar all over the cat, and "

Winnie interrupted by severely signifying that
what he had done with it, or was going to do with it
was cf no consequence ; he should like the brush;

no Gypsifs Sowing and Reaping.

" if he didn't have that brush, he'd squeal, he'd stamp,
he'd pound, he'd thump, he'd holler awful ; would
she let him have the brush ? "

It was the only way of getting rid of him
without a battle, so she took the brush from its
hiding-place on the mantel, and Winnie stamped off
triumphant.

He came to supper with a very red face.

" What is the matter ? " asked Gypsy.

" Oh, nothin', only I've been shaving," said
Winnie, rubbing his cheeks. " I didn't s'pose it was
going to hurt."

" Hurt ? How ? What did you shave with ? "

" With a brush, of course ; you do ask such
stupid questions, Gypsy Breynton ! "

" Anything besides the brush ? "

" Oh, nothing but a case-knife ; it was an all
notched-up case-knife, too ; Patty wouldn't give me
a nice one — the old thing ! "

When Winnie had been in bed about fifteen minutes
that night, there suddenly uprose an utterly indescrib
able shriek, as of one who had been controlling his
emotions to the verge of human endurance.

Gypsy rushed upstairs.

'* Why, Winnie Breynton! what has hap
pened ? "

" They hur-r-rt !" sobbed Winnie, who was
holding on to his cheeks with both hands. " They
hurt dreadful, and I wasn't goin' to — tell, 'cause
father arid Tom — never — do ! "

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 1 1 1

" Winnie, what did you shave with, I should like
to know ? "

" Water."

"Nothing else?"

No, there was nothing else. What did he put the
water in ? An old peach-can that he found on tho
ehelf.

" On the shelf in tho pantry ?— the lower shelf? "

"Yes, I don't see what there is to laugh et
either."

Gypsy did her best, but she could not help it.

" Oh, Winnie Breynton ! I'd been using it to
make mother's mustard-paste !"

CHAPTER IX.

STONY PLACES.

MRS. BREYNTON did not become well fast. It took
her a long time to get out of bed, a long time to get
downstairs, a long time U> get out of doors. " It
was an obstinate case," repeated the doctor, peering
mysteriously at her through his glasses, " and she had
very littlr ~»tality in rallying from it, very little
vitality. " Ijrypsy said, " Yes, sir," with a remarkably
vague idea what he was talking about, and Winnie
wanted to know if vitality meant whiskers.

In fact, it ended in Mrs. Breynton'a becoming a

Gypsy fs Sowing and Reaping.

confirmed invalid for the winter, very easily excited
and much injured by excitement ; very dependent on
rest and quiet, and having things cheerful about her.
Thus the family fell into the way of telling her the
brightest side of everything, and bearing their little
anxieties without her, and thus it came about thatsho
never knew of something which Gypsy did when the
college term was about two-thirds through.

She had been down to the office one day to carry
a letter to Tom from "Winnie. Winnie was under the
ignominious necessity of getting some one else to
write his letters, but he made up for it by originality
of material. This particular letter ran as follows : —

" Tell him I want him to bring me some pea-nuts
and candy, sir, and if he can't afford it he needn't, and
I want him to bring me two pounds of pea-nuts and
candy. My whiskers don't grow very fast. Why
don't they ? I shaved them one time with the mus
tard-box. I squealed that night, too. I smash my
potatoes myself, to dinner. I like to do it with the
napkin-ring, but Gypsy she won't let me. I know
how to tie my shoe-strings in a hard knot, too.
Mother's an intidel, and stays in her room pretty
much. Nothing else that I can think of. This is
from Winnie Sreynton, Esq., sir."

Gypsy found in the box a letter for herself. It
was from Tom. She was a little surprised, for she
had heard from him only two days before. She read
it on the way home, folded it with a grieved and puz
zled face, put it in her pocket, and said nothing about

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping , 113

it to any one. It was no wonder that she was grieved
and puzzled.

" MY JEWEL OF A GYPSY : —

"I made a rush in Greek yesterday, and the
Sophs are behaving better than they did. Hall came
very near getting into trouble with Tutor 1),, but
begged off. I hope mother is better, and that you
have gone back to school. Did I ever tell you how
much everybody admires your mark in my Bible ? I
keep it on the table, so they can see it.

" Look here, Gyp. I've got into a little fix. My
funds were low — very low — decjidelly minus, in fact
though I am sure I cannot tell where it is all gone
to, and I borrowed a few dollars of one of the fellows,
and expected to pay it back before now j but father sa}'8
that what I had ought to have lasted till the end of the
icrm, and he was so vexed (though I didn't tell him
what I wanted it for), and hammers at me so for being
extravagant, that I can't apply to him. I know
I've spent too much, and I suppose he gives me all he
can afford. I don't want to talk against him, for I
suppose this way he has is mostly because he thinks
80 much of us, and I know I've made him trouble
enough ; but I don't dare to have him know about
this. The follow wants the money, and has a right
to it. It will be a disgrace to me if I don't pay be
fore long ; he won't hold his tongue, for he is mad
about it. Can you think of any way I can get out of
it ? Could you get something from mother ? I would

114 Gypsy* s Sowing and Reaping.

not write to her, for I did not know but she was too
eick. It goes hard to have her know any way. Don't
tell her if it will do her any hurt. Didn't mean ever
to have come to yon about such a scrape again, and
I haven't paid back your four dollars yet, either.
But, to tell the truth, it is a serious fix. I wonder you
are not tired to death of being bothered by

" Your graceless brother, TOM."

Gypsy did not know what to do. She lay awake
a long time that night, thinking about it, her merry
brows knotted, and her red lips drawn into asorrowful
curve. And what she thought was this : —

Tom must have the money. It was too bad — terribly
too bad that he should keep making such good resolves
and then forgetting them. He ought not to have bor
rowed ; he ought not to have needed to borrow ; but
he must have the money. If he should not have it,
she did not know exactly what would happen ; but ho
certainly intimated that it would be something very
bad. At least he would be disgraced, and whatever
that might mean, it would be dreadful to have Tom
disgraced. She concluded that they would probably
send him to prison. In all the story-books, people
went to prison for debt. And to think of Tom in
prison ! No, he must have the money at any cost.

This was very easy to say ; the thing was to get
it. She had none of her own ; she had lent it all to
him before. Of course she could not go to her father.
Telling her mother was not to be thought of; the
excitement and pain would throw her back a fort-

Gypsy9 s Sowing and Reaping.

night. Peace Maythorne could be no help. What
was to be done ? She tossed about on the bed till
eleven o'clock, and was no nearer answering the
question than she was at nine. So she went to sleep
on it. About midnight she woke up suddenly, and
thought of something. She jumped up in the dark
and ran to her upper bureau drawer, and pulled it
out with a jerk. She took out a little box, and sat
down on the floor by the window, in the pale star
light, and opened it. It was a pretty box of cedar-
wood, inlaid with pearl lilies, and was lined wilh
soft, pink cotton. It held all Gypsy's jewellery.
" All " was very little, to be sure, but some of it was
quite pretty. There was a cameo pin — her best one
— with a Beatrice's head on it ; there was a tiny gold
cross that she sometimes wore around her neck ; a
coral bracelet fastened by a gold snake, made out of
the sleeve-clasps which she had worn when she was
a baby ; a battered gold heart, intended to slip ou
one of the old-fashioned watch-guards ; two gold
buttons that one of her aunts had given her several
years ago ; a lava stud, and a number of rings
These rings ran very much to cornelian and gutta-
percha, but there were two handsome ones. One had
been her mother's when she was a girl, and was
sealed by the least bit of an opal ou a gold leaf; this
Gypsy wore only on state occasions. The other, her
uncle George had given her ; it was a circle of
elaborate chasing, and had been originally a very
pretty ring. But she had lost it once in the garden,

Ii6 G?//^;\> Sowing and Reaping.

and when it was found, months after, it was tar«
nished and bent, and had lain on the pink cotton ic
that condition ever since. When Gypsy had looked
all the things over, she took out this ring, the bat
tered heart, the two gold buttons, and the lava stud,
and turned them about in her fingers, hesitating.

" I never wear these," she said, half aloud, " and
nobody will ever suspect or wonder, or ask where
they're gone to ; Joy might, if she were here, but
she isn't. And I am sure they must be worth as
much as ten dollars, and— yes, I'll do it."

After that she put away the pearl-inlaid box, and
wrent to bed, and thought how much she was like the
girls in the story-books.

It chanced that Mr. Breynton was in Burlington
for a day or two on business, and Gypsy hesitated a
little about what she said to her mother the next day,
but remembered that Tom was iu a hurry, and finally
said it.

" Mother, I have been thinking I should like to
go over to Vcrgcnncs this afternoon, and match the
worsteds for your camp-chair."

" To-day, Gypsy ? "

" Yes, mother ; it is such a perfect day for it, and
Mr. Surly says it is going to snow to-morrow. Tim
only thing is, leaving you without father here. I
don't exactly want to."

" Oh, I don't care. It will only be a few hours,
and I don't need anything but what Patty can do
for mo. If you want to go, you had better.'*

Gypsy's Sowing and Reafing. 117

Now, if there Lad been nothing but the worsteds
OP her own pleasure concerned, Gypsy would not
Aave thought of going till her father was at home.
But something more important than worsteds or
pleasure was concerned, and she accepted the per
mission with a readiness that was very unlike
Gypsy ; for she had been very generous and thought
ful ; quick to deny herself anything and everything,
since her mother's illness. Mrs. Breynton, though
she really did not need her, noticed the difference,
and Gypsy felt that she did, and being unable to
explain it, was the hardest thing about this Vergennes
undertaking.

She started in the noon train, with a very stout-
looking purse in her pocket, and one hand holding it
tight. It held her money — change for her fare and
bills for her worsteds— and it also held a battered
heart, a ring, two buttons, and a lava stud.

It was a bright, bleak, winter day ; the sun on the
snow dazzled her, and the wind blew sharply into
her face, as she stepped from the cars and began to
wander about the streets of Vergennes. She did
not know exactly where to go with her jewellery ;
and now that it had come to the point, she dreaded
selling it. It was an unpleasant thing to do. It had
a mean look she thought ; she was not poorly dressed,
and they would never guess that she could really
need the money, and certainly never guess what it
was for. Besides, she felt uneasy about doing ftuch
a thing without her mother's knowledge. She

n8 Gypsy9 s Sowing and Reaping.

wished for the twentieth time that Tom had not run
in debt. However, it was rather late in the day to
begin to be discouraged ; so, after she had bought
her worsteds, remembering that the girls in the
story-books always took their jewellery to tha pawn
brokers, she stopped the first man she met, and asked
him if he could tell her where there was a pawn
broker's shop. The man put his hands in his pockets,
and his hat on one side of his head, and stared — at
her face, the feather in her hat, her pretty cashmere
dress, her lady-like muff, her neatly-gloved hands,
and said —

" Dew tell, now ! "

" Can you tell me where there is a pawnbroker's,
sir ? " repeated Gypsy, reddening. " I want to sell
some jewellery."

"Wall, I never!" said the man; "you don't
want nary pawnbroker. Jewellers is the place fur
sech pooty little gals. You'll find one right round
the corner ; very genteel jeweller, and fust cousin of
mine, too."

Gypsy thanked him, and walked away as fast a3
she could. The "fust cousin " proved to be a littlo
man with a black moustache. Whether his claims
to gentility lay in that, or in his blue satin vest and
flaring purple scarf-pin, or in his dingy, dusty shop,
or in his stock of flashy jewellery — largely consisting
of brass and paste — was not quite clear to the in
quiring mind. Gypsy looked about her, and was
sorry that she had come.

Gypsy's Bowing and Reaping . I.I 9

" What will you have to-day, ma'am ? " asked the
jeweller, promptly ; " ear-rings, bracelets — finest
Etruscan gold, them bracelets — fine assortment of
diamonds, stone cameos, and this ruby, ma'am — the
genooine article, worth fifty dollars if it's worth a
copper; but seeing it's you, now, I'll let you have it
for a song — I'll say ten dollars, and that'll be throwin'
of it away."

" Oh, I wouldn't have you throw it away on me,
I'm sure," said Gypsy, with mischief in her eyes.
" I don't exactly see how you could afford to lose
forty dollars on it either. Besides, I didn't come to
buy anything. I came to sell some jewellery."

" Oh, you did, did you ? " said the jeweller, witL
a sudden change of tone ; " well, I don't do much in
that line. I sometimes take folks' old silver and such
to oblige 'em, but it isn't worth nothing to me."

Gypsy had opened her purse, and the trinkets
fell out upon the glass show-case. She spread them
out, and asked how much he was willing to give her.
The jeweller looked them over with ill-concealed
eagerness, and took them up with masterly indif
ference.

" Hum ! look as if they'd been through the wars :
if I was to give you seventy- five cents for 'em, it
would be more than they're worth."

" Seventy-five cents ! " exclaimed Gypsy ; " why,
I wouldn't sell one of the buttons for that," and she
began to put them back in her purse.

" Well, say a dollar, then ; come now, that's fair."

I2o tyt'^f8 Sowing a /id Heaping.

"No, sir, I don't think it is fair at all," said
Gypsy, shutting up her purse very fast.

" Dollar and a quarter then — call it a bargain."
But Gypsy walked right out of the shop.

She strolled about awhile, feeling discouraged
enough, but Gypsy-like, more provoked that anyboJy
should try to cheat her, till at last she stumbled upon
another jeweller's, a handsome store, large, and clean,
and well-lighted, with a display of watches and silver
in the windows. So she pulled out her purse again
and went in.

There was a well-dressed man behind the counter,
who had a very singular smile. Gypsy noticed it
before she had shut the door, and was so absorbed in
looking at it that she forgot what she had come for,
and never said a word.

" How can I serve yon ? " said the man, politely.

" Oh, how do you do ? " said Gypsy, reddening.

" I'm very well, I thank you," said the jeweller,
his singular smile becoming so very singular that
Gypsy was more confused than ever. She felt as if
he were making fun of her, and she knew that she
had said a stupid thing ; so, by way of making up
for it, with her face on fire, she broke out —

" I want to sell a heart and some buttons for my
brother ; that is — I mean — well, do you pay people
for old jewellery ? That's what I mean."

Well, it depended on the quality ; sometimes he
did and sometimes he didn't ; he would look at any
thing she might have and tell her. So out came the

Gypjy's Sowing and Reaping. ill

heart and the buttons, the ring and the lava stud, a
second time. The jeweller took them up one by one,
examined them carefully, laid them, down, and said,
looking as if he were relieving himself of some ex
cellent joke, that he would give her two dollars and
a half for the whole.

" Why, I expected to get ten, just as much as
could be ! " said Gypsy.

" Two dollars and a half is all they're worth,
miss," repeated the jeweller, and his remarkable
smile broadened and grew to such an extent that
Gypsy's indignation got the better of her politeness.

*' I should like to know what you're laughing at,
if you please! I don't see anything so very funny !';

" Oh, nothing, nothing. I beg your pardon ;
only to think that you expected ten dollars ! but
nothing is the matter at all."

" Then you won't give me any more than two
dollars and a half!" said Gypsy, faintly, her ripe,
red lips quivering with disappointment. Two dollars
and a half would never pay the debt. Poor Tom,
poor Tom !

Just then a customer opened the door ; a step
strangely familiar sounded on the floor behind her;
a heavy hand was laid upon her shoulder.

Gypsy started, turned, and screamed.

It v/as her father.

122 Gypsy*s Sowing and Reaping.

CHAPTER X.

VARIOUS MATTERS.

THE hot, crimson blood rushed all over her face, down
her neck, out to the tips of her fingers. If he had
caught her stealing, she could not have looked more
guilty. In a minute she remembered herself, and
£ried to laugh as if nothing unusual were going on.

" Why, father ! Where on earth did you drop
down from ? "

"I am just on my way home from Burlington,
and had a littledbusiness here. I did not expect to
find you. What brought you over ? and what are
you buying there ? "

" I came over to get mother some worsteds ; that
is — yes, I've been buying her some worsteds for her
camp-chair."

" Bat these are not worsteds."

Gypsy looked the other way and stood still, and
the jeweller seemed to think that it was very funny.

" What are you doing, Gypsy ? Buying some
jewellery ? Does your mother know about it ? "

Gypsy picked up the trinkets, and never said a
word. What should she say ? Her father began to
look displeased.

" Gypsy/' Baid he, gravely, " what does all this
mean?"

Gypsy, bewildered, frightened, hardly knowing
what she said, broke out : —

" No, sir, I wasn't bnying, I was selling — just

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 123

some little things that belong to me; and mother
always lets me do what I want with my things, and
the man wouldn't give me but two dollars and a half,
and that won't half pay it, and — I mean, I don't want
Tom to go to prison, and — oh, dear, let's go home
now."

" Put those things back into your purse," said
her father, sternly. Gypsy obeyed in silence, and in
silence they went out of the store and left the jeweller
smiling still.

Mr. Breynton took the road to the station, walking
in great strides that Gypsy could scarcely keep up
with. For a few moments he said nothing to her, and
his silence frightened her more than anything he
could have said.

" Grypsy," he began at last, and Gypsy trembled
all over, " Gypsy, I don't understand this thing, and
I want you to explain it, the whole of it/' Gypsy
knew that she must obey, and it seemed to her as if
her breath stopped coming. What would Tom say ?
Oh, what would he ! She spoke her thought for
answer, and it was the best answer she could have
made.

" Oh, father ! I don't know what Tom will say tc
me. He wouldn't have had you know for the world,
not for the world, and mother was too sick to tell,
arid so I had to do it all alone, and "

''' Do what all alone ? " interrupted her father,
severely. " What is this about Tom ? What has ha
done?"

124 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

" He borrowed a little money — I don't believe it
fyas very much, but he borrowed it," said GypsyT
faintly, " and he couldn't pay, and I was afraid he
would have to go to prison, and so I thought I'd sell
my heart and things — it was a real old heart, and
jammed up where Winnie bit it, and I stamped on it
when we were little, you know," she added, her eyes
twinkling in spite of her fright and grief.

" So Tom has run in debt and been to you to pay
it!"

Mr. Breynton's eyes flashed, and there was a
terrible sound in his voice. Gypsy did not dare to
say a word.

*'I should like to know how long this has been
going on."

" Oh, not long, sir, not very long, and Tom was
so sorry, and I know he didn't mean to, and I never
cared a bit for the heart, you know, and the ring was
all black lying out in that funny little chink undei
the fence.*'

Thnre was a silence. Mr. Breynton strode rapidly
on, and Gypsy had to run to keep up with him.

" I should like to know," he said, suddenly,
" what you meant by saying that Tom wouldn't have
me know for the world, but would have told his
mother if she had been fit to hear such a disgraceful
story."

" Why, you know, Tom thinks you — you don't
take things just like mother," said honest Gypsy,
Afraid that she was going to be disrespectful, but nut

Gypsy9 s bowing and Reaping. 1 25

knowing any other way than to tell tho truth
u Sometimes yon are very much displeased, yon know,
and yon talk to him a good deal, and he gets angry,
— and of course that's very wrong in him ; but then
ho seems to get along better with mother; and he
eaid he knew he had no business to have borrowed,
but he didn't dare to have yon know, and you see,
sir, I wasn't to say a word abont it, and I don't
know what he will do."

Mr. Breynton made no answer, but strode on faster
than ever, his face flushing and paling, and working
strangely. Gypsy wondered what he was thinking.
Whatever it was she never knew — nor any one else,
perhaps.

"I do hope you won't scold him very hard," she
ventured, at last, in a very faint voice. " Ho didn't
mean to — oh, I know he didn't mean to ! "

" Do you think you have been doing right to start
off in this way, without the knowledge of either youf
mother or father, selling jewellery in tho stores to help
him when he doesn't deserve to be helped ? That
money was really stolen from me, as much as it will
be stolen from his class-mate if it is not paid. He
knew I hadn*t it for him to spend," said Mr. Breynton,
taking no notice of what she said.

" I'm sure I don't know," said poor Gypsy. " I
was so troubled and bothered, and I wanted to tell
mother. I tried to do right, anyway."

She raised her great brown eyes just then, and

126 Gypsy's Sow'mg and Reaping.

nobody looking into them could doubt it. Her fathei
did not, and he spoke more gently.

"Well, well, my child, I hope so. Tom makes
us all a great deal of trouble. I don't understand it.
I'm sure I've taken care enough of that boy."

Gypsy might have said a thing or two to that, if
she had not been his daughter; but she did some
thing that was much better. She began to plead
again — and Gypsy made a very pretty pleader — for
Tom.

" You know, father, he will never do it again as
long as he lives, never, and he is so dreadfully sorry
and ashamed and a'l, and if he gets angry, and goes
and acts worse after it, why, I should cry so, father!"

Her father drew her hand up into his, his nervous
face pale, and puzzled, and grave.

" He has done wrong, Gypsy, and I must tell him
so. But I will be gentle with him, and I will pay the
debt this time, though 1 never shall again. Now, my
child, I hope you will conceal nothing of this sort
from me after this."

" I didn't suppose you would be so nice," said
Gypsy, drawing a very long breath. " If I had sup
posed you'd be so nice I should have wanted to tell
and have it over, right straight off."

Towards the end of the term Tom came out with
a new idea. He wanted to go into the army. His
letters home were filled with it, and the more his
father opposed it the more Tom insisted. The boy
wa«5 too young, said Mr. Breynton, and said rightly ;

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 12 7

it would be the ruin of him, body and soul} the
Government neither required nor needed such sacri
fices yet. If the war lasted till he was twenty he
might go ; not a month before.

Bat so many of the fellows were going, reasoned
Tom ; everybody was talking about it, since that last
defeat at the West ; two of his own class-mates had
left within a fortnight ; he felt so mean to stay at
home. Sometimes his letters would come embellished
with flags, and shields, and various national devices
of his own painting ; sometimes he copied for Gypsy
certain stirring patriotic songs which were popular
in college, and privately instructed her to sing them
to her father every night when he came home from
the store. Once in a while he undertook a very par
ticular appeal to his mother, but received for answer
only a gentle, " I am sorry, my son ; but I agree
with your father perfectly about this thing. We do
not think it best for you to go till you are older and
stronger. Then, if you are needed, we would not
keep you back a moment. Try to be a good boy,
meantime, and wait patiently."

Finally, Tom had to content himself with sly hints
and innuendoes, and with the most remarkable patri
otic orations, covering sixteen pages of note-paper,
in which the Star-Spangled Banner and the Ameri
can Eagle figured largely. These sublime abstrac
tions were evidently intended as a severe and digni
fied way of stinging the family conscience. In a
confidential note to Gypsy he said once, what he had

128 Gypsy's Sowing anil Reaping.

not said to any one else : — " You see, Gypsy, I'm sick
of college through, and through. 1 haven't taken the
stand, nor behaved the way I meant to ; and I wish
I were out of it once for all."

So the winter passed, and the spring vacation
came, and Tom with it. The army question had
rather subsided, and they thought he had forgotten
it. But, once or twice, when the subject was men
tioned, Gypsy, looking up suddenly, caught an ex
pression in his eye which made her doubt and think.

Somebody made up a party one bright day to
visit Belden's Falls, and Tom and Gypsy were of it.
The Kowes were there, and the Guests, the Holmans,
Miss Cardrew, and Mr. Guernsey — nearly all the
teachers and scholars of the High School, and many
of Tom's old friends. The day was charming, and
the company was charming, and the Falls were so in
teresting, Delia said. The ride was a long one, and
led through sunny valleys, where the early birds were
.singing; up rocky hills, where the carnages jolted,
and the girls screamed ; through patches of forest
cooled by the snow that still lay in the hollows, and
under the shadow of the walls.

They drove into the woods that surrounded the
Falls, tied their horses, and voted to walk the rest of
the way, through the cool, damp shadow, and the
perfume of the pines. Not that they thought very
much about perfume or shadow. Tom and Francis
were telling college stories, and after the fashion of
a party of very young people, they were fast getting

Gypsy*s Sowing mid Reaping. I2<)

" excited," when they turned a sudden corner, and
stopped.

A flash of light, a roar, a dizziness — and there it
all was. A sheer fall of foam, broken and tossed
about by huge, black, jagged rocks ; the stealthy
under-current showing through in green, swift lines ;
showers of spray falling in feathers, breaking in
bubbles, flashing into silver, touched into gold ; and,
spanning the roar, and brightness, and bewilderment,
a tiny rainbow, quivering like a thing imprisoned.
A-bove, the terrible rushing on of the black current
co its fall, through gorges and caverns, through sun
light and shade — a thing untamed and untamable. Be
yond, the tree- tops tossing, and a sky \vithsilver clouds.

" Oh, I never ! Isn't it sweet pretty ? He ! he !
ha ! " said Delia Guest.

" Elegant ! splendid ! leautiful ! Why, how hand
some it is !" from Sarah.

Gypsy had thrown off her liat — she was sure she
could not have told why — and stood with it hanging
by one string from her dropped hands, her face up
turned, her eyes as still as a statue's.

" Look at Gypsy Breynton ! " said somebody, pre
sently. " Why don't you talk, for pity's sake ? "

" Oh !" said Gypsy, with a jump ; " yes — I forgot.
What was it you wanted ? "

They looked to their hearts' content, and looked
ngain, and went away, and came back and looked
again ; they crawled round into the cave, and threw
stones into the boiling vortex ; and tried to meamire

I3° Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

the sides of the gorge with a fish-line ; and crouched
where they could feel the spray on their faces ; and
explored the wooded banks ; and crossed the tiny
foot-bridge that hung, old and trembling, over a
chasm where the black water lay two or three hun
dred feet down.

" I feel so sorry for it," said Gypsy, as she stood
looking down, leaning rather recklessly on the frail
railing.

" Sorry for it !" called Sarah, from a safe place
on the bank — she said that the bridge made her
nervous.

" Why, it looks so like a great creature leaping
along to be killed," said Gypsy, under her breath.

Sarah stared, and wanted to know if she read
that in a fairy story ?

"Oh, look at Tom Breynton!" called one of the
Holmans, suddenly. He had crawled to the very edge
of the chasm, past some trees and a bush or two, and
was sitting on a sharp, projecting rock, both feet
hanging down, and his hands "n his pockets. Of
course, everybody exclaimed, and the girls screamed
— which was, probably, exactly what Tom wanted.

" Tom, I don't like to look at you very much,"
saitl Gypsy, quietly. She had not any of that way
which so many sisters have, of worrying Tom if she
thought that he was doing a dangerous thing. Sho
knew that he was old enough and sensible enough to
take care of himself; and, further, that boys don't
like to be interfered with by their younger sisters

Gypsy 's Sowing and Reaping. 131

" before folks ;" and, also, that boys will do things
that girls cannot do, and dangerous things, and be
hurt or not, as the chance may be ; and that there is
no more use in trying to stop them than there would
be in putting down a little pine-branch into that great
writhing current, to dam it up. So she said what
she had to say, and then let him alone.

" Look the other way, then," said Tom, coolly
leaning far over, with both hands in his pockets ; it
did have an ugly look — as if a breath would blow
him off.

Gypsy made him no answer, but she pressed for
ward, instinctively, to watch him, leaned heavily
upon the railing, and it cracked with a loud, sharp
noise.

Tom heard it and sprang. Gypsy was on the
shore at a bound, safe enough, and the bridge,
too. Tom, with his hands encumbered, slipped and
fell.

There was a cry — the vacant rock — and horrible
silence.

Into it a groan broke, and Gypsy, leaning ovei
with rigid face, where all the rest had fallen back to
make room for her, saw that the reck shelved and
jutted eight feet down, into a narrow ledge. Tom,
swinging by the bush with one free hand, had fallen
here, and lay helpless, one ankle sprained by a cruel
twist in a crevice.

Mr. Guernsey was gone already for a rope, and
they drew him up and drove him slowly home- and —

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

well, I am inclined to think that Tom said his prayers
that night.

The sprain proved to be a severe one ; the doctor
ordered him to the sofa, and to the sofa he had to go.
The result was, that he lost several weeks of the be
ginning of the term.

This was time and soil for Gypsy's sowing, and
she made the most of it.

It was vacation, so that she had most of her time
to herself, and she delivered it over entire to Tom.
Perched on a high, round stool without a back, with
her feet oil the rounds, and her head on one side like
a canary, she sat by his sofa hour after hour, and
read to him, and sang to him, and talked to him, and
played chess with him. She ran on errands for him,
she made him lemonade and whips and jellies, she
saved up every scrap of news that she could gather
for him, she ran all over town to borrow novels for
him — she became, in fact, for patience, and gentle
ness, and persistent care, such a model of a little
sister as astonished Tom beyond measure. Not that
she never made any blunders. She would scarcely
have been Gypsy if she had not tipped over his
lemonade, shut up flies into his books, spilt cold
water down his r.eck, and lost the pins out of his
bandages. Nor was it by any means as easy to be a
model little sister as might be supposed. In spile of
her love for Tom, play was play, and to sit up on a
round stool and read Cooper's novels aloud, when tho
sun was shining, and Sarah Howe was paddling about

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 133

in the orchard swamp alone, was hard enough some
times. Moreover, a sick boy is very much like a
caged panther, and Tom, to tell the truth, was onc<
in a while — a little — cross. He voted it a bore, this
lying on sofas, at least twenty times a day, and in by
no means the most cheerful of tones ; he was sure
that his bandage was too tight one minute, and con
fident that it was too loose the next ; he pronounced
the lemonade too sour, and the whips not as good as
they were yesterday ; he wished that Gypsy would
not read so fast. No, that was too slow, now ; it
sounded like Dr. Prouty preaching a two-hours'
Fast-Day sermon. Now, why need she keep cough
ing and wriggling about? and what was the use
in making up such unearthly faces over the long
words ? "

" Then you see, I get mad sometimes," Gypsy
told Peace, " and I fire up and say something horrid,
and then I'm just as sorry, and I go right at him and
squeeze him and kiss him, and he says he didn't
mean to, and that I'm too good to a fellow, and I say
I didn't mean to, and I squeeze him again, and we're
both of us sorry, and after that I go down town arid
get him a pint of peanuts, and you ought to see ua
eat them ! "

So the weeks passed, and what Tom thought of
Gypsy at the end of them, he managed partly io
tell her one Sunday night when they were alone to
gether.

"leay, Gyp.'*

1.34 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

" Well ? "

« Look here."

" I'm looking as hard as I can ; it's pitch dark !
I can't see a thing but two boots (they want black
ing dreadfully), not in the place where boots ought
to be — all skewed up on top of the parlour sofa."

" G"7Psy* I was undertaking to talk sense."

" You were ? Well, I never ! Do let me call in
father and mother — they would be so taken by sur
prise."

"Yes, ma'am, I was. I was going to say that
you have been a good girl since I've been shut up
here."

" Oh ! " said Gypsy, with a change of tone.

"A good girl," repeated Tom, "and what with
your jellies and novels and bandages, you've treated
me better than I deserve. I vote you a first-rate
fellow. Give us a kiss, will you ? "

Gypsy gave him the kiss, and thought about it.

<; What would you give, to see me in a blue uni
form, with a musket on my shoulder, or a sword,
perhaps, and a red sash, taking a rebel fort and get
ting into the newspapers, and doing up glory, and
Hail Columbia, and all the rest of it — be a little
proud of your good-for-nothing brother, maybe ? "

" Yes," said Gypsy, with flashing eyes, " of course
T should. Bui/ you're not a good-for-nothing, and
soldiers are so apt to get killed, you know. Besides,
mother won't let you, and I had rather be proud of
you at college, a great deal. I eypect you will do

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 135

splendidly this term, don't you ? " she added, confi
dentially.

" Hum," said Tom, in a queer tone, and broke
out whistling. Gypsy could not see his face in the
dark.

" You know Yankee Doodle isn't — exactly — Sun
day, Tom dear," she ventured, at last. " No, nol
John Brown's Body, nor Dixie either, Tom Breyn-
ton ! Old Hundred ? Yes, that will do. I wonder
if it would be wicked for me to whistle alto ? "

Whenever Gypsy proposed to whistle, Tom's
musical tendencies came to an untimely end, and this
occasion proved no exception.

CHAPTER XI.

A STAMP IN TUB WRONG CORNER.

A DAT or two before Tom went back to college, tae
children were all sitting together one morning in Mrs,
Breynton's room, when their father came in from the
post-office with an open letter in his hand.

" Oh, I guess that's a letter from my coal man,"
remarked Winnie, with the nonchalance of a business
man of untoH epistolary experience. " I ordered
two tons and a pint tipped into my cellar, only Mrs.
Winnie, she said, it wasn't enough to keep the chil
dren warm, and then I tell you we got mad, and I

136 Gypsy" s Sowing and Reaping.

just told her she wasn't anything but a woman, and
she kept still after that, sir !"

"From Uncle George ?" asked Gypsy, looking up
from her work. " Oh, what did Joy do about those
satin slippers, and what did he give her on her birth
day ?" but then she stopped. She had seen, and
every one else had seen by this time, the dark stern
ness of her father's face.

" Thomas, I should like to have you read that."

Tom took the letter, read it, dropped it, gre\V
very pale.

It fell on the floor by Gypsy's chair. She saw
that it was a printed circular, so she picked it up and
read : —

" DAVID BREYNTON, ESQ. : —

" SIR,— The bill of Mr. Thomas Breynton, for tho
last Collegiate term, has not been paid. This notice
is given in obedience to a law of the College, which
provides that * If any student shall fail to pay, within
fi'O weeks after the close of any vacation, his bil!u
of tho preceding term, it shall be the duty of the
Treasurer to give immediate notice thereof to tho
Bondsman of such Student, unless the latter shall
have deposited with the Treasurer a certificate from
his Bondsman or Guardian, that the means of pay
ment have not been furnished him, or shall have pro-
sen ted to the Treasurer a satisfactory reason for tho
delay.' " Your obedient servant,

Sowing and Reaping. 137

"Well," said Mr. Breynton, " what have you to
say for yourself ? "

Tom had not a word to say for himself. He sat
with his eyes upon the ground, his face still very
pale.

" I should like to know why your tuition was not
paid," insisted his father. Tom tried to whistle,
failed miserably, put his hands in his pockets, aud
walked over to the window.

" Meant to pay it this term," he said, sulkily.
" My money got played out some way or other,
I'm sure I haven't the fraction of an idea how, and I
meant to start fresh when I went back, and pay it.
I don't know how I was to know that the old fellow
must come and tell you."

" So first you were guilty of a meanness both to
your instructors and to me, and then you resorted to
a deception to hide it."

"There wasn't any deception about it!" broke
out Torn, angrily. " I meant to pay it up honest, I
Ffiy, and I didn't tell you, because it was of no use
to anybody that I see, aud then I knew you would
make such a -- "

" Tom !" interrupted his mother's sorrowful voice
aud Tom stopped. When ho had stopped, he saw
Gypsy's eyes, and his face flushed.

"You may corne into the library, Thomas, and
we will talk this over," said his father, excitedly
They went out and shut the door.

Winnie, who in the excitement had put his

138 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

coal-basket on his head, and forgotten to take it
off, looked after them with his mouth open, and
Gypsy and her mother looked at each other, and
never said a word.

Tom was shut up with his father until dinner
time, and a violent headache, brought on by the ex
citement of the morning, kept Mrs. Breynton in her
room all day. Gypsy wandered mournfully about
the house, shut herself upstairs, and tried to cry a
little, tried to play with Winnie, tried to make Tom
talk, and, failing in all, went at last to Peace May-
thorne. There, in the quiet room, in sight of the
quiet eyes, the tears came, and comfort too.

Yet, after all, there were very many boys much
worse than Tom. He was thoughtless rather than
vicious — too much intent on being as well-dressed as
anybody, on heading subscriptions, and patronizing
first-class clubs, and " treating " generously ; over-
desirous to be set down as " a good fellow ;" more
anxious to be popular than to be a good scholar, like
many another open-hearted, open-handed, merry boy ;
moreover, a little afraid to say No. Yet, as I said,
by no means vicious. Faithful to his promise to
Gypsy, he had left off all manner of sipping and
pledging in brandies and wines ; had met question,
laugh, and sneer, and met them like a man ; of his
incipient gambling he had soon wearied ; his sense
of honour was his stronghold, and that was crossed
by it sadly. As for the smoking — though I am no*
including that rery disagreeable habit among ths

Gypsy's* Sowing .and Reaping. 139

vices t — angry as lie had been about it, he had been
cornered by his father's command : the discomfort
of doing a tiling, as he said, " upon the sly," was
rather more than the cigars were worth.

Extravagance and laziness were what ailed him
now — two rather treacherous compagnons de voyage
for a college-boy. Judging from the record of
these two terms, what would they have done for
him when the four years were over ? Gypsy used
to wonder sometimes, her bright cheeks paling as she
asked herself the question.

Perhaps she need not have been as much afraid as
she was, of having Tom with Francis Howe. He did
not seem to fancy Francis as much as he had done
six months ago. From certain mysterious hints
that he dropped once or twice, and from the ex
pression of his face, Gypsy inferred that that young
gentleman's recent career at the Halls of Learning
had been such as to disgust even thoughtless Tom.

One day, when Tom had been back at college a
little over a week, Gypsy came slowly home from.
Peace Maythorne's, with troubled eyes. This sultry
spring weather was doing Peace no good. She had
grown very weak and almost sleepless from continued
pain.

" She looks like a ghost this morning," said
Gypsy, coming into her mother's* room, " so thin,
and pale, and patient, and sweet, it almost made me
cry to look at her. I don't see why those old doctors

can't do something for her,"

10

J4-O Gyp*y's Sowing and Reaping.

" They do all they can," said Mrs. Breynton.
" These diseases in the spine are very hard to manage.
But it does seem as if Peace had a great deal of suf
fering, poor child !"

"It has made an angel of her, anyway," said
Gypsy, emphatically. " I told Tom, the other day,
she made me feel like a little mean caterpillar crawl
ing round in the mud beside her. I'm going to write
to him again to-day. He always wants to know how
Peace is. Hilloa, Winnie !— a letter ?"

" From Tom S"

" Yes, for you."

Mrs. Breynton took it, stopping a moment to look
at the envelope.

" How blurred the post-marks do get ! This
doesn't look any more like New Haven than it does
like Joppa, does it, Gypsy ?"

" ]S"o, and just look at the stamp, skewed clear
over there in the left-hand corner. How funny !"

" Tom is always very particular about his stamp,
and all the getting up of his letters. He must have
been in a great hurry," said his mother, breaking the
seal.

Evidently he was in a hurry, for the letter waa
undated. She read, with Gypsy looking over her
shoulder.

" MY DEABEST MOTHER : —

': I don't know what you will think of me, and
it is rough work telling you, but I've done it — I've

enlisted.

Sowing and Reaping. 141

" I left New Haven day before yesterday, and
enlisted as a private here at Washington this morn-
ing, in the - regiment, and expect to be sent to
the front to-morrow. , "•

" I couldn't stand it any longer. So many of the
fellows were off, and I wasn't doing anything at col»
lege, and I was ashamed of myself, and I knew you
were all ashamed of me. I can shoulder a musket
and obey orders, ajid perhaps — who knows ? — take
some prisoners, and get noticed by the general. At
any rate, I can die at my post, if there is any neces
sity, and that is better than nothing, and I shouldn't
bother you any more.

" There I I had no business to say that, mother.
I don't expect to be killed, either. I expect to have
a jolly time, and I think serving your country is a
great deal better than studying Homer.

" The only thing about it is, I am afraid you will
feel so, and Gypsy. I didn't much like doing it after
you had said No, but I must do it on the sly or not
ted at all, and I set my heart on going, before the end
of last term.

" I won't drink, mother, nor learn to swear, nor
any of the rest of ifc. I promise you I will be a better
fellow than I was in college, and be double the use in
the world, and you shall be proud of me some day.
Tell Gypsy so, and tell her not to cry, and to think
the best she can of me. She is a jewel, and I don't
like disappointing her, nor you either. I do hope it
won't make you worse. I don't know what father

142 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping,

frill say ; couldn't make up my mind to write to him.
I thought he wouldn't mind it quite so much if yon
told him. Please give him my love, if he will take it,
and tell him you will all see the day when you will
think that I have done the best way, Give Winnie a
kiss for me, and tell him my gun is taller than he is.
Will write again as soon as I get to camp, and tell
you how to direct.

" I do want to hear soon, and find out whether
you can forgive

" Your Son,

" TOM."

" P.S. — I am very well — never better in my life
— and should be very happy if I only knew what you
were going to say about it. I suppose you will think
I have done wrong; well, anyway, it can't be helped
now. " T. B."

CHAPTER XJI.

!

QUIET EYES.

Two girls, with hands clasped, and cheeks laid softly
together ; the one with her bloodless lips and pale,
gold hair and shrunken hands ; the other round and
rosy and brown, with her dark eyes sparkling, and

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 143

that cfinary poised to her head, and the morning sun
light over both ; it made a very pretty picture.

Bat neither of them was thinking anything about
that, which was the charm of it.

" Peace, you are so white this morning ; do turn
your face out of that sunbeam — it makes you look
worse."

Peace smiled, and moved her head.

"Why, it doesn't do the least good. The sun
always goes wherever you do. Peace Maythorne, I
should like — well, I think I should like to pound that
doctor with a tack-hammer, and then put some cay
enne pepper on his handkerchief, and then pinch him,
and then choke him a little — just a little, not enough
to be impolite exactly, you know."

" He does all he can for me," said Peace, laugh
ing, " and he is very kind, I'm sure."

" If it weren't for his whiskers," considered Gypsy,
u such solemn-looking things ! They look like grave
stones, exactly — little black slate grave-stones, fringed
on the edge."

" He's good enough to her, I'm sure," observed
Aunt Jane, who sat sewing by the window, " and
what with the jelly, and tongue, and books, and no
body knows what not, your ma keeps sendin' her, T
don't think Peace has much to complain of."

"Perhaps you would, if you had to lie froa
morning to night with a pain in your back, an4

your father and mother dead, and nobody to •

began Gypsy, with flashing eyes, and stopped.

144 Gypsy's Soivmg and Reaping.

Then there was the old story over again — Peace
was grieved, and Aunt Jane was angry, and Gypsy
was sorry. Presently Aunt Jane went out on an
errand, and Gypsy said so. Peace sighed, but made
no answer. Only after a time, she said something,
half to herself, about " a little while," that Gypsy did
not exactly understand,

" The worse you feel, the more of an angel you
are," said Gypsy, in a pause.

"Oh, Gypsy!"

" Yes, you are," nodded Gypsy, " and Pm crosg
and bothered and worried about Tom, and, put it all
together, I don't begin to have as hard a time as
you. "When I come here, and look right into your
eyes, I am so ashamed of myself— why, I'm so
ashamed, Peace !"

Peace raised her .quiet eyes, and then she turned
them away, for they had grown suddenly dark and
dim. " But I don't have anything but myself to bear,
Gypsy. It is a great deal easier to take things our
selves, than to see them coming on somebody we lovo
so very dearly."

" Yes," said Gypsy, thinking for the moment
how thankful she would be if she could be the
soldier in Tom's place j or how it seemed as if
she would go to bed and lie there like P^aue,
if she could only make Tom the noble, prin
cipled, successful man that he might be ; that she
was afraid at times he would never be. " Ye-es ; but
then, you see, I have Tom, to begin with"

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 145

I1 And Peace said nothing to that.

Presently, she wanted to know what they heard
from him.

" Well, we had a letter day before yesterday, and ho
said he was pretty well, and was over that terrible
neuralgia, — he has had it almost ever since he has
been there. But he thought there was going to bo
another fight, and so, yon know, I have to go and
think about it, and mother sits upstairs in the dark,
and I know she's been crying, as well as I want to."

Peace did not say, " Oh, he won't get hurt. Ho
wasn't last time. The way not to have a thing hap
pen is not to expect it. Look on the bright side,
etc., etc., etc." That sorry sort of sympathy it was
not her fashion to give. Of course it was as possible
for Tom to be wounded as any one else, and she-
could not have deluded Gypsy into thinking it was
not, if she had tried. But she turned and kissed the
cheek that was touching hers.

" It was so dreadful at first," said Gypp.y, who,
when she once began to talk to Peace abouv Tom,
never knew where to stop ; " you see, father, — I
guess I told yon, didn't I ? — well, he was so angry.
— I never saw him look so in all my life. He said
Torn was a disgrace to the family, and he said he
would go right on and bring him home. Tom is
under age, you know, and he could do it, and I was
> terribly afraid he would, and that would make
Tom just as wicked as he could be, I know, he'd
be so angry. But mother talked him over. Well.

46 QyPs*f& Sowing and Reaping.

tli en he sat right down and wrote a letter to Tom,
and I never saw what was in it, but I guess it waa
awful. I don't believe but what mother talked him
round not to send that, too, for I saw her tearing up
some letter-paper that night, and she was just as pale !
But by-and-by father didn't seem to he angry, but
just sorry. He was walking to and fro, to and fro,
in the entry, and he never knew I saw him, and he
shut up his hands together tight, and once I heard
him groan right out loud, and say, l Poor boy, poor
boy ! ' and you'd better believe I thought I was going
to cry. Then did I tell you about our having
prayers ? "

" No."

" Didn't ? Well, that was the worst of it. You
"see trey had been shut up together almost all the
afternoon and evening talking it over, I suppose, —
he and mother, I mean, — and nobody ate any supper
but Winnie, he ate six slices of bread and two baked
apples, and wanted to know if Tom got killed if he
couldn't have his gun, and I couldn't go to bed, and
Winnie wouldn't, — he acted just as if it was a holi«
fay, and said he was going to sit up till nine o'clock,
because Tom had gone to the wars ; so we just sat
round and looked at each other, and it grew dark, aiid
we could hear them talking upstairs, and it waa
dreadful. Then when Winnie saw me feeling for
my handkerchief, he began to think he must cry too;
eo he stood up against the wall, and opened his nioutb,
and set up such a shout, — it was enough to wake

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 147

the dead ! and I had enough to do hushing him up,
but it made me laugh, and I couldn't help it to save
me. Well, then, it kept growing darker, and pretty
soon they came down, and father called in Patty, just
os if somebody were dead or something, and
told her that Mr. Tom h:id enlisted; then he
sent her out, and we all sat clown, and he said:
* Children, Tom has done wrong, and we are
sorry ; but we have decided to let him stay in the
army if he wishes, and now we will pray God to bless
it to him, and to bring him home to us if it be His
will.' And then we all knelt down, and he began to
pray, and 1 tell you, Peace, he loves TJjm Breynton !
I did wish Tom could have heard him, and then, per
haps, he would forget about some of the times he has
worried him so. I think we were all choking before
we got up, except Winnie ; he was sound asleep on the
floor when we went to pick him up.

'• So after that they wrote to Tom, but I don't know
what they said, and we all wrote to him, and his next
letter sounded dreadfully sorry. Now, I believe some
thing, Peace Maythorne."
"What is it?"

«' Well, Tom is sick of it, only he won't say so."
" Why, what makes you think that r "
" Oh, he keeps praising it up so much, for one
thing. When Tom likes a thing first rate, he doesn't
keep talking about it. Then once in a while he lets
out a sentence about the rations being rather different
from mother's sponge cake and mince pies, and he

148 Gi/psif* tioii'hig and Reaping.

says the marches tire him dreadfully. Then there's
the neuralgia. He's real patriotic, Tom is, and just
as brave; but mother says he isn't strong enough
for it, and father says such young boys always go
more from love of adventure than anything else, and
almost always wish they had stayed at home. He
says they don't help the Government either, getting
sick and filling the hospitals, and what we want in
the army is men. But as long as he has gone, I hope
he will take a prisoner or something. He likes to get
funny letters from home, and so I drew a picture last
week of a great, big, lean, lank, long Rebel, with Tom
coming up about to his knee, and standing up on a
barrel to arrest him."

" You write to him often, I suppose ? " asked
Peace.

" Oh, yes, Tom likes it. And I tell him all the
news; he likes that. And I tell him I love him
pretty much ; and he likes that. AVe send quantities
of letters, and some he gets and some he doesn't.
But we get almost all his. But the thing of it is,
Peace Maythorne, Francis Howe says everybody ij
the army drinks and swears before they are out of it,
and then the papers do tell such dreadful things
about the battles, and I think, and go to bed think
ing, and wake up thinking."

" Gypsy," said Peace, in a tone that had a new
thought in it.

" Well ? "

" You love Tom ever so much/'

Gypsy's Sou1 ing and Reaping. 149

" Urn— a little— yes."

" And you are a real good sister to him, 1
think."

" Don't know about that," said Gypsy, winking ;
" sometimes I'm horrid, and sometimes I'm not ; it's
f st as it happens."

" I've been -wondering " said Peace, ar,d

hesitated.

"Wondering what? "

Peace raised her still eyes, and Gypsy Icoked
into them.

" Wondering if you have helped him every way
you can."

'- 1 don't understand exactly."

" There's one way I was thinking about. I mean
— if you should tell God about him."

"Oh!"

The quiet eyes looked at Gypsy, and Gypsy looked
at them. Perhaps for an instant Peace was almost
sorry that she had said what she had — a little un
certain how Gypsy was going to take it. But cha
>uiet eyes showed nothing of this; they held Gypsy's
fast by their stillness and their pureness, and did for
her what they always did.

<: Peace Maythorne — " after a pause, "I should
like to know what made you think of saying that
to me."

" Oh, I don't know. I was only wondering, and
thinking ; nothing seems of very much use wi
oH it."

150 Gypsy's boivwg and Reaping.

Gypsy swung her hat round by the strings, and
tapped the floor with one fcot.

" Well, I suppose I haven't, exactly ; no. I say
Our Father every day — 'most ; only sometimes I'm
sleepy. I say something about Tom once in a while,
but I never supposed it was going to make any diffe
rence. Besides, I'm so wicked and horrid."

Peace made no answer.

" Now I suppose you mean, here I've been doing
and worrying for Tom all this time, and it is all of
no account, then ? "

" Oh, no; it is of a great d?al of account. Only
if you see a man drowning, and throw him out planks
and branches and straws and shavings, and there is
a boat there you could have just as well as not ?"

"Hum," said Gypsy— " yes. I see."

There was a silence. Peace broke it.

11 1 expect I've bothered you with my sober talk.
But I thought — I didn't know as I should have
another chance."

" Another chance ! " echoed Gypsy, mystified.
Peace turned her head over with a sudden motion,
and did not answer.

" Peace, what did you mean ? " Alarmed at the
silence, Gypsy climbed up on the bed to see what
was the matter.

They had talked too long, and Peace had fainted
away.

" She has these turns pretty nigh 'most every
day now," said Aunt Jane, coming in, and emptying

Gypsy's Sowitig and Reaping. 151

half the water-pitcher upon her pallid face — not
roughly, but very much as she would gather a skirt
or cut button-holes ; as if it were part of the business
of life, and life meant business, and love was a duty
— a crippled orphan or a shirt-bosom, it was all the
same.

CHAPTEH XIII.

THE VOICE UPON THE SHORE.

ONE night, not long after that talk with Peace, Gypsy
had a dream. It was a strange dream.

It seemed to be nearly two thousand years ago,
and she was living, and Peace, and Tom, and Winnie ;
and their home was in Judea. Tom wa-i a young
Rabbi, and Winnie was in the Temple at Jerusalem,
educating, like Samuel, for the priesthood ; her father
and mother were buried in the Cave of Machpelah,
and she and Peace were Jewish maiden:?, and lived
in a little vine-covered house by the banks of silver
Kedron. It was a very pleasant house, though ver )
email and simply furnished. From the door she
could look over to Jerusalem, and see the sun light
the towers of the Temple, and from the windows she
could watch the mils, and the shadows on them, anJ
the paths worn up ; there was a certain awe about
those paths ; she wondered in the dream who wore
them, but she did not seem to know.

152 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

The bed for Peace was drawn tip by the window,
and Peace lay always (as she always had since Gypsy
had known her) still upon the pillows, with folded
hands. Tom used to carry her out into the aii1
sometimes, and lay her down upon the grass beneath
the palm-trees, and Gypsy would run and shout, and
roam away over the brook and up the mountains,
and Peace could never go, but lay under the palm-
trees, weak and white, with wistful eves. And once
it chanced that they were together, she and Peace
alone, on a long, smooth beach, with the blue waves
vDf Galilee singing and sighing up about their feet,
and singing and sighing out to dash against the
prows of boats from which bronzed fishermen were
casting nets-

Feace was lying upon the sands, and Gypsy had
made her a pillow of sea-mosses, and the light was
falling full upon her face, and resting in a line of
gold upon the water. Peace was watching this line
of gold, and Gypsy was braiding her hair into the
plaits the Jewish maidens wore, and it chanced that
neither heard the stepping of near feet upon the
sand.

As they sat there talking softly with each, other,
and looking off to the line of gold, and listening to
the singing and the sighing of the waves, a sudden
iight fell on them, and One stood there smiling, and
took the hand of Peace, and spoke to her. The
words He said were few an d strange : — " Maiden, I
say unto thee, arise/'

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. j^3

Gypsy hearing, turned in wonder to see who it
tould be that was mocking the helplessness of Peace,
»iit He Lad gone. And standing where He had
ftood was Peace, upright, erect, and strong, with
colour in her cheeks and brightness in her eyes
— free to walk, to run, to leap, like happy Gypsy,
all her crippled years forgotten like a dream gone
by.

" Ob, Peace ! " said Gypsy in the dream, " Oh,
Peace, I am so glad ! " and springing forward, tried
to throw her arms around her neck. " I must go,"
said Peace, " to thank Him," and glided out of
Gypsy's clinging arms, and turned her face towards
Galilee, and vanished in the line of gold, and there
was nothing left but the sighing of the waves upon the
shore, and Gypsy sat alone.

She awoke with a start. The room was dark and
the house was still. Far up the street a distant
sound was drawing near. As she lay listening to it,
it grew into the clatter of horses' hoofs. They drew
rearer and louder, and rattled up and rattled by;
they had a sharp, hurried sound as if they were. on
an errand of life and death. She jumped out of
bed, went to the window, and looked out. In the
faint moonlight she caught a glimpse of the doctor's
carriage.

" What a queer dream," she thought, going back
to bed, " and how pretty ; I suppose ifc is because I
have been down to see Peace so much lately, and
then I was reading mother that chapter to-night

154 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

about the lame man. I'll tell it to Peace to-morrow,
and — and — "

She was asleep again by that time.

To-morrow came, and Gypsy woke early. It wLd
a rare morning. The winds, sweeping up over beds
of late summer violets, and nooks where the bells
of the Solomon's seal were hanging thickly, and
shadowy places under pines where anemones, white
and purple, and crimson, clustered with drooping
heads, were as sweet as winds could be. There waa
not a cloud in the sky. and in the sunshine there waa
a sort of hush, Gypsy thought, like the sunshine
on Sunday mornings. She remembered afterwards
having stood at the window and wondered how many
happy things were going to happen all over the
world, that day, and if any sorrowful things could
happen, and how sorrowful things could ever happen
on such days

Before she was dressed she heard the door-bell
ring, wondered who it was so early, and forgot all
about it in tying a new green ribbon — a beautiful
shade just like the greens of the apple trees — upon
her hair. Before she had finished twisting and pull
ing the pretty bow upon the side (Gypsy always
made pretty bows) Winnie came stamping in, and
said that there had been " a funny little Irish girl,
with a flat nose and two teeth, down ringin' the
door-bell, and now mother just wanted to see Gypsy
Breynton in her room."

Gypsy gave a last look in the glass, and went,

Gypsy's Sowing and Red (»f tig. 155

atill fingering the ribbon. She could never look at
that pretty green ribbon afterwards without a shiver j
for a long time she did not want to wear green
ribbons at all. The least little things are so linked
with the great ones of our life.

Her mother was still in bed, — she seldom rose
now till after breakfast, — and Gypsy, going in, saw
that she looked startled and pale.

" Gypsy, shut the door a minute, and come here."

Gypsy shut it, and came, wondering.

" Miss Jane Maythorne has just sent up a

message."

" A message ! **

" For yon ; from Peace. She wants you. Gypsy,
ray child, she is "

Gypsy paled, flushed, paled again, caught her
mother's hand with a queer idea to stop the words
that she was going to say, — not to hear them, not to
know them.

" They sent for the doctor at midnight," said Mrs.
Breynton, softly kissing the little appealing hand.
" They thought that she was dying then. He says
she cannot live till night."

It was said now. Gypsy drew a long breath ,
k>ssed her mother, put on her things and went out
into the hushing sunlight. Ah, how changed it all
was* now ; how bleak, and thin, and white it seemed ;
Gypsy noticed, as she ran along, a huge, white rock,
on which it lay thickly, it made her think of a tomb-
fctone. The leaves of the silver aspens, fluttering in

ii

156 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

the wind, reminded her of grave- clothes. In the
shadows that fell and floated under the trees, she
seemed to see the face of Peace, lying with closed
eyes and motionless. She ran fast and faster,
Co escape the horrible, haunting pictures, but they
chased her and followed her into the narrow street?,
and went with her up the dark, hot stairway. At
the door of the room she stopped. A strange
dread came over her. She had never seen any
one die, and for a moment she forgot that it was
Peace, and that Peace wanted her, in the horror oi
the thought, and lingered, without courage to go
in.

While she stood there, one of the neighbours
opened the door and came out crying. Gypsy caught
a glimpse of Peace, and slipped in, and all her fear
was gone.

The doctor was there, preparing some medicine
at a little table by the window. Aunt Jane was there,
fanning Peace gently, her stern face softened and
shocked. Peace was lying with her hands folded, her
face turned over on the pillow in the old way, her eyes
closed. The Sabbath-like sunlight was falling as ifc
always fell into that room, — turning its ba*e floor and
poor furnishing to gold, painting the patchwork quilt
in strange patterns of light and shade, like some old
tapestry, glorifying the face of Peace where it fell
around and upon it. Gypsy, as she came in, had a
fancy that it must look something like the faces of
pictured sairts framed in dusky niches of old cathe-

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 157

drals across the sea, — she had heard her mother tell
about them.

Peace did not hear her come in, and Gypsy
had knelt down on the floor beside the bed, right
in the light, which struck out sharply the con
trast between the two, — before she knew that she
was there. She opened her eyes suddenly and saw
her.

" Oh— why, Gypsy!"

Gypsy put up her hand, and Peace took hold of
it.

" I'm so glad you've come," she said, in her quiet
voice, with the old, quiet smile. .And Gypsy said
not a word for wonder. How could anybody smile
who was going to die ?

Would it trouble you too much to stay a little
while ? " asked Peace, forgetting herself, remember
ing how to think for the comfort of others to the verj
last, as only Peace could do.

" Trouble me ! Oh, Peace ! Do you think I
could go away ? "

" I want to talk a little," whispered Peace; "not
now, — I cnn't now. Perhaps I shall get a little
breath by-and-by."

She said no more after that for a long time, and
Gypsy knelt upon the floor, and held her hand, and
watched her suffer, and could not help her, could not
bear it for her, could only look on and break her heart
in looking.

How much Peace suffered, probably none of them

158 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

knew. In her death as in her life, she made no com
plaint, uttered no cry of pain. Only once she called
the doctor aiid said : —

" Jf you could give me something ! It seems as
if I had borne as much as I can"

For weeks after, the pitiful, appealing words used
to ring in Gypsy's ears at night when she was alone.

They gave her laudanum and she slept, and woke
to lie in waking stupors, and slept again. The
neighbours — rough-faced w^omen in rags — came in,
through the morning, to look their last at her, and go
out crying. " God bless her," they said, " the swate
craythur ! — she always 'ud lay so patient-like, there
in the sunshine, an' hear about a body's throubles,
whin the childer was sick an' the man was took to
Arink, an' sech a way of smilin' as she had, the Houly
yither rest her soul!" "It's greeting sair I shall
Xv for her," said one pale Scotch woman, " greeting
sao tcZr." The children— all the little, freckled,
frowzy, dirty children that Peace always would find
something beautiful about — came in to say good-bye
and go out wondering wrho would tell them stories
now. Mrs. Breynton came down at noon, and stayed
till her strength gave out, but long enough to see
Peace look up conscious and smiling, and to under
stand the thanks which she could not speak. Aunt
Jane sat by the bed, and moved gently aboui the
room, acd did ^hat was to be done, still with that
shocked, softened look upon her face, anJ Gypsy
watching her, wondered.

Gypsy9 s 3owmg and Reaping. 159

The doctor left, and went to other patients j
Peace passed from the stupor to sleep and from sleep
to stupor, and the day wore on, but Gypsy never left
her.

She had no fear now of this -mysterious presence
which was coming ; she did not dread to look upon
it. The light that, sliding from window to window,
still flooded the bed, made the face of Peace, even
then, less like the face of death than like the pictured
saint.

As Gypsy knelt there on the floor through the
long hours, awed and still, watching for Peace to
waken, she did not wonder any more that Peace
could smile when she was going to die.

Her dream of the night came back to her sud
denly. She saw again, as vividly as if she had lived
it through, the warm waves of Galilee, the line of
gold ; she heard the voice upon the shore, and saw
the figure with its hand upraised. And suddenly ii
came to her what dying meant to Peace — all the free
dom and the strength, and the rest from pain.

The thought was in her heart, when Peace iwoke
at last, conscious and quiet. It was at the end of
the afternoon, and the light was stealing into the
West. They were all gone now but Aunt Jane and
herself.

" Peace," said her aunt, gently, " Peace, dear."

But Peace, in her joy at seeing Gypsy there, saw
nothing and heard nothing besides. Aunt Jane
shrank back j she deserved it, and she knew it, bat

160 Gypsy9 s Sowing and Reaping*

it was a little hard, now when she might — who
knows? — have asked in death forgiveness for that
which she had done and left undone to make life
bitter.

" Gypsy, you here yet ? Oh, I am very glad."

Gypsy crept up on the bed.

" Right here, close by you, Peace."

" I want to tell you something, Gypsy ; I want
to say you have been so good — so good to me. And
don't you think I'm going to forget it now, and don't
think I'm going to forget you. Why, I shall thank
Him for you one of the very first things."

At the voice and at the words, Gypsy's courage
gave way.

" Ob, Peace, oh, Peace ! what shall I do without
you ? What shall I do ? " and could say no more
for sobbing, and Peace took her clinging hand and
drew it up beside her cheek, and so they lay and said
no word ; and the stealing light gathered itself upon
the hills, and the night came on.

All at once Peace turned, and took away her
hand, and pointed at the wall.

" See, Gypsy— why, see ! "

Gypsy looked up. Upon the wall, close by the
bed, the illuminated text was hanging, that had been
her Christmas gift to Peace over a year ago. Flashes
of crimson thrown from- the West hung trembling
over it, and framed in and transfigured the blae and
golden words : —

" 8ati tijc tnljafcitaut £!;all not s'an, i- am «rtr£ « •

Sowing and Reaping.

" Oh, Gypsy, Gypsy, how nice it will be ! "

"Yes, dear," and Gypsy stopped her sobbing.

" To walk about, and run, and not have any pain;
why, think of not haying any pain, Gypsy ! "

" Yes, dear."
i " Kiss me, Gypsy."

Gypsy kissed her, and the flush of crimson faded
from the blue and golden words, and the twilight fell
into its place.

" She's dropped into another nap,"' said Aunt
Jane, coming up, turning her stern face away so that
Gypsy should not see, in the dark, the hot, fast-
droppicg tears. So they sat awhile in the dusk to
gether, Aunt Jane moving the great white fan dimly
to and fro on t?;<3 other side of the bed, and Gypsy
crouched among tu-S pillows watching it, watching
the face of Peace, watching the blackness gather in
the room.

Presently the doctor came in.

" She may hold out till morning, after all, sir,"
whispered Aunt Jane ; " she's having a long nap
now. I hope she will last a little longer, for I've
got something to say to her. I meant to say it, I
meant to say it. I'll light the lamp, sir."

She lighted the lamp; she went up to the bed,
holding it and shading her eyes.

Then through the silence, a cry " tore upwards,"
like the cry of a stern heart breaking under that
most pitiful of human pains — a life-long, unavailing
regret.

162 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

But the lamplight fell upon the wall, and fell
upon the blue and golden words, and Gypsy saw
them and saw them only.

CHAPTEE XIV.

TROUBLES NEVER COME SINGLE.

WE all of us, if we live long enough, find our saint.
You do not understand what I mean ? Well, per
haps you will, some day.

Gypsy, young as she was, had found hers.

She had loved Peace May thorne with all her heart.
And now that she was gone, she loved her more than
ever. The beautiful, sorrowful life, and beautiful,
happy dying, followed her like watching angels ; the
patient face, with its pale, gold hair and quiet eyes,
and the smile upon its lips, hung, like those pictured
faces in the old cathedrals to which she had likened
it, in a very quiet, shaded corner of her_ heart — a
corner where noisy Gypsy, and rude G jrpsy, and angry
Dr selfish, or blundering Gypsy never came. It looked
at her Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays, when
"the days were rough," and lessona were long, and
patience was short It smiled at her in the Sabbath
twilights, when her thoughts grew "sorry" and sober.
It turned upon her when she was alone at night,
when the tears fell, and stars peeped n at her win-

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 163

dow, that were looking down on Tom miles away by
the Southern rivers, in camp, in battle, in prison, or
— for who could tell ? — in some grave dug quickly in
the sands and left alone. And in this, where the
pictured face had always been most help and comfort
to her, it was most help and comfort now. She could
not forget how Peace had sorrowed for her, had cried
with her, had kissed her when she talked of Tom, nor
what she had advised for him, nor what she had hoped
for him. And one thing that Peace had said in that
very last talk, she could not forget, and she did not
try.

You think that I am talking poetry ? And you
wonder what saints and cathedral pictures have to do
with merry Gypsy ? Wait till some one very dear to
you passes out of life, and you will wonder no longer.
You will see how the little bare room. — very empty
and cold it used to seem, and the sunlight lonely —
the painful bed which Peace had left vacant and
silent and smooth, the very roads that had led so long
to her poor home, and the still spot behind the church
where she was lying, became sacred places to Gypsy.
You will see how, in all her temptations and troubles,
and hopes and fears, Peace became more help to her
dead than she had been living.

"I miss her — oh, I do miss her !" she wrote to
Tom ; " and now mother is sick, and I can't keep
going to her as I used to, and there is nothing left of
Peace but that grave over there (mother's given me
some tea-roses to plant on it), it does seem as i

164 Gypsifs Sowing and Reaping.

there weren't anybody to stop me when I get ugly
and cross and wicked. Bat then, Tom, if you'll be
lieve it, I don't cry very much about her. I can't.
To think of her up there walking round — for mother
says she does walk round — and to think about that
pain, and Aunt Jane, and how she is rid of it for ever
and ever and ever — why, it just seems as if I ought
to be glad of it. Now, Tom Breynton, don't you tell,
will you ? but I should like to know what she is
doing in these days. I do hope she isn't singing
psalm-iunes all this time; but then the hymn-books
say so, and I suppose, of course, they must be true —
o — I was going to say ' old things !' but I guess
that was wicked, so I won't."

Troubles never will come single, and while
thoughts of Peace were yet very fresh in Gypsy's
heart, there came startling news from Tom.

It came on a rainy day. It was a dreary rain ;
the streets were muddy, the trees were dripping, the
grass was drenched, the skies were lead. Gypsy came
Lome early from school, exchanged her rubber-boots
and waterproof for dry clothes, and sat down by the
parlour window to string some beads .

"I'll help you/' said Winnie, magnanimously ;
I can, just as well as not."

Gypsy politely declined his cCer,

" If you. don't let me, I'll just stamp and *'

" Six red — two white — one, two, three — oh,
Winnie !"

" Squeal and holler and *'

Gypsy's Suu'itig and Reaping. 105

"Do — and wake up mother.'*
" Frow some water at you," finished Winnie, with
superb superiority ; " frow some water out of the tin
dipper, with a little 'larsis in it I put in to look at —
no, I didn't drink it either, I only put it in to look at,
and some sugar, too, and a little vinegar and pepper
and— well, I'm going to frow it at you, anyway, and
you won't know anything about it, you see. Now-
going to give me those old beads ?"

" Why, there's the door-bell ! Bun, Winnie, like
a good boy,"

Winnie stamped to the door, and came back with
an envelope in his hand, and said that there was a
man who wanted seventy-five cents.

" Why," said Gypsy, wondering, " a telegram !
Run up and tell mother — no, on the whole, I won't
wake her ; I have her purse in my pocket."

She paid the messenger and sent him off, and went
to the foot of the stairs, and stood still with the
envelope in her hand.

" Perhaps I had better open it," she said, half fcj
herself, half to Winnie, dreading to do so, she knew
not why, dreading, too, to go to her mother. " If
there should be anything bad— and father is at the
store — perhaps it would make her worse to read it
herself. I wonder what it can be !"

"Why don't you open it then?" said curious
Winnie, peering through the banisters.

" I — can't, somehow," said Gj psy, and stood still
ard looked at it. Then she tore it open and read—

1 66 Gypsy's Sowing and RccpiJig.

names, dates, blurring before her eyes— a few words
only awfully distinct : —

" Your son was wounded in tlie shoulder this morn
ing ; may not live through the day"

They had told his mother somehow, they neve?
knew exactly how. She had not fainted, nor shed
tears. She had sunk down weakly on the bed, and
closed her eyes, and said one thing only, over and
over : —

" And I cannot go to him ; cannot go to him ! "

In all the shock and horror, that was the sting.
Her slowly-gaining strength v\\s not yet enough ;
the journey would be death to her. Tom could not
see her, could not feel her last kiss on his lips, must
die without his mother.

" You mu-.t go, Gypsy ; yon must tell him. — Oh,
Gypsy, how can I, can I bear it ? "

" Oh, mother, mother ! ..poor mother! "

And Gypsy forgot all about herself, and drew her
mother's face into her arms, and all the rest went out,
and the two lay down upon the pillows and sobbed
and moaned together.

Yes, Gypsy must go. She had a dim conscious-
ness, as she hurried about to get ready, of saying
Thank you to some one, that she could go.

" I neve^ thought about saying my prayers foi
ever so long after that," she said afterwards, " but it
was so queer how I kept saying Thank you, just as if

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping, 167

I couldn't help it. It would have been. so terrible not
to see him again."

It was strange work, this making ready. The
house looked odd, and dark, and unfamiliar. Winnie,
poor little fellow, only half able to understand what
was going on, went off into a corner and had a frolic
with the kitty. Gypsy looked on and wondered how
he could laugh — how anybody could laugh — how she
had ever laughed, or could ever laugh again. She
wondered, too, that she did not forget things, in her
preparations for the journey. But she forgot nothing.
She packed her bag and her father's carefully ; she
stopped to think to put up her cologne-bottle, won
dering if it might not come in use for Tom j to stick
into the corners a roll or two of old soft linen, a
spcnge, and a little flask of brandy. She had an
idea that he would not be properly taken care of at
the hospitals, and that she had better, at any rate,
have these things with her. There were some ripe,
'fresh oranges on the pantry shelf. She took them up,
but dropped them suddenly, and sat down with a sick
faintness creeping all over her. Perhaps Tom would
never eat again.

lie had been 'carried, just after the fight — a mere
skirmish, they saw by the evening papers — to one of
the Washington hospitals ; that, they found out from
the dispatch, which poor Gypsy, in the blindness and
bewilderment of bearing the sight of it first, and
bearing it all alone, and knowing that all the rest
must hear of it from her, had only partially read-

1 68 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

The army were on tho march, her father said, theif
camp hospitals probably broken up ; he was glad thai
they had sent Tom to Washington; he could receive

better care ; there was more chance ; there he

broke off, and pulled his hat over his eyes, and Gypsy
waited in vain for the rest of the sentence.

The night train to Washington carried them both,
pitting side by side, looking now and then into each
others' faces, but saying scarcely a word. Neither
wanted to talk. There was nothing to say. And
that was worst of all. If there had been any tiling to
do but bear !

Gypsy sat by the window. She could not sleep,
and so she leaned her forehead on the glass and looked
out. She had never travelled in the night before, and
the strangeness of it fitted her terrible errand. She
watched the blackness that lay thickly beyond the
window, in the shade of forest and tunnel, and the
dead outlines — blackness cut in blackness — of trees
and fences, houses, spires, hill-tops, streams, and flats,
arid bridges whirling by, and the poles of the telegraph
lines rising like thin, sharp fingers against the &ky,
and the sparks from the engine shooting past. Ti.e
rattling of the axle over which- she sat, the- sick
swaying of the train from side to side, as they flew up
and over and down the terrible mountains at the rate
of forty miles an hour, the dull pattering of the storm
upon the windows, heard through all the clash and
roar, the long, loud, human shriek of the locomotive
as they rushed through sleeping villages in the

Gypsy's Solving and Reaping. 169

twinkling of an eye, the sudden Hare of cities and
lighted depots, -where the monster was reined up
panting, the groups upon the platforms — single faces
in them, here a soldier, there a pale woman iri
mourning, now a girl clinging to her brother's arm —
a brother with merry eyes and hair like Tom's ] once
a cluster of men in blue uniform, bearing a long, white
'box upon their shoulders; — all these things Gypsy
saw, and heard, and felt ; yet of no one was she dis
tinctly conscious ; they all blended into one thought,
one picture, one dream of Tom.

Sometimes she seemed to see him in battle, his
bright, brave face flushed, and eager, and beautiful,
his hair blown by the wind, his keen eye taking aim.
Then she would hear — hear above all the din of the
train and storm — the report of a pistol, a cry, a groan,
see his arms thrown up, see him fall and lie still in
the blood and horror. After that, it would be the
slow journey from the front to the Capital, the painful
ambulance jolting and jarring, the face within it —
Ah, Tom would be too brave to cry out. Then thf
hospital, the long rows of beds and his among them,
the surgeons' faces, the nurses — strangers, all
strangers ; not one familiar look or smile or touch ;
nobody there to kisr tym • none to whom he was dear.
And then there was one picture more ; one that swept
over all the rest and blackened them out of sight;
one that grew sharper and plainer as the train
shrieked on, and the night wore on with it. Tom
lying still, very still ; his eyes closed, his hands

i "jo @ypsy'* Solving and Rcaphig.

folded, herself and her father looking dumbly on— -
too late.

Gypsy thought that the train crept, crawled,
dragged upon its way. Sometimes it seemed to her
as if she must spring up and shriek with the horror
of her thoughts. Sometimes as if she must cry out
to her father, and throw her arms around his neck,
and sob upon his shoulder. But when she saw his
face rigid and white, as he sat beside her with his
eyes closed and his head laid back, she determined
not to add her pain to his, but to bear it alone, and
bear it like a woman ; and she did.

That was a horrible night. Perhaps it is not very
often — I hope not — that a child of Gypsy's years has
each to live through. Anxiety, and danger, and
death come everywhere, and many brave young bro
thers have gone as Torn went, out of happy homes
into which they never came back. But brothers an?
different, and sisters ; and all are not what Gyps}
and Tom were to each other.

Bat there was one pleasant thing about the night ;
one quiet, restful thing, that Gypsy used afterwards
to remember thankfully.

At one of the large towns where the express
stopped for a moment, there was a little bustle at the
end of the car, and two men came in carrying a
crippled girl. There was not room enough for her,
and they passed on into the next car, and Gypsy saw
uo more of her. But she had caught a glimpse of

Gi/psy's Sowing and Reaping. 171

her white face and shrunken shoulders as they carried
her through, and it took her quick thoughts back
to Peace Maythorne, and that was the pleasant
thing.

Tor she remembered that Peace had said :

" If you see a man drowning, and throw him out
planks, and branches, and straws, and there is a boat
you could have just as well as not ?"

And the hot tears came, for sorrow and wonder
that she could have forgotten to pray for Tom ; that
all this long night had been wasted in branches, and
planks, and straws, — in fruitless fears, and useless
grief and dreaming ; and the only thing that could
help him, — why, how could she forget ?

So, with the pictured face of Peace smiling in
that silent corner of her heart, she told God all the
story, — all that she feared, all that she hoped, all that
she thought she could not bear. He loved her. He
loved Tom. He would do right. She seemed to
feel that, after awhile, and with the thought in her
heart, she went quietly to sleep.

Who shall say what that thought and that prayer
had to do with what came afterwards ?

So the night passed, and the morning came, and
the garish sunshine, and the burning day, and the
sick faintness of the long journey.

They had travelled as fast as steam could take
them, and when the next night settled down they
were in Washington.

Gypsy looked out from the carriage- window on

12

1?2 GyPsy' s Bowing and Reaping.

the twinkling lights and heavy shadows of the city,
and thought of that other journey to Washington
which she had taken with her cousin Joy j thought
of it with a curious sort of wonder, that she could
ever have been as happy as she was then ; that
Tom could have been at home, safe and well, waiting
to kiss her when she came, to take her in his strong
arms, to look down into her face with his own bright,
brown eyes, and pinch her cheek, and say how he had
missed her.

Oh, if the bright, brown eyes should never look
at her any more ! If he should never miss her, never
wait for her again !

The carriage stopped suddenly. They were at
the foot of the hospital steps. There were many
lights in the windows, and some men gathered about
the door.

Gypsy caught her father's hand and held it
tightly.

" Father " — in a sort of terror, — " don't let's go
in yet. Wait a minute. I can't bear to — know."

But the driver had the door open then, and some
body lifted her out, and she found herself climbing
the steps, clinging to her father, and trying not to
think.

They went in. Mr. Breynton dropped her hand
for a moment, and called a man who was stand
ing in the hall, and said something to him in a
whisper.

" Ereynton, Breynton !>f said the man aloud,

Gypsy1 s Sowing and Reapinj. 173

*let me see; think I remember the name. Jack,
look here !"

Jack came.

"Here's a gentleman looking for Breynton —
Thomas Breynton. Know where they've put him ?"

"WardS, sir, yes— if— "

Gypsy half caught the words — " if he's held out
till now ; don't know about that. This way, sir : bed
No. 2, in the corner, — this way."

The steward walked on, with rapid, businesslike
Btrides. Through a bewilderment of light, of moving
figures, of pallet beds, of pale faces on them, Gypsy
followed him, catching at her father's hand.

They reached the corner. They reached the bed .
They stopped.

It was empty.

CHAPTER XV.

ONLY A WHISPER.

GYPSY did not say a word. Some of the soldiers said
afterwards, that they could see her fingers griping
on her father's arm in an odd way ; as if she were
trying to talk with them. But she never remembered
it, nor did he.

So it was all over. They had come too late.
Tom was beyond the reach of her kisses, beyond the

1 74 Gypsy's Sowing and Reapmg.

look of her eyes; he could never hear one word of
hers again ; she could never say good-bye.

The empty bed whirled round before her eyes ;
the room began to grow dark as if a thunder-cloud
were sweeping over it.

She remembered sitting down upon the bed, for
the feeling to pass away ; and she remembered seeing
her father stagger a little, against the wall. But,
strangely enough, the only thought she had was that
she wished she could cry.

" My dear child," said a voice behind her. A.
hand was laid on her shoulder then, — a very gentle
hand, and she turned her head. A sweet-faced lady
in mourning stood there, and Gypsy thought that it
must be the nurse.

" My child, there is a mistake."

" What ? "

" They made a mistake ; he is not dead."

"Is not dead!"

" And is not going to die. He was moved into
another ward this morning, and is getting well, dear,
as fast as he possibly can. Yes, I mean just what I
say ; don't look so frightened. That is his father ?
This way, sir. Come right along, and you shall see
him. He has been having such a nice nap. The
surgeon says it is wonderful how fast he is getting
up. Right through this door — there ! look over by
the window ! "

They looked. So weak, so white, so brave, so
smiling, so beautiful — who but Tom could h&ve a
fac<i like that ?

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 175

And when lie saw them coming in — well, well, I
cannot tell you, and I shall not try, what he said, or
they. I very much doubt if they said anything ; at
least, if they did nobody knew what it was, for the
boys all looked the other way, and the sweet-faced
nurse went off as fast as she could go.

But I know as much as this ; that the first thing
Gypsy knew very much about, she was sitting down
on the bare floor, with her feet crossed like a little
Turk, and her face in the bed-clothes. But what
she could possibly be doing with her face in the bed
clothes ?

" I'm sure 1 don't know, Tom. Crying ? Why,
what on earth is there to cry about — Oh, dear ! " —
down went the head again — "just as if — you'd gone
and died, and here you — didn't ! And here's my hair
all down my back, and how you always used to knock
it down when you kissed me, Tom, always, and here
we are talking you to death, and I shan't say an
other word, and — did you ever see such a little
goose ? "

It was many days before Tom was able to be
about, others still before he could go home. But
Mrs. Breynton, as soon as she had the joyful tele
gram, sent back word to Gypsy to stay with him if
the nurses would let her ; that she was getting strong
fast, for joy, and did not need her.

" Would it bother you to have me, Tom ? *»

Tom looked ; and Gypsy stayed.

176 Gypsy's Solving and Reaping.

The first morning that Tom was strong enough
to bear much talking, Mr. Breynton sent Gypsy
away, nominally to get a walk and the air ; but tha
amount of it was that he had something to say to
Tom, and she understood it.

She never knew what it was, nor any one else.
But she had her guess. For when she came back
her father's eyes were moist, his nervous lip tremb
ling, and into Tom's voice and manner there had
crept a certain tenderness that was not always there.
There was always more or less of it, after that, in his
treatment of his father, and his mother and Gypsy
used to look on rejoicing. If Mr. Breynton had
erred in the management of his son, perhaps he wa3
man enough to say so. That is no concern of Gypsy's
or of ours, but this at least is sure ; in some way or
other Tom had found out, and felt very penitent in
finding out, how much he loved him ; and that,
whether right or wrong in judgment, he cared far
more for his children's best good and happiness than
for his own.

One night, the day before they were to start for
home, Tom had something to say to Gypsy. It was
only a whisper, and there were only four words in it,
but it was well worth hearing.

He had been up and about the house, but being a
little tired towards night, had lain down to get rested
for to-morrow's journey. Gypsy had crawled up on
the edge cf the narrow bed, and was brushing his
hair for him, — very soft and smooth was Tom's curly

Gypsy1 s Sowing and Reaping. 177

hair, and very pretty work she thought it -was to
play with it, to toss it off from his forehead, to curl
it about his ears, to make him look at himself in he;
tiny toilet glass, and call him a handsome fellow,
and stop him with a kiss when he began his usual
answer :

" Why don't you give a fellow some recent in
telligence while you're about it ? "

Their father was out, and the men were none of
them near enough to hear conversation carried on in
a low tone, so that the two were as if alone together.
Tom had been lying with his eyes shut, and Gypsy
had sat silent for awhile, watching his face, — the snn
struck through the western window and fell on it a
little. Suddenly she spoke, half to herself, it seemed :

" 1 wonder if the boat had anything to do with
it."

"The boat!"

" Why, yes, — instead of the sticks and straws/7

" Gypsy, what are you talking about ? "

" Oh, I was thinking about Peace, and somethirg
she said, and how I remembered it coming on ia tie
cars. I wonder if she isn't smilirg away up there, to
see that you didn't die. Anyway, you'd better thank
her for her part of it."

" Her part of it ? Gypsy, do talk English ! if

But not a word would Gypsy say to explain her
self.

There was another silence, and Tom was the one
to break that.

1/8 Gy spy's Sowing and Reaping.

" Gypsy, look here ; father is good to a fellow,
after all."

" To be sure."

" And he has told me I might dc as I liked about
going back 5 he said what he wanted, but he wouldn't
have any command about it, for which I gave him
three cheers."

"Well?"

Gypsy waited and trembled for the answer.

" It will take six months to get this shoulder in
working order/' said Tom, in a sort of a growl, half
glad, half sorry, " and how is a fellow going to fight
with it ? — be in the way if I stay."

" You're not a bit tired of it, then ? " asked Gypsy,
trying not to let her eyes twinkle.

" Well, not — that is to say — exactly. But when
I'm twenty-one, with a little more muscle for the
inarches, if the war holds out till then, I tell you I'll
pitch in and see it out, and smash the Rebs, anyway,
and come through Colonel, if I can't get to Brigadier-
General."

" How nice that will be," said Gypsy, who had not
the slightest doubt that Tom could be Lieutenant-
General if he chose. " So then," and do her dignified
best, she could not keep the little scream of delight
out of her voice, — " so then you're going home to
stay."

" Hum — I suppose so ; father has got mo a
discharge."

" Because vou're wounded ? n

Gypsifs Sowing and Reaping.

" Yes, and" — he hesitated ; it was rather a bitter
cup for proud Tom to drink, but he deserved it and
he knew it — " and because, because; well, I was
under age, you know.'*

" Oh."

Gypsy twisted the bright, brown curls about her
fingers softly.

" So now you will be at home again all safe and
sound, and I shan't have to cry any more nights,
thinking about your being shot, — kiss me, Tom."

et There ! well, you won't have too much of a good
thing. I am back to college next September, to get
that ' education ' father is for ever talking about."

" Tom, you are an angel ! "

" And Gypsy, see here --- "

Gypsy drew her fingers out of the twining curia
and laid her pretty pink ear to his lips, to hear his
whisper.

" I'm going to behave"

CHAPTER XVL

THE REAPING.

TOM always kept his promises.

And one day, a long time after that, when Gypsy
was quite a youug lady, and after her year at the
Golden Crescent, which it will take another book
to tell you about, in a certain church at New Haven,

i8o Gypsifs lowing and Reaping.

there was a great audience gathered. It was a gem
of a day, with the April sun flitting in and out of
little clouds that broke into little showers that did
nobody any harm, and people nocked in, like bees to
a clover-field on a summer morning. There was to
be fine speaking, it was said. The orations as a
whole, did honour to the class, but there was one which
was expected to attract particular attention. The
young man , — "so very young, and so handsome!" wag
buzzed around among the school-girls — was one of the
finest declaimers in college. There were already mur
murs of the DeForest when he should become a senior.

How smiling, and flushed in the face, and warm,
and packed, and crammed, and uncomfortable, and
happy, the audience looked ! What a quantity of old
ladies, with poke bonnets and palm-leaf fans, and 01
pretty school-girls, with their waterfalls, and whirl
pools, and necklaces, and ribbons, and streamers,
and red cheeks and simpers ! How many placid
papas in spectacles, and anxious mammas, with little
front curls, and mature brothers sitting among the
Alumni, and proud, young sisters, with expectant
eyes, all watching the stage, and waiting, and
wondering how long it would be before Dick and
Harry and Will would speak, and hoping that he
would not have to be prompted, and not oaring a
etr-iw for all the rest !

It was a merry sight.

Among the placid papas and anxious mammas and
expectant sisters, was clustered one group that we

's Sowing and Reaping. 181

know. Mr. Breynton was there, by no means placid,
but as nervous and as nappy as be could be, afraid
one minute that the boy had not committed his pieca
thoroughly, and sure the next, that it was something
— something, certainly; to have such a son. Mrs.
Breynton was there, looking as well as ever, as calm
as a moonbeam, but with something in her gentle eyes
that any son would like to. see turned on him. And
Winnie was there, in anew jacket resplendent in new
steel buttons, which he was jerking off as fast as he
possibly could, by jumping up and sitting down
every two minutes by the clock, sticking up his little
fat chin on the top of the next row and looking round
with his mouth open to see " why Tom didn't come and
preach too, old fellow !" And there was Gypsy — a little
older, with long dresses and kid gloves, and her jaunty
hats replaced by a stylish little bonnet all rose-buda
and moss (between you and me, it was made on pur
pose for Tom's exhibition, and she made it herself,
too), — a little prettier, perhaps a little more demure,
but with the old dimples on her cheeks, and the old
mischief in her eyes ; in short, she was still, what she
probably will be all her life, just Gypsy, and nobody
else. But take her altogether, she was a very pleasant
sight to look upon, and of all the pretty, proud little
sisters in the hall, Tom thought none looked prettier
or prouder, and I don't know as anybody blamed him0
And when, after a certain number of other Toms had
said what they had to say, to the entire satisfaction
of certain other sisters and mothers, and Tom came

1 82 Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping.

out upon the stage as carelessly and easily as lie
might walk into the parlour at home, looking as
cool and collected, and tall and handsome and manly
as even Tom could look, and there was a buzz all
over the house, and then a silence, and Gypsy heard
whispers going around behind her : —

"That's the one. That's he— buzz, buzz. One
of the finest declaimers — buzz. DeForest — yes,
buzz, buzz, buzz," — well, I fancy that there will be few-
times in her life in \\hich she will be much happier.

And when Tom began, and the house grew still,
and he went on, and it grew stiller, and he saw, out
of all the crowd, her eager, upturned face, with its
parted lips and proud, young eyes, I am inclined to
think that he was glad he had " behaved."

I cannot tell you the exact subject of his oration,
but Gypsy says it was something about Genius and
liberty, and a little about the Future, and that she
Relieves there was something about Life's Morning,
but she could not understand it to save her — Tom
did know so much ! Besides, she was thinking how
his moustache had grown.

I suppose Tom's oration was like all other college
orations, and that he wras just like any other boy
who had something to say, and knew how to say it ;
but when he came to the end, there was a long hush,
and then a long burst of applause, and Gypsy was
perfectly sure that there never was such a hush or
such applause in Yale College before, and perfectly
eure that Tom was especially destined by Providence

Gypsy' ;, Sowing and Reaping. 183

fc> fill the place of Mr. Edward Everett, and perfectly
sure that there was nobody like him in all the world.
His father was delighted, his mother content, and
Tom himself trying to look very indifferent and very
modest, was very glad that it was over. As for
Winnie, he had expressed his sentiments sufficiently
when the oration was about half through. Tom, in
the excitement of his delivery, in one of his choicest
gestures, chanced to step very near the edge of the
stage — it did look rather uncertain — and Winnie
jumped up with a jerk, and was right out with it
aloud, before anybody could stop him : —

" Ow ! Look a-there, mother ! He'll tip over ! "

And Gypsy says that it was "so remarkable"

that Tom kept his countenance, and went on as if

nothing had happened, though there was a smile all

over the house.

That day was one long dream of delight to Gypsy.
She was so proud of Tom, and Tom was so handsome
and kind. It was " such fun " to be introduced to
his class-mates as "my sister," and to see by the
flash of his eyes that he was not exactly ashamed of
her, in spite of her being " a little goose that did
hate Latin, and never could get her bonnets on
straight like other girls." And very pleasant was it,
moreover, to have a word or two to say about " my
brother," and to try not to look delighted when one
of the professors who had been talking to her mother,
turned around and congratulated her on his success,
and told her in his dignified way, that "her brother's

/. 84. Gypsy1 s Sowing and Reaping.

conduct at college had given great satisfaction to the
Faculty."

And very pleasant was it when the bustle and
excitement of the day were over, when busy Tom
stole fifteen minutes away from all his class engage
ments, and went out to walk with her by moonlight
to show her the elms. On the whole, it was the best
part of the day. Fpr the light fell down without a
cloud, and there was all the wonder and the glory of
the long colonnades and netted arches of silver and
shade, and the sky looking down — she stopped even
then to think — silent and glad, like Peace May-
thorne's eyes ; and then there was Tom's face.

" Oh, Tom, did you ever ? " she began, softly,
patting his arm in her old way, as if he were a
kitten.

" Did I ever what ? "

" Why, it is so nice ! And that Professor said,
yon know, ' He — his conduct ' — let me see j I'm
afraid I can't get it straight."

"He's done himself proud? Well, it's little
enough to anybody bat you and mother and the rest.
But it might have been less."

"And, Tom;'— half under her breath,—*' just
think of the days when we were so afraid, and I used
to watch and worry, and to think I ever thought
you could be like Francis Rowe — why, to think ! "

" Gypsy, look here."

Gypsy looked. Tom's tone had changed sud
denly, and his merry eyes were earnest and still.

Sowing and Reaping. 185

" I'm not the talking sort of fellow, and I can't
go on like the story-books, and say it all over about
gratitude and the rest, but I know this much: I
should not be where I am to-day if it weren't for
you."

"Oh, Tom dear!"

" No, I shouldn't. If you hadn't been so patient
with a chap, and had such a way of keeping your
temper and doing things, and if you hadn't had such
great eyes — well, I guess that will do ; thought I'd
let you know, that's all."

Gypsy gave his arm a little squeeze, and pretty
soon down went her face on it — pink rosebuds and
all — and that was all the answer she oad &r him.

TIIE

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