CHAPTER II

SHE SHALL COME?

Supper was ready. It had been ready now for ten minutes. The cool, white cloth, bright glass, glittering silver, and delicate china painted with a primrose and an ivy-leaf—the best china, and very extravagant in Gypsy, of course, but she thought the occasion deserved it—were all laid in their places upon the table. The tea was steeped to precisely the right point; the rich, mellow flavor had just escaped the clover taste on one side, and the bitterness of too much boiling on the other; the delicately sugared apples were floating in their amber juices in the round glass preserve-dish, the smoked halibut was done to the most delightful brown crispness, the puffy, golden drop-cakes were smoking from the oven, and Patty was growling as nobody but Patty could growl, for fear they would "slump down intirely an' be gittin' as heavy as lead," before they could be eaten.

There was a bright fire in the dining-room grate; the golden light was dancing a jig all over the walls, hiding behind the curtains, coquetting with the silver, and touching the primroses on the plates to a perfect sunbeam; for father and mother were coming. Tom and Gypsy and Winnie were all three running to the windows and the door every two minutes and dressed in their very "Sunday-go-to-meeting best;" for father and mother were coming. Tom had laughed well at this plan of dressing up—Gypsy's notion, of course, and ridiculous enough, said Tom; fit for babies like Winnie, and girls . (I wish I could give you in print the peculiar emphasis with which Tom was wont to dwell on this word.) But for all that, when Gypsy came down in her new Scotch plaid dress, with her cheeks so red, and her hair so smooth and black; and Winnie strutted across the room counting the buttons on his best jacket, Tom slipped away to his room, and came down with his purple necktie on.

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

These cozy, comfortable touches about it—the little conceit of the painted china, and the best clothes—were just like Gypsy. Since she was glad to see her father and mother, it was imperatively necessary that she should show it; there was no danger but what her joy would have been sufficiently evident—where everything else was—in her eyes; but according to Gypsy's view of matters, it must express itself in some sort of celebration. Whether her mother wouldn't have been quite as well pleased if her delicate, expensive porcelain had been kept safely in the closet; whether, indeed, it was exactly right for her to take it out without leave, Gypsy never stopped to consider. When she wanted to do a thing, she could never see any reasons why it shouldn't be done, like a few other girls I have heard of in New England. However, just such a mother as Gypsy had was quite likely to pardon such a little carelessness as this, for the love in it, and the welcoming thoughts.

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

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

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

"My kitty had a fit," observed Winnie, the first pause he could find.

"And there are some letters for father," from Tom.

"Patty has a new beau," interrupted Gypsy.

"It was an awfully fit," put in Winnie, undiscouraged; "she rolled under the stove, 'n' tell you she squealed, and——"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The resurrection day?"

"Why, yes. When you went off I kept thinking everybody was dead and buried, all that morning, and it was real horrid—Oh, you don't know!"

"Gypsy," said Mrs. Breynton, a while after supper, when Winnie had gone to bed, and Tom and his father were casting accounts by the fire, "I want to see you a few minutes." Gypsy, wondering, followed her into the parlor. Mrs. Breynton shut the door, and they sat down together on the sofa.

"I want to have a talk with you, Gypsy, about something that we'd better talk over alone."

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

"You haven't asked about your cousin, Joy," said her mother, interrupting her thinking.

"Oh!—how is she?" said Gypsy, looking somewhat ashamed.

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

"What's going to become of her? Who's going to take care of her?"

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

"Why, I don't see what I have to do with it!" said Gypsy, astonished.

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

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

"Yes," said Mrs. Breynton, "that is it."

Gypsy's bright face fell. "Well?" she said, at last.

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

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

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

"I don't like Joy," said Gypsy, bluntly.

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

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

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

"What was it?" asked Gypsy.

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

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

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

"This was what she said—softly, in Joy's frightened way, you know: 'You're all I had anyway,' said she. 'All the other girls have got mothers, and now I won't ever have any, any more. I did used to bother you and be cross about my practising, and not do as you told me, and I wish I hadn't, and —

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

Mrs. Breynton smiled.

"Then she may come, may she?"

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

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

"She'll sleep in the front room, of course?" suggested Gypsy.

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

"Six months or a year! In my room!"

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

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

"Come here, Gypsy."

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

That very afternoon Gypsy wrote her note to Joy:

" Dear Joy :

"I'm real sorry your mother died. You'd better come right up here next week, and we'll go chestnutting over by Mr. Jonathan Jones's. I tell you it's splendid climbing up. If you're very careful, you needn't tear your dress very badly. Then there's the raft, and you might play baseball, too. I'll teach you.

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

"Your affectionate cousin,

" Gypsy ."