CHESTNUTS

Something woke Gypsy very early the next morning. She started up, and saw Joy standing by the bed, in the faint, gray light, all dressed and shivering with the cold.

"Well, I never!" said Gypsy.

"What's the matter?"

"What on earth have you got your dress on in the middle of the night for?"

"It isn't night; it's morning."

"Morning! it isn't any such a thing."

"'Tis, too. I heard the clock strike five ever so long ago."

Gypsy had fallen back on the pillow, almost asleep again. She roused herself with a little jump.

"See here !"

"Ow! how you frightened me," said Joy, with another jump.

"Did I? Oh, well"—silence. "I don't see"—another silence—"what you wear my rubber—rubber boots for."

"Your rubber boots! Gypsy Breynton, you're sound asleep."

"Asleep!" said Gypsy, sitting up with a jerk, and rubbing both fists into her eyes. "I'm just as wide awake as you are. Oh, why, you're dressed!"

"Just found that out?" Joy broke into a laugh, and Gypsy, now quite awake, joined in it merrily. For the first time a vague notion came to her that she was rather glad Joy came. It might be some fun, after all, to have somebody round all the time to—in that untranslatable girls' phrase—"carry on with."

"But I don't see what's up," said Gypsy, winking and blinking like an owl to keep her eyes open.

"Why, I was afraid father'd get off before I was awake, so I was determined he shouldn't. I guess I kept waking up pretty much all night to see if it wasn't time."

"I wish he didn't have to go," said Gypsy. She felt sorry for Joy just then, seeing this best side of her that she liked. For about a minute she wished she had let her have the upper drawer.

Joy's father started by a very early train, and it was still hardly light when he sat down to his hurried breakfast, with Joy close by him, that pale, pinched look on her face, and so utterly silent that Gypsy was astonished. She would have thought she cared nothing about her father's going, if she had not seen her standing in the gray light upstairs.

"Joyce, my child, you haven't eaten a mouthful," said her father.

"I can't."

"Come, dear, do, just a little, to please father."

Joy put a spoonful of tea to her lips, and put it down. Presently there was a great rumbling of wheels outside, and the coachman rang the door-bell.

"Well, Joy."

Joy stood up, but did not speak. Her father, holding her close in his arms, drew her out with him into the entry. Mrs. Breynton turned away; so did Gypsy and the rest. In a minute they heard Joy go into the parlor and shut the door, and then her father called out to them with his cheerful good-byes, and then he was in the coach, and the door was shut.

Gypsy stole into the parlor. Joy was standing there alone by the window.

"Why don't you cry?" said Gypsy; "I would."

"I don't want to," said Joy, moving away. Her sorrow at parting with her father made her fretful that morning. This was Joy's way. She had inherited her mother's fashion of taking trouble. Gypsy did not understand it, and her sympathy cooled a little. Still she really wanted to do something to make her happy, and so she set about it in the only ways she knew.

"See here, Joy," she called, merrily, after breakfast, "let's come out and have a good time. I have lots and lots to show you out in the barn and round. Then there is all Yorkbury besides, and the mountains. Which'll you do first, see the chickens or walk out on the ridge-pole?"

"On the what ?"

"On the ridge-pole; that's the top of the roof, you know, over the kitchen. Tom and I go out there ever so much."

"Oh, I'd rather see the chickens. I should think you'd kill yourself walking on roofs. Wait till I get my gloves."

"Oh, you don't want gloves in Yorkbury ," said Gypsy, with a very superior air. "That's nothing but a Boston fashion. Slip on your hat and sack in a jiff, and come along."

"I shall tan my hands," said Joy, reluctantly, as they went out. "Besides, I don't know what a jiff is."

"A jiff is—why, it's short for jiffy, I suppose."

"But what's a jiffy?" persisted Joy.

"Couldn't tell you," said Gypsy, with a bubbling laugh; "I guess it's something that's in a terrible hurry. Tom says it ever so much."

"I shouldn't think your mother would let you use boys' talk," said Joy. Gypsy sometimes stood in need of some such hint as this, but she did not relish it from Joy. By way of reply she climbed up the post of the clothesline.

Joy thought the chickens were pretty, but they had such long legs, and such a silly way of squealing when you took them up, as if you were going to murder them. Besides she was afraid she should step on them. So they went into the barn, and Gypsy exhibited Billy and Bess and Clover with the talent of a Barnum and the pride of a queen. Billy was the old horse who had pulled the family to church through the sand every Sunday since the children were babies, and Bess and Clover were white-starred, gentle-eyed cows, who let Gypsy pull their horns and tickle them with hay, and make pencil-marks on their white foreheads to her heart's content, and looked at Joy's strange face with great musing beautiful brown eyes. But Joy was afraid they would hook her, and she didn't like to be in a barn.

"What! not tumble on the hay!" cried Gypsy, half way up the ladder into the loft. "Just see what a quantity there is of it. Did you ever know such a quantity? Father lets me jump on it 'cause I don't hurt the hay—very much."

No. Joy couldn't possibly climb up the ladder. Well, Gypsy would help her then. By a little maneuvering she persuaded Joy to step up three rounds, and she herself stood behind her and began to walk up. Joy screamed and stood still.

"Go ahead—you can't stop now. I'll keep hold of you," said Gypsy, choking with laughter, and walking on. There was nothing for Joy to do but climb, unless she chose to be walked over, so up they went, she screaming and Gypsy pushing all the way.

"Now all you have to do is just to get up on the beams and jump off," said Gypsy, up there, and peering down from among the cobwebs, and flying through the air, almost before the words were off from her lips. But Joy wouldn't hear of getting into such a dusty place. She took two or three dainty little rolls on the hay, but the dried clover got into her hair and mouth and eyes, and she was perfectly sure there was a spider down her neck; so Gypsy was glad at last to get her safely down the ladder and out doors.

After that they tried the raft. Gypsy's raft was on a swamp below the orchard, and it was one of her favorite amusements to push herself about over the shallow water. But Joy was afraid of wetting her feet, or getting drowned, or something—she didn't exactly know what, so they gave that up.

Then Gypsy proposed a game of marbles on the garden path. She played a great deal with Tom, and played well. But Joy was shocked at the idea. That was a boy's play!

"What will you do, then?" said Gypsy, a little crossly. Joy replied in the tone of a martyr, that she was sure she did not know. Gypsy coughed, and walked up and down on the garden fence in significant silence.

Joy was not to go to school till Monday. Meantime she amused herself at home with her aunt, and Gypsy went as usual without her.

Saturday afternoon was the perfect pattern of an autumn afternoon. A creamy haze softened the sharp outline of the mountains, and lay cloudlike on the fields. The sunlight fell through it like sifted gold, the sky hung motionless and blue—that glowless, deepening blue that always made Gypsy feel, she said, "as if she must drink it right up"—and away over miles of field and mountain slope the maples crimsoned and flamed.

Gypsy came home at noon with her hat hanging down her neck, her cheeks on fire, and panting like the old lady who died for want of breath; rushing up the steps, tearing open the door, and slamming into the parlor.

"Look here!—everybody—where are you? What do you think? Joy! Mother! There's going to be a great chestnutting."

"A what?" asked Joy, dropping her embroidery.

"A chestnutting, up at Mr. Jonathan Jones's trees, this afternoon at two o'clock. Did you ever hear anything so perfectly mag?"—mag being "Gypsy" for magnificent.

"Who are to make the party?" asked her mother.

"Oh, I and Sarah Rowe and Delia Guest and—and Sarah Rowe and I," said Gypsy, talking very fast.

"And Joy," said Mrs. Breynton, gently.

"Joy, of course. That's what I came in to say."

"Oh, I don't care to go if you don't want me," said Joy, with a slighted look.

"But I do want you. Who said I didn't?"

"Well," said Joy, somewhat mollified, "I'll go if there aren't any spiders."

The two girls equipped themselves with tin pails, thick boots and a lunch-basket, and started off in high spirits at precisely half-past one. Joy had a remarkably vague idea of what she was going to do, but she felt unusually good-natured, as who could help feeling, with such a sunlight as that and such distant glories of the maple-trees, and such shadows melting on the mountains!

"I want to go chestnotting, too-o-o!" called Winnie, disconsolate, in the doorway.

"No, Winnie, you couldn't, possibly," said Gypsy, pleasantly, sorry to disappoint him; but she was quite too well acquainted with Winnie to undertake a nutting party in his company.

"Oh, yes, do let's take him; he's so cunning," said Joy. Joy was totally unused to children, having never had brothers and sisters of her own, and since she had been there, Winnie had not happened to develop in any of his characteristic methods. Moreover, he had speedily discovered that Joy laughed at everything he said; even his most ordinary efforts in the line of wit; and that she gave him lumps of sugar when she thought of it; and therefore he had been on his best behavior whenever she was about.

"He's so terribly cunning," repeated Joy; "I guess he won't do any hurt."

"I won't do any hurt," put in Winnie; "I'm real cunnin', Gypsy."

"You may do as you like, of course," said Gypsy. "I know he will make trouble and spoil all the party, and the girls would scold me 'cause I brought him. I've tried it times enough. If you're a mind to take care of him, I suppose you can; but you see if you don't repent your bargain."

Gypsy was perfectly right; she was not apt to be selfish in her treatment of Winnie. Such a tramp as this was not at all suited to his capacities of feet or temper, and if his mother had been there she would have managed to make him happy in staying home. But Winnie had received quite too much encouragement; he had no thought of giving up his bargain now.

"Gypsy Breynton, you just needn't talk. I'm goin' chestnotting. I'm five years old. I'm goin' with cousin Joy, and I'll eat just as many chestnots as you or anybody else, now!"

Gypsy had not the slightest doubt of that, and the three started off together.

They met Sarah Rowe and Delia on the way, and Gypsy introduced them.

"This is my cousin Joy, and this is Sarah. That one in the shaker bonnet is Delia Guest. Oh, I forgot. Joy's last name is Breynton, and Sarah is Sarah Rowe."

Joy bowed in her prim, cityish way, and Sarah and Delia were so much astonished thereat that they forgot to bow at all, and Delia stared rudely at her black dress. There was an awkward silence.

"Why don't you talk, somebody?" broke out Gypsy, getting desperate. "Anybody'd think we were three mummies in a museum."

"I don't think you're very perlite," put in Winnie, with a virtuous frown; "if you don't let me be a dummy, too, I'll tell mother, and that would make four."

This broke the ice, and Sarah and Delia began to talk very fast about Monday's grammar lesson, and Miss Cardrew, and how Agnes Gaylord put a green snake in Phœbe Hunt's lunch-basket, and had to stay after school for it, and how it was confidently reported in mysterious whispers, at recess, that George Castles told Mr. Guernsey he was a regular old fogy, and Mr. Guernsey had sent home a letter to his father—not Mr. Guernsey's father, but George's; he had now, true's you live.

Now, to Joy, of course, none of this was very interesting, for she had not been into the schoolroom yet, and didn't know George Castles and Agnes Gaylord from Adam; and somehow or other it never occurred to Gypsy to introduce some subject in which they could all take part; and so somehow it came about that Joy fell behind with Winnie, and the three girls went on together all the way to Mr. Jones's grove.

"Isn't it splendid?" called Gypsy, turning around. "I'm having a real nice time."

"Ye—es," said Joy, dolefully; "I guess I shall like it better when we get to the chestnuts."

Nothing particular happened on the way, except that when they were crossing Mr. Jonathan's plowed field, Winnie stuck in the mud tight, and when he was pulled out he left his shoes behind him; that he repeated this pleasing little incident six consecutive times within five minutes, varying it by lifting up his voice to weep, in Winnie's own accomplished style; and that Joy ended by carrying him in her arms the whole way.

Be it here recorded that Joy's ideal of "cherubic childhood," Winnie standing as representative cherub, underwent then and there several modifications.

"Here we are!" cried Gypsy at last, clearing a low fence with a bound. "Just see the leaves and the sky. Isn't it just—oh!"

It was, indeed "just," and there it stopped; there didn't seem to be any more words to say about it. The chestnut-trees were clustered on a small, rocky knoll, their golden-brown leaves fluttering in the sunlight, their great, rich, bursting green burs bending down the boughs and dropping to the ground. Around them and among them a belt of maples stood up like blazing torches sharp against the sky—yellow, scarlet, russet, maroon, and crimson veined with blood, all netted and laced together, and floating down upon the wind like shattered jewels. Beyond, the purple mountains, and the creamy haze, and the silent sky.

It was a sight to make younger and older than these four girls stand still with deepening eyes. For about a half minute nobody spoke, and I venture to say the four different kinds of thoughts they had just then would make a pretty bit of a poem.

Whatever they were, a fearfully unromantic and utterly indescribable howl from Winnie put an unceremonious end to them.

"O-oh! ugh! ah! Gypsy! Joy! I've got catched onto my buttons. My head's tippin' over the wrong way. Boo-hoo-hoo! Gypsy!"

The girls turned, and stood transfixed, and screamed till they lost their breath, and laughed till they cried.

Winnie, not being of a sentimental turn of mind, had regarded unmoved the flaming glories of the maple-leaves, and being influenced by the more earthly attractions of the chestnuts, had conceived the idea of seizing advantage of the girls' unpractical rapture to be the first on the field, and take entire and lawful possession thereof. Therefore had he made all manner of haste to crawl through the fence, and there had he stuck fast between two bars, balanced like a see-saw, his head going up and his feet going down, his feet going up and his head going down.

Gypsy pulled him out as well as she could between her spasms of laughter.

"I don't see anythin' to laugh at," said Winnie, severely. "If you don't stop laughin' I'll go way off into the woods and be a Injun and never come home any more, and build me a house with a chimney to it, 'n' have baked beans for supper 'n' lots of chestnots, and a gun and a pistol, and I won't give you any! Goin' to stop laughin'?"

It did not take long to pick up the nuts that the wind and the frost had already strewn upon the ground, and everybody enjoyed it but Joy. She pricked her unaccustomed fingers on the sharp burs, and didn't like the nuts when she had tasted of them.

"They're not the kind of chestnuts we have in Boston," she said; "ours are soft like potatoes."

"Oh dear, oh dear, she thought they grew boiled !" and there was a great laugh. Joy colored, and did not relish it very much. Gypsy was too busy pulling off her burs to notice this. Presently the ground was quite cleared.

"Now we must climb," said Gypsy. Gypsy was always the leader in their plays; always made all their plans. Sarah Rowe was her particular friend, and thought everything Gypsy did about right, and seldom opposed her. Delia never opposed anybody.

"Oh, I don't know how to climb," said Joy, shrinking and shocked.

"But I'll show you. This isn't anything; these branches are just as low as they can be. Here, I'll go first and help you, and Sarah can come next."

So up went Gypsy, nimble as a squirrel, over the low-hanging boughs that swayed with her weight.

"Come, Joy! I can't wait."

Joy trembled and screamed, and came. She crawled a little ways up the lowest of the branches, and stopped, frightened by the motion.

"Catch hold of the upper bough and stand up; then you can walk it," called Gypsy, half out of sight now among the thick leaves.

Joy did as she was told—her feet slipped, the lower branch swung away from under her, and there she hung by both hands in mid-air. She was not more than four feet from the ground, and could have jumped down without the slightest difficulty, but that she was altogether too frightened to do. So she swung back and forth like a lantern, screaming as loud as she could scream.

Gypsy was peculiarly sensitive to anything funny, and she quite forgot that Joy was really frightened; indeed, used as she was to the science of tree-climbing all her life, that a girl could hang within four feet of the ground, and not know enough to jump, seemed to her perfectly incomprehensible.

"Jump, Joy, jump!" she called, between her shouts of laughter.

"No, no, don't, you might break your arm," cried Delia Guest, who hadn't the slightest scruple about telling a falsehood if she were going to have something to laugh at by the means. Poor Joy was between Scylla and Charybdis. (If you don't know what that means, go and ask your big brothers; make them leave their chess and their newspapers on the spot, and read you what Mr. Virgil has to say about it.) If she hung on she would wrench her arms; if she jumped, she should break them. She hung, screaming, as long as she could, and dropped when she could hang no longer, looking about in an astonishment that was irresistibly funny, at finding herself alive and unhurt on the soft moss.

The girls were still laughing too hard to talk. Joy stood up with a very red face and began to walk slowly away without a word.

"Where are you goin?" called Gypsy from the branches.

"Home," said Joy.

"Oh, don't; come, we won't laugh any mote. Come back, and you needn't climb. You can stay underneath and pick up while we throw down."

"No; I've had enough of it. I don't like chestnutting, and I don't like to be laughed at, either. I shan't stay any longer."

"I'm real sorry," said Gypsy. "I couldn't help laughing at you, you did look so terribly funny. Oh, dear, you ought to have seen yourself! I wish you wouldn't go. If you do, you can find the way alone, I suppose."

"I suppose so," said Joy, doubtfully.

"Well, you'd better take Winnie; you know you brought him, and I can't keep him here. It would spoil everything. Why, where is the child?"

He was nowhere to be seen.

"Winnie! Win—nie!"

There was a great splash somewhere, and a curious bubbling sound, but where it came from nobody could tell. All at once Delia broke into something between a laugh and a scream.

"O—oh, I see! Look there—down in that ditch beyond the elder-bushes—quick!"

Rising up into the air out of the muddy ground, without any visible support whatever, were a pair of feet—Winnie's feet, unmistakably, because of their copper toes and tagless shoestrings—and kicking frantically back and forth. "Only that and nothing more."

"Why, where's the—rest of him?" said Joy, blankly. At this instant Gypsy darted past her with a sudden movement, flew down the knoll, and began to pull at the mysterious feet as if for dear life.

"Why, what is she doing?" cried all the girls in a breath. As they spoke, up came Winnie entire into the air, head down, dripping, drenched, black with mud, gasping, nearly drowned.

Gypsy shook him and pounded him on the back till his breath came, and when she found there was no harm done, she set him down on a stone, wiped the mud off from his face, and threw herself down on the grass as if she couldn't stand up another minute.

"Crying? Why, no; she's laughing. Did you ever?"

And down ran the girls to see what was the matter. At the foot of the knoll was a ditch of black mud. In the middle of this ditch was a round hole two feet deep, which had been dug at some time to collect water for the cattle pasturing in the field to drink. Into this hole, Winnie, in the course of some scientific investigations as to the depth of the water, had fallen, unfortunately, the wrong end foremost, and there he certainly would have drowned if Gypsy had not seen him just when she did.

But he was not drowned; on the contrary, except for the mud, "as good as new;" and what might have been a tragedy, and a very sad one, had become, as Gypsy said, "too funny for anything." Winnie, however, "didn't see it," and began to cry lustily to go home.

"It's fortunate you were just going," said Gypsy. "I'll just fill my pail, and then I'll come along and very likely overtake you."

Probably Joy didn't fancy this arrangement any too well, but she remembered that it was her own plan to take the child; therefore she said nothing, and she and Winnie started off forlornly enough.

About five o'clock Gypsy walked slowly up the yard with her pail full of nuts, her hat in her hand, and a gay wreath of maple-leaves on her head. With her bright cheeks and twinkling eyes, and the broad leaves casting their gorgeous shadows of crimson and gold upon her forehead, she made a pretty picture—almost too pretty to scold.

Tom met her at the door. Tom was very proud of Gypsy, and you could see in his eyes just then what he thought of her.

"What a little——" he began, all ready for a frolic, and stopped, and grew suddenly grave.

"Where are Joy and Winnie?"

"Haven't they come?"

"No."

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