Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

“ I see a lively girl in pretty short dresses and very long stockings,—quite a Tom-boy, if I remember rightly. She paddles a raft, she climbs a tree, she skates and tramps and coasts, she is usually very muddy, and a little torn. There is apt to be a pin in her gathers; but there is sure to be a laugh in her eyes. Wherever there is mischief, there is Gypsy. Yet, wherever there is fun, and health, and hope, and happiness,—and I think, wherever there is truthfulness and generosity,—there is Gypsy, too. ”

“ Gypsy never took any trouble very deeply to heart, and the morning sunlight, and the sight of the dear, familiar mountains, drove away, to a great extent, the repentant and anxious thoughts of the night.
As the train shrieked into Yorkbury, she forgot everything but that she was at home,—miles away from Boston, her mother near, and Tom, and the dear old days of paddling about on rafts, and having no dinner-parties to disgrace herself at, and no aunt to be afraid of. ”

“ She must know just what Tom had been doing this interminable week, just how many buttons Winnie had lost off from his jacket, and what kind of pies Patty had baked for dinner. She must kiss her mother twenty times an hour, and pull her father’s whiskers, and ride Winnie on her shoulder. Best of all, perhaps, it was to run down to Peace Maythorne’s, and find the sunlight golden in the quiet room, and the pale face smiling on the pillow; to hear the gentle voice, when the door opened, say, “Oh, Gypsy!” ”

“ The two great drops rolled slowly down Gypsy’s cheeks, and into her mouth. She swallowed them with a gulp, and brushed her hand, angrily, across her eyes. Gypsy very seldom cried, but I fancy she came pretty near it on that occasion.
“Miss Melville,” she said, with an earnestness that was comical, in spite of itself; “I wish you’d please to scold me. I should feel a great deal better.”
“Scoldings won’t do you much good,” said Miss Melville, with a sad smile; “you must cure your own faults, Gypsy. ”

“ Mrs. Breynton bound up her finger, and went down again. She was no more than fairly seated before there came from up-stairs, not a scream, but one of the merriest laughs that ever was heard.
“What is to pay, now?” called Tom, from the entry.
“Oh, dear!” gasped Gypsy; “it’s too funny for anything! If here isn’t the carving-knife we scolded Patty for losing last winter, and—Oh, Tom, just look here!—my stick of peanut candy, that I thought I’d eaten up, all stuck on to my lace under-sleeves!”
It was past Gypsy’s bed-time when the upper drawer was fairly in order and put back in its place. ”

“ The great soft shadows fell and faded on the mountains, and the air was sweet with the breath of a hundred fields where crimson clovers nodded in the sleepy wind. It seemed to Gypsy that she had never seen such mellow sunlight, or skies so pure and blue; that no birds ever sung such songs in the elm-trees, and never were butterflies so golden and brown and beautiful as those which fluttered drowsily over the tiny roadside clovers. ”

“ Hallam made a rule that he or Tom should keep the girls constantly in sight, and that, during the time spent in excursions which they could not join, they should remain in Mr. Fisher’s house. He said it was too wild a place for them to be alone in for any length of time, and he was sorry he left them before.
Gypsy did not resent this strict tutelage. She was very humble and obedient and careful as long as they stayed upon the mountain. Those few moments, when she clung sobbing to Tom’s neck, were a lesson to her. She will not forget them as long as she lives. ”

“ After a while Tom laid down his oars, and they floated idly back and forth among the lily-stems and the soft, purple shadows of the [Pg 81] maple-boughs, from which the perfumed scarlet blossoms dropped like coral into the water. Tom took off his cap, and leaned lazily against the side of the boat; Winnie, interested in making a series of remarkable faces at himself in the water, for a wonder sat still, and Gypsy lay down across two seats, with her face turned up watching the sky. It was very pleasant, and no one seemed inclined to talk. ”

“ I can’t talk to little boys when I’m sewing.”
“Oh, I guess I don’t want anythin’clock, very much,” said Winnie, folding his arms composedly, as if he had seated himself for the day; “I’m five years old.”
Down went Gypsy’s work, and a whole handful of pink and white blossoms came fluttering into Winnie’s eyes.
“How am I going to sew?” said Gypsy, despairingly; “you’re so exactly in the right place to be hit. I don’t believe Mrs. Surly herself could help snowballing you.”
“Mrs. Surly snowball! Why, I never saw her. Wouldn’t it be just funny?”
“Winnie Breynton, will you please to go away?” ”

“ There was not a trout-brook for miles where she had not fished. There was hardly a tree she had not climbed, or a fence or stone-wall—provided, of course, that it was away from the [Pg 45] main road and people’s eyes—that she had not walked. Gypsy could row and skate and swim, and play ball and make kites, and coast and race, and drive, and chop wood. Altogether Gypsy seemed like a very pretty, piquant mistake; as if a mischievous boy had somehow stolen the plaid dresses, red cheeks, quick wit, and little indescribable graces of a girl, and was playing off a continual joke on the world. ”

“ When the truth came to Gypsy, she sat for a moment like one stunned. The terrible sense of awakening in a desolate place, at midnight, and alone, instead of in a safe and quiet bed, with bolted doors, and friends within the slightest call, might well alarm an older and stouter heart than Gypsy’s. ”

“ Breynton did not offer to help Gypsy in the task which bade fair to be no easy one, of putting her room in order; but, with a few encouraging words, she went down stairs and left [Pg 32] her. It would have been far easier for her to have gone to work and done the thing herself, than to see Gypsy’s face so clouded and discouraged. But she knew it would be the ruin of Gypsy. Her only chance of overcoming her natural thoughtlessness, and acquiring the habits of a lady, lay in the persistent doing over and over again, by her own unaided patience, these very things that came so hard to her. ”

“ Gypsy installed herself as housekeeper-in-general, and she and Sarah lost no time in unpacking the cake and bread and butter. Tom collected some light, dry brushwood for a fire, and he and Mr. Hallam made the coffee. It seemed as if no supper had ever tasted as that supper did. The free mountain air was so fresh and strong, and the breath of the pines so sweet. It was so pleasant to [Pg 186] sit on the moss around a fire, and eat with your fingers if you chose, without shocking anybody. ”

“ How to put away the pencils and the rubber, when the drawing-box was lost; how to collect all the cookey-crumbs and wandering needles, that slipped out of your finger as fast as you took hold of them; where on earth to put those torn geography leaves, that wouldn’t stay in the book, and couldn’t be thrown away; where was the cork to the inkstand? and how should she hang up the riding-whip, with the string gone? These were questions that might well puzzle a more systematic mind than Gypsy’s. ”

“ Here, too, was the Dipper beneath her, swaying idly back and forth upon the water. She remembered, with a little cry of joy, that the boat was always locked; she could not have stirred from the shore; it would be but the work of a moment to jump upon the wharf, then back swiftly through the fields to the house.
She looked back. The wharf was not in sight. A dark distance lay between her and it. [Pg 91] The beds of lily-leaves, and the dropping blossoms of the maples were about her on every side. She had drifted half across the pond. ”

“ I like the rabbits better, jumping round at home under the pine-trees. Then I think the trout-brook, at Ripton, is a great deal prettier than these fountains. But then I guess I should like the stores,” she said, apologetically, a little afraid she had hurt or provoked Joy.
“I never saw anybody like you,” said Joy, looking puzzled. When they came to Tremont, and then to Washington Street, Gypsy was in an ecstasy. ”

“ Joy seemed to be perfectly happy when she was dressed in her brilliant Stuart plaid silk, with its long sash and valenciennes lace ruffles, and spent a full half hour exhibiting her jewelry-box to Gypsy’s wondering eyes, and trying to decide whether she would wear her coral brooch and ear-rings, which matched the scarlet of the plaid, or a handsome malachite set, which were the newer.
Gypsy looked on admiringly, for she liked pretty things as well as other girls ”

“ She changed her boots, tossed on her turban, whisked on her sack, and began to fasten it with a jerk, when off came the button at the throat, and rolled maliciously quite out of sight under the bed.
“There!” said Gypsy.
“Can’t wait!” shouted Tom.
“I mended that sack,” said Gypsy, “only yesterday afternoon. I call it too bad, when a body’s trying to keep their things in order, and do up all their mending, that things have to act so!” ”

“ To get home, to see her mother,—to hide her head on her shoulder and cry,—this was the one thought that had turned itself over and over in her mind, on that quick ride from Beacon Street, and [Pg 248] in that hour spent in the dark corner of the depot. Here she was, running like a thief from her uncle’s house, without a word of good-by or thanks for his hospitality, with no message to tell him where she had gone but that note, hastily written in the first flush of her hurt and angry feelings. And the hurrying train was whirling her over hill and valley faster and farther. ”

“ All the particularly cross and disagreeable girls are Birdies and Sunbeams. All the brunettes with loud voices and red hands, who are growing up into the “strong-minded women,” are Lilies and Effies and Angelinas, and other etherial creatures; while the little shallow, pink-and-white young ladies who cry very often and “get nervous,” are quite as likely to be royal Constance, or Elizabeth, without any nickname at all.
But Gypsy’s name had undoubtedly been foreordained, so perfectly was it suited to Gypsy. For never a wild rover led a more untamed and happy life. ”

“ How in the world did Gypsy “grow up?” For that was before toboggans and telephones, before bicycles and electric cars, before bangs and puffed sleeves, before girls studied Greek, and golf-capes came in. ”

“ Accordingly she left the old woman groaning out her thanks, and went down the narrow stairs, and into the street.
She ran all the way home, and rushed into the parlor where her mother was sitting quietly sewing. She looked up as the door burst open, and Gypsy swept in like a little hurricane, her turban hanging down her neck, her hair loose and flying about an eager face [Pg 136] that was all on fire with its warm crimson color and twinkling eyes.
“Why Gypsy!”
“Oh, mother, such an old woman—such a poor old woman! ”

“ Gypsy returned to her seam, and the apple-blossoms, and to her own little meditations about the china-closet key; which, being of a private and somewhat humiliating nature, are not given to the public.
The apple-tree stood in one corner of a very pleasant garden. Mr. Breynton had a great fancy for working over his trees and flowers, and, if he had not been a publisher and bookseller, might have made a very successful landscape-gardener. Poor health had driven him out of the professions, and the tastes of a scholar drove him away from out-door life ”

“ Please to imagine, O orderly readers! who keep every pin in its proper place, the worst looking upper drawer that your horrified eyes ever beheld, and you will have some idea of this drawer of Gypsy’s. ”