se
powders she left you put you to sleep."

"Nicely. They're better than anything the doctor gave me; everything your
mother does seems to be the best sort, somehow. She can't touch your hand,
or smooth your pillow, without doing it differently from other people."

"That's so!" said Gypsy, emphatically. "There isn't anybody else like her.
Do you lie awake very often?"

Peace answered in the two quiet words that were on her lips so often, in
the quiet voice that never complained,--

"Oh, yes."

There was a little silence. Gypsy was watching Peace. Peace had her eyes
turned away from her visitor, but she was conscious of every quick,
nervous breath Gypsy drew, and every impatient little flutter of her
hands.

The two girls were studying each other. Gypsy's investigations, whatever
they were, seemed to be very pleasant, for she started at last with a bit
of a sigh, and announced the result of them in the characteristic words,--

"I like you!"

To her surprise, Peace just turned up her eyes and turned them away, and
the eyes were full of tears. After a moment,--

"Thank you. I don't see many people so young--except the children. I tell
them stories sometimes."

"But you won't like me," said Gypsy.

"I rather think I shall."

"No you won't," said Gypsy, shaking her head decidedly; "not a bit. I know
you won't. I'm silly,--well, I'll tell you what I am by-and-by. First, I
want to hear all about you,--everything, I mean," she added, with a quick
delicacy, of which, for "blundering Gypsy," she had a great
deal,--"everything that you care to tell me."

"Why, I've nothing to tell," said Peace, smiling, "cooped up here all the
time; it's all the same."

"That's just what I want to hear about. About the being cooped up. I don't
see _how you bear it_!" said Gypsy, impetuously.

Peace smiled again. Gypsy had a fancy that the smile had stolen one of the
sunbeams that lay in such golden, flickering waves, upon the bed.

Too much self-depreciation is often a sign of the extremest vanity. Peace
had nothing of this. Seeing that Gypsy was in earnest in her wish to hear
her story, she quietly began it without further parley. It was very
simple, and quickly told.

"We used to live on a farm on the mountains--father and mother and I.
There were a great many cattle, and so much ground it tired me to walk
across it. I always went to school, and father read to us in the evenings.
I suppose that's the way I've learned to lov