and Peace lay quite still upon the bed.

"There!" said Gypsy, at last, with a jump. "I shall be late to school."

"Oh," said Peace, "you haven't told me anything about yourself; you said
you would."

"Well," said Gypsy, tying on her hat, "that's easy enough done. I'm silly
and cross, and forgetful and blundering."

"I don't believe it," said Peace, laughing.

"I am," said Gypsy, confidentially; "it's all true; and I'm always tearing
my dresses, and worrying father, and getting mad at Winnie, and bothering
Miss Melville, and romping round, and breaking my neck! and then, when
things don't go right, how I scold!"

Peace smiled, and looked incredulous.

"It's just so," said Gypsy, giving a little sharp nod to emphasize her
words. "And here you lie, and never think of being cross and impatient,
and love everybody and everybody loves you, and--well, all I have to say
is, if I were you I should have scolded everybody out of the house long
before this!"

"You mustn't talk so about me," said Peace, a faint shadow of pain
crossing her face. "You don't know how wicked I am--nobody knows; I am
cross very often. Sometimes when my back aches as if I should scream, and
aunt is talking, I hide my face under the clothes, and don't say a word to
her."

"You call _that_ being cross!" said Gypsy, with her eyes very wide open.
She buttoned on her sack, and started to go, but stopped a minute.

"I don't suppose you'd want me to come again--I'm so noisy, and all."

"Oh, I should be so glad!" said Peace, with one of those rare smiles: "I
didn't dare to ask you."

"Well; I'll come. But I told you you wouldn't like me."

"I do," said Peace. "I like you very much."

"How funny!" said Gypsy. Then she bade her good-by, and went to school.

"Mother," she said, at night, "did you have any particular reason in
sending me to Peace Maythorne?"

"Perhaps so," said Mrs. Breynton, smiling. "Why?"

"Nothing, only I thought so. You were a very wise woman."

A while after she spoke up, suddenly.

"Mother, don't the Quakers say good matches are made in heaven?"

"Who's been putting sentimental ideas into the child's head?" said her
father, in an undertone.

"Why, Gypsy Breynton!" said Winnie, looking very much shocked; "you hadn't
ought to say such things. Of course, the brimstone falls down from hell,
and they pick it up and put it on the matches!"

"What made you ask the question?" said Mrs. Breynton, when the laugh had
subsided.