career? Or take a husband?
Did she edit a Quarterly Review, or sing a baby to sleep? Did she write
poetry, or make pies? Did she practice medicine, or matrimony? Who knows?
Not even the author of her being.

Only one thing I do know: Gypsy never grew up to be "timid," or silly, or
mean, or lazy; but a sensible woman, true and strong; asking little help
of other people, but giving much; an honor to her brave and loving sex,
and a safe comrade to the girls who kept step with her into middle life;
and I trust that I may bespeak from their daughters and their scholars a
kindly welcome to an old story, told again.

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

Newton Centre, Mass.,
_April, 1895._

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I WHICH INTRODUCES HER 7
CHAPTER II A SPASM OF ORDER 21
CHAPTER III MISS MELVILLE'S VISITOR 42
CHAPTER IV GYPSY HAS A DREAM 69
CHAPTER V WHAT SHE SAW 89
CHAPTER VI UP IN THE APPLE TREE 105
CHAPTER VII JUST LIKE GYPSY 126
CHAPTER VIII PEACE MAYTHORNE 146
CHAPTER IX CAMPING OUT 167
CHAPTER X THE END OF THE WEEK 202
CHAPTER XI GYPSY'S OPINION OF BOSTON 213
CHAPTER XII NO PLACE LIKE HOME 242

GYPSY BREYNTON

CHAPTER I

WHICH INTRODUCES HER

"Gypsy Breynton. Hon. Gypsy Breynton, Esq., M. A., D. D., LL. D., &c., &c.
Gypsy Breynton, R. R."

Tom was very proud of his handwriting. It was black and business-like,
round and rolling and readable, and drowned in a deluge of hair-line
flourishes, with little black curves in the middle of them. It had been
acquired in the book-keeping class of Yorkbury high school, and had taken
a prize at the end of the summer term. And therefore did Tom lean back in
his chair, and survey, with intense satisfaction, the great sheet of
sermon-paper which was covered with his scrawlings.

Tom was a handsome fellow, if he did look very well pleased with himself
at that particular moment. His curly hair was black and bright, and
brushed off from a full forehead, and what with that faint, dark line of
moustache just visible above his lips, and that irresistible twinkle to
his great merry eyes, it was no wonder Gypsy was proud of him, as indeed
she certainly was, nor did she hesitate to tell him so twenty times a day.
This was a treatment of which Tom decidedly approved. Exactly how
beneficial it was to the growth within him of modesty, self-forgetfulness,
and the passive virtu