"

"Why, how your teeth chatter. Isn't it cold up there?"

"Ra-ther. I don't know but I _might_ as well come down."

"I wonder," muttered Gypsy, drowsily, just as Joy had begun in very
thrilling words to request Oliver Cromwell to have mercy on her, and was
about preparing to jump out of the cocoa-nut shell into Niagara Falls,
"I wonder what makes people think it's a joke to lie awake."

"I don't believe they do," said Joy, with a tinge in her voice of
something that, to say the least, was not hilarious.

"Yes they do," persisted Gypsy; "all the girls in novels lie awake all
night and cry when their lovers go to Europe, and they have a real nice
time. Only it's most always moonlight, and they talk out loud. I always
thought when I got large enough to have a lover, I'd try it."

Joy dropped into another dream, and, though not of interest to the
public, it was a very charming dream, and she felt decidedly cross,
when, at the end of another unknown period Gypsy woke her up with a
pinch.

"Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!"

"What are you merry Christmassing for? That's no fair. It isn't morning
yet. Let me alone."

"Yes, it is morning too. I heard the clock strike six ever so long ago.
Get up and build the fire."

"I don't believe it's morning. You can build it yourself."

"No, it's your week. Besides, you made me do it twice for you your last
turn, and I shan't touch it. Besides, it _is_ morning."

Joy rose with a groan, and began to fumble for the matches. All at once
Gypsy heard a very fervent exclamation.

"What's the matter?"

"The old thing's tipped over--every single, solitary match!"

Gypsy began to laugh.

"It's nothing to laugh at," chattered Joy; "I'm frozen almost to death,
and this horrid old fire won't do a thing but smoke."

Gypsy, curled up in the warm bed, smothered her laugh as best she could,
to see Joy crouched shivering before the stove-door, blowing away
frantically at the fire, her cheeks puffed out, her hands blue as
indigo.

"There!" said Joy, at last; "I shan't work any more over it. It may go
out if it wants to, and if it don't it needn't."

She came back to bed, and the fire muttered and sputtered a while, and
died out, and shot up again, and at last made up its mind to burn, and
burned like a small volcano.

"What a noise that fire makes! I hope it won't wake up mother. Joy,
don't it strike you as rather funny it doesn't grow light faster?"

"I don't know."

"Get up