r,
and Tom was there that morning, knotting his handsome brows up into a
very decided frown, when he saw her in the doorway, with Joy peeping
over her shoulder. So Gypsy--somewhat reluctantly, it must be
confessed, for the boys seemed to be having a good time, and with boys'
good times she had a most unconquerable sympathy--went up with Joy into
Miss Cardrew's recitation room. Nobody was there. A great, empty
schoolroom, with its rows of silent seats and closed desks, with power
to roam whithersoever you will, and do whatsoever you choose, is a great
temptation. The girls ran over the desks, and looked into the desks,
jumped over the settees, and knocked down the settees, put out the fire
and built it up again, from the pure luxury of doing what they wanted
to, in a place where they usually had to do what they didn't want to.
They sat in Miss Cardrew's chair, and peeped into her desk; they ate
apples and snapped peanut shells on the very platform where sat the
spectacled and ogre-eyed committee on examination days; they drew all
manner of pictures of funny old women without any head, and old men
without any feet, on the awful blackboard, and played "tag" round the
globes. Then they stopped for want of breath.

"I wish there were something to do," sighed Gypsy; "something real
splendid and funny."

"I knew a girl once, and she drew a picture of the teacher on the board
in green chalk," suggested Joy; "only she lost her recess for a whole
week after it."

"That wouldn't do. Besides, pictures are too common; everybody does
those. Boys put pins in the seats, and cut off the legs of the teacher's
chair, and all that. I don't know as I care to tumble Miss Cardrew
over--wouldn't she look funny, though!--'cause mother wouldn't like
it. Couldn't we make the stove smoke, or put pepper in the desks,
or--let me see."

"Dress up something somehow," said Joy; "there's the poker."

Gypsy shook her head.

"Delia Guest did that last term, 'n' the old thing--I mean the poker,
not Delia--went flat down in the corner behind the stove--flat, just
as Miss Melville was coming in, and lay there in the wood-pile, and
nobody knew there was a single sign of a thing going on. I guess you
better believe Delia felt cheap!--hark! what's that?"

It was a faint miaow down in the yard. The girls ran to the window and
looked out.

"A kitten!"

"The very thing!"

"I'm going right down to get her."

Down they ran, both of them, in a great h