d grieved, but
triumphant. "I was up in auntie's room, and I saw it. It was open on her
bed, and I read it. It said there was coal and iron and silver, and lots
and lots of gypsies."

There was a breathless hush, followed suddenly by a shrieking laugh from
Tilly.

"Oh, girls, girls!" she gasped. "That blessed child means 'gypsum.' I
saw that in papa's encyclopedia just the other day."

"But what is gypsum?" demanded Alma Lane.

"Mercy! don't ask me," shuddered Tilly. "I looked it up in the
dictionary, but it only said it was a whole lot of worse names. All I
could make out was that it had crystals, and was used for dressing for
soils, and for plaster of Paris. _Gypsies!_ Oh, Edith, Edith, what a
circus you are!" she chuckled, going into another gale of laughter.

It was Fred's injured tones that filled the first pause in the general
hubbub that followed Tilly's explanation.

"You haven't heard mine, yet," he challenged. "Mine's right!"

"Well?" questioned Cordelia, wiping her eyes. (Even Cordelia had laughed
till she cried.) "What is yours, Fred?"

"It's boats. There hasn't one of you said a single thing about the boats
you were going to ride in."

"Boats!" cried the girls in a second chorus of unbelief.

"Oh, you needn't try to talk me out of that," bristled the boy. "I
_know_ what _I'm_ talking about. Old Mr. Hodges told me himself. He's
been in 'em. He said that years and years ago, when he was a little boy
like me, he and his father and mother went 'way across the state of
Texas in a prairie schooner; and I asked father that night what a
schooner was, and he said it was a boat. Well, he did!" maintained Fred,
a little angrily, as a shout of laughter rose from the girls.

"And so 'tis a boat--some kinds of schooners," Harold Day soothed the
boy quickly, rising to his feet, and putting a friendly arm about the
small heaving shoulders. "Come on, son, let's you and I go over to the
house. I've got a dandy picture of a prairie schooner over there, and
we'll hunt it up and see just what it looks like." And with a
ceremonious "Good day, ladies!" and an elaborate flourish of his hat
toward the Happy Hexagons, Harold drew the boy more closely into the
circle of his arm and turned away.

It was the signal for a general breaking up of the club meeting.
Cordelia, only, looked a little anxiously after the two boys, as she
complained:

"Harold never tells a thing that he knows about Texas, and he must know
a lot