Gypsys Cousin Joy

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Gypsy's Cousin Joy

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Title: Gypsy's Cousin Joy
Author: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
Release Date: June 21, 2006 [EBook #18646]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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GYPSY'S COUSIN JOY
By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
New York Dodd, Mead and Company
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[Illustration]
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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by
GRAVES & YOUNG,
in the Clerk's Office for the District Court of Massachusetts
Copyright, 1895, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward.
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PREFACE.
Having been asked to write a preface to the new edition of the Gypsy books, I am not a little perplexed. I was hardly more than a girl myself, when I recorded the history of this young person; and I find it hard, at this distance, to photograph her as she looks, or ought to look to-day. She does not sit still long enough to be "taken." I see a lively girl in pretty short dresses and very long stockings,--quite a Tom-boy, if I remember rightly. She paddles a raft, she climbs a tree, she skates and tramps and coasts, she is usually very muddy, and a little torn. There is apt to be a pin in her gathers; but there is sure to be a laugh in her eyes. Wherever there is mischief, there is Gypsy. Yet, wherever there is fun, and health, and hope, and happiness,--and I think, wherever there is truthfulness and generosity,--there is Gypsy, too.
And now, the publishers tell me that Gypsy is thirty years old, and that girls who were not so much as born when I knew the little lady, are her readers and her friends to-day.
Thirty years old? Indeed, it is more than that! For is it not thirty years since the publication of her memoirs? And was she, at that time, possibly sixteen? Forty-six years? Incredible! How in the world did Gypsy "grow up?" For that was before toboggans and telephones, before bicycles and electric cars, before bangs and puffed sleeves, before girls studied Greek, and golf-capes came in. Did she go to college? For the Annex, and Smith, and Wellesley were not. Did she have a 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.
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
NEWS 7
CHAPTER II
SHE SHALL COME? 24
CHAPTER III
ONE EVENING 40
CHAPTER IV
CHESTNUTS 54
CHAPTER V
GYPSY MAKES A DISCOVERY 82
CHAPTER VI
WHO PUT IT IN? 99
CHAPTER VII
PEACE MAYTHORNE'S ROOM 122
CHAPTER VIII
THE STORY OF A NIGHT 148
CHAPTER IX
UP RATTLESNAKE 187
CHAPTER X
WE ARE LOST 211
CHAPTER XI
GRAND TIMES 229
CHAPTER XII
A TELEGRAM 243
CHAPTER XIII
A SUNDAY NIGHT 263
CHAPTER XIV
GOOD BYE 274
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GYPSY'S COUSIN JOY
CHAPTER I
NEWS
The second arithmetic class had just come out to recite, when somebody knocked at the door. Miss Cardrew sent Delia Guest to open it.
"It's a--ha, ha! letter--he, he! for you," said Delia, coming up to the desk. Exactly wherein lay the joke, in the fact that Miss Cardrew should have a letter, nobody but Delia was capable of seeing; but Delia was given to seeing jokes on all occasions, under all circumstances. Go wherever you might, from a prayer-meeting to the playground, you were sure to hear her little giggle.
"A letter for you," repeated Delia Guest. "He, he!"
Miss Cardrew laid down her arithmetic, opened the letter, and read it. "Gypsy Breynton."
[Illustration]
The arithmetic class stopped whispering, and there was a great lull in the schoolroom.
"Why I never!" giggled Delia. Gypsy, all in a flutter at having her name read right out in school, and divided between her horror lest the kitten she had tied to a spool of thread at recess, had been discovered, and an awful suspicion that Mr. Jonathan Jones saw her run across his plowed field after chestnuts, went slowly up to the desk.
"Your mother has sent for you to come directly home," said Miss Cardrew, in a low tone. Gypsy looked a little frightened.
"Go home! Is anybody sick, Miss Cardrew?"
"She doesn't say--she gives no