Mrs.Breynton was a wise, as well as a loving mother, and had done everything in the way of punishment, reproof, warning, persuasion, and argument, that mothers can do for the faults of children.

Nor was it for want of a good example, Mrs.
Breynton was the very pink of neatness.

It was a natural _kink_ in Gypsy, that was as hard to get out as a knot in an apple-tree, and which depended entirely on the child's own will for its eradication.

This disorder in her room and about her toilet was only one development of it, and by no means a fixed or continued one.

Gypsy could be, and half the time she was, as orderly and lady-like as anybody.