I should feel a great deal better." "Scoldings won't do you much good," said Miss Melville, with a sad smile; "you must cure your own faults, Gypsy.

Nobody else can do it for you." Gypsy turned around in a little passion of despair.
"Miss Melville, _I can't_! It isn't in me--you don't know! Here this very morning I got late to school, tipping Winnie over in a raft--drenched through both of us, and mother, so patient and sweet with the dry stockings she'd just mended, and wasn't I sorry?
Didn't I think about it all the way to school--the whole way, Miss Melville?
And didn't I make up my mind I'd be as good as a kitten all day, and sit still like Agnes Gaylord, and not tickle the girls, nor make you any trouble, nor anything?
Then what should I do but come into the entry and see those things, and it all came like a flash how funny it would be'n I'd talk up high like Mrs.
Surly 'n you wouldn't know me, and--that was the last I thought, till you took off the veil, and I wished I hadn't done it.

It's just like me--I never can help anything anyhow." "I think you can," said her teacher, kindly.

"You certainly had the power, when you stood out there in the entry, to stop and think before you touched the things." "I don't know," said Gypsy, shaking her head, thoughtfully; "I don't believe I had." "But you wouldn't do it again ?" "I guess I wouldn't!" said Gypsy, with an emphasis.
"What you can do one time, you can another," said Miss Melville.
Gypsy was silent.
"There's one other thing about it," continued her teacher, "besides the impropriety of playing such a trick in school hours--that is, that it was very unkind to me." "Unkind!" exclaimed Gypsy.
"Yes," said Miss Melville, quietly, "unkind." "Why, Miss Melville, I wouldn't be unkind to you for anything!--I love you dearly." "Nevertheless, Gypsy, it was very unkind to deliberately set to work to annoy me and make me trouble, by getting the school into a frolic.
Anything done to break the order of study-hours, or to withstand any rule of the school, is always an unkindness to a teacher.

There is scarcely a girl in school that might help me more than you, Gypsy, if you chose." "I don't see how," said Gypsy, astonished.
"I do," said Miss Melville, smiling, "and I always think a little vote of thanks to you, when you are quiet and well-behaved.