"I guess I'd rather do the sewing." Presently a little scarlet maple-blossom floated out on the wind, and dropped right into Gypsy's mouth (which most unpoetically happened to be open).
"Just think," said Gypsy, whose thoughts seemed to have taken a metaphysical turn, "of being a little red flower, that dies and drops into the water, and there's never any fruit nor anything,--I wonder what it was made for." "Perhaps just to make you ask that question," answered Tom; and there was a great deal more in the answer than Tom himself supposed.

This was every solitary word that was said on that boat-ride.

A little is so much better than much, sometimes, and goes a great deal further.
It seemed to Gypsy the pleasantest boat-ride she had ever taken; but Tom became tired of it before she did, and went up to the house, carrying Winnie with him.

Gypsy stayed a little while to row by herself.
"Be sure you lock the boat when you come up," called Tom, in starting.
"Oh yes," said Gypsy, "I always do." "Did you bring up the oars ?" asked Tom, at supper.
"Yes, they're in the barn.

I do sometimes remember things, Mr.Tom." "Did you----," began Tom, again.
But Winnie just then upset the entire contents of his silver mug of milk exactly into Tom's lap, and as this was the fourth time the young gentleman had done that very thing, within three days, Tom's sentence was broken off for another of a more agitated nature.
That night Tom had a dream.
He thought the house was a haunted castle--( he had, I am sorry to say, been reading novels in study hours), and that the ghost of old Baron Somebody who had defrauded the beautiful Lady Somebody-else, of Kleiner Berg Basin and the Dipper, in which it was supposed Mrs.Surly had secreted a blind kitten, which it was somehow or other imperatively necessary should be drowned, for the well-being of the beautiful and unfortunate heiress,--that the ghost of this atrocious Baron was going down stairs, with white silk stockings on his feet and a tin pan on his head.
At this crisis Tom awoke, with a jump, and heard, or thought he heard, a slight creaking noise in the entry.