When you went off I kept thinking everybody was dead and buried, all that morning, and it was real horrid--Oh, you don't know!" [Illustration] "Gypsy," said Mrs.Breynton, a while after supper, when Winnie had gone to bed, and Tom and his father were casting accounts by the fire, "I want to see you a few minutes." Gypsy, wondering, followed her into the parlor.

Mrs.Breynton shut the door, and they sat down together on the sofa.
"I want to have a talk with you, Gypsy, about something that we'd better talk over alone." "Yes'm," said Gypsy, quite bewildered by her mother's grave manner, and thinking up all the wrong things she had done for a week.

Whether it was the time she got so provoked at Patty for having dinner late, or scolded Winnie for trying to paint with the starch (and if ever any child deserved it, he did), or got kept after school for whispering, or brought down the nice company quince marmalade to eat with the blanc mange, or whether---- "You haven't asked about your cousin, Joy," said her mother, interrupting her thinking.
"Oh!--how is she ?" said Gypsy, looking somewhat ashamed.
"I am sorry for the child," said Mrs.Breynton, musingly.
"What's going to become of her?
Who's going to take care of her ?" "That is just what I came in here to talk about." "Why, I don't see what I have to do with it!" said Gypsy, astonished.
"Her father thinks of going abroad, and so there would be no one to leave her with.

He finds himself quite worn out by your aunt's sickness, the care and anxiety and trouble.

His business also requires some member of the firm to go to France this fall, and he has almost decided to go.
The only thing that makes him hesitate is Joy." "I see what you mean now, mother--I see it in your eyes.