"I've cut my hand," said Gypsy, faintly; "there was a great heap of broken glass in my drawer!" "_Broken glass!_" "Yes, I'm sure I don't know how it came there; I guess I was going to frame a picture." Mrs. Breynton bound up her finger, and went down again. She was no more than fairly seated before there came from up-stairs, not a scream, but one of the merriest laughs that ever was heard. "What is to pay, now?" called Tom, from the entry. "Oh, dear!" gasped Gypsy; "it's too funny for anything! If here isn't the _carving-knife_ we scolded Patty for losing last winter, and--Oh, Tom, just look here!--my stick of peanut candy, that I thought I'd eaten up, all stuck on to my lace under-sleeves!" It was past Gypsy's bed-time when the upper drawer was fairly in order and put back in its place. Three others remained to go through the same process, as well as wardrobe shelves innumerable. Gypsy, with her characteristic impulsiveness, would have sat up till twelve o'clock to complete the work, but her mother said "No" very decidedly, and so it must wait till to-morrow. Tom came in just as everything was done, and Gypsy had drawn a long breath and stood up to look, with great satisfaction, all around her pleasant, orderly room. "Well done! I say, Gypsy, what a jewel you are when you're a mind to be." "Of course, I am. Have you just found it out?" "Well, you know you're a diamond, decidedly in the rough, as a general thing. You need cutting down and polishing." "And you to polish me? Well, I like the looks of this room, anyhow. It _is_ nice to have things somewhere where you won't trip over them when you walk across the room--only if somebody else would pick 'em up for me." "How long do you suppose it will last?" asked Tom, with an air of great superiority. "Tom," said Gypsy, solemnly; "that's a serious question." "It might last forever if you have a mind to have it,--come now, Gyp., why not?" "That's a long time," said Gypsy, shaking her head; "I wouldn't trust myself two inches. To-morrow I shall be in a hurry to go to school; then I shall be in a hurry to go to dinner; then I shall be in a _ter_rible hurry to get off with Sarah Rowe, and so it goes. However, I'll see. I feel, to-night, precisely as if I should never want to take a single pin out of those little black squares I've put them into on the cushion." Gypsy found herself in a hurry the next day and the next, and is likely to, to the end of her life, I am afraid. But she seemed to have taken a little gasp of order, and for a long time no one had any complaint to make of Gypsy's room or Gypsy's toilet. CHAPTER III MISS MELVILLE'S VISITOR As will be readily supposed, Gypsy's name was not her original one; though it might have been, for there have been actual Billys and Sallys, who began and ended Billys and Sallys only.