She seemed fated to be interrupted in her convulsive attempts at "run-and-back stitching." Winnie was hardly in the house, before Sarah Rowe came out in the garden to hunt her up. "Oh, dear," said Gypsy, as Sarah's face appeared under the apple-boughs; "I'm not a bit glad to see you." "That's polite," said Sarah, reddening; "I'll go home again." "Look," said Gypsy, laughing; "just _see_ what I've got to mend, and I came out here on purpose to get it done, so I could come over to your house. You see I oughtn't to be glad to see you at all, but I am exceedingly." Sarah climbed up, and sat down beside her upon a long, swaying bough. "Now don't you speak a single word," said Gypsy, with an industrious air, "till I get this done." "No, I won't," said Sarah. "What do you have to sew for, Saturday afternoons?" "Why, it's my mending: mother wants me to do it Saturday morning, and of course it's a great deal easier, because then you have all the afternoon to yourself, only I never seem to get time; I'm sure I don't know why. This morning I had my history topics to write." "Why, I wrote mine yesterday!" "I meant to, but I forgot; Miss Melville said I musn't put it off another day. There! I wasn't going to talk." "Mother does my mending for me," said Sarah. "She does! Well, I just wish my mother would. She says it wouldn't be good for me." "How did you tear such a great place, I'd like to know?" "Put my foot right through it," said Gypsy, disconsolately. "It was hanging on a chair, and I just stepped in it and started to run, and down I went,--and here's the skirt. I was running after the cat. I'd put her under my best hat, and she was spinning down stairs. You never saw anything so funny! I'm always doing such things,--I mean like the skirt. I do declare! you mustn't talk." "I'm not," said Sarah, laughing; "it's you that are talking. You haven't sewed a stitch for five minutes, either." Gypsy sighed, and her needle began to fly savagely. There was a little silence. "You see," said Gypsy, breaking it, "I'm trying to reform." "Reform?" said Sarah, with some vague ideas of Luther and Melancthon, and Gypsy's wearing a wig and spectacles, and reading Cruden's "Concordance." "Yes," nodded Gypsy, "reform. I never knew anybody need it as much as I. I never do things anyway, and then I do them wrong, and then I forget all about them. Mother says I'm improving. She says my room used to look like a perfect Babel, and now I keep the wardrobe door shut, and dust it out--sometimes. Then there's my mending. I came out here so's to be quiet and _keep at it_. The poor dear woman is so afraid I won't learn to do things in a lady-like way. It would be dreadful not to grow up a lady, wouldn't it?" "Dreadful!" said Sarah; "only I wish you'd hurry and get through, so we can go down to the swamp and sail. Couldn't you take a little bigger stitches?"