Cordelia turned to confront her ten-year-old cousin, Edith. "Why, Edith!" "And I have, too," piped up Edith's brother, Fred, with shrill earnestness. (Fred was eight.) "And mine's new, too." Cordelia frowned thoughtfully. "But, children, you don't belong to the club. Only members can talk, you know." "Pooh! let's hear it, Cordelia," shrugged Tilly. "I'm sure if it's _new_, we need it--of all the old chestnuts we've heard to-day!" "Well," agreed Cordelia, "what is it, Edith? You spoke first." "It's gypsies," announced the small girl, triumphantly. "Gypsies!" chorused the Happy Hexagons in open unbelief. "Yes. There's lots of 'em there--more than 'most anywhere else in the world." The girls looked at each other with puzzled eyes. "Why, I never heard Genevieve say anything about gypsies," ventured Tilly. "Well, they're there, anyhow," maintained Edith; "I read it." "You read it! Where?" demanded Cordelia. "In father's big sac'l'pedia." Edith's voice sounded grieved, but triumphant. "I was up in auntie's room, and I saw it. It was open on her bed, and I read it. It said there was coal and iron and silver, and lots and lots of gypsies." There was a breathless hush, followed suddenly by a shrieking laugh from Tilly. "Oh, girls, girls!" she gasped. "That blessed child means 'gypsum.' I saw that in papa's encyclopedia just the other day." "But what is gypsum?" demanded Alma Lane. "Mercy! don't ask me," shuddered Tilly. "I looked it up in the dictionary, but it only said it was a whole lot of worse names. All I could make out was that it had crystals, and was used for dressing for soils, and for plaster of Paris. _Gypsies!_ Oh, Edith, Edith, what a circus you are!" she chuckled, going into another gale of laughter. It was Fred's injured tones that filled the first pause in the general hubbub that followed Tilly's explanation. "You haven't heard mine, yet," he challenged. "Mine's right!" "Well?" questioned Cordelia, wiping her eyes. (Even Cordelia had laughed till she cried.) "What is yours, Fred?" "It's boats. There hasn't one of you said a single thing about the boats you were going to ride in." "Boats!" cried the girls in a second chorus of unbelief. "Oh, you needn't try to talk me out of that," bristled the boy. "I _know_ what _I'm_ talking about. Old Mr. Hodges told me himself. He's been in 'em. He said that years and years ago, when he was a little boy like me, he and his father and mother went 'way across the state of Texas in a prairie schooner; and I asked father that night what a schooner was, and he said it was a boat. Well, he did!" maintained Fred, a little angrily, as a shout of laughter rose from the girls.