d commenting upon every article of Gypsy's attire.
"Come, let's go down. Mother scolds if we're late."

"Scolds!" said Gypsy. "How funny! my mother never scolds."

"Doesn't she?" asked Joy, a little wonder in her eyes.

"It seems so queer to have dinner at six o'clock," said Gypsy,
confidentially, as they went down stairs. "At home they are just sitting
down to supper."

Joy laughed patronizingly.

"Oh, yes; I suppose you're used to country hours."

For the second time, Gypsy felt uncomfortable. She would very much have
liked to ask her cousin what there was to be ashamed of in being used to
country hours, when you lived in the country. But they had reached the
dining-room door, and her aunt was calling out somewhat fretfully to Joy
to hurry, so she said nothing.

After supper, her uncle said she looked very much like her father, hoped
she would make herself at home, thought her a little taller than Joyce,
and then was lost to view, for the evening, behind his newspaper. Her aunt
inquired if she could play on the piano, was surprised to find she knew
nothing more classical than chants and Scotch airs; told Joy to let her
hear that last air of Von Weber's; and then she took up a novel which was
lying partially read upon the table. When Joy was through playing, she
proposed a game of solitaire. Gypsy would much rather have examined the
beautiful and costly ornaments with which the rooms were filled, but she
was a little too polite and a little too proud to do so, unasked.

"What do you play most?" she asked, as they began to move the figures on
the solitaire board.

"Oh," said Joy, "I practise three hours, and that takes all the time when
I'm in school. In vacations, I don't know,--I like to walk in Commonwealth
Avenue pretty well; then mother has a good deal of company, and I always
come down."

"Only go to walk, and sit still in the parlor!" exclaimed Gypsy; "dear
me!"

"Why, what do you do?"

"Me? Oh, I jump on the hay and run down hills and poke about in the
swamp."

_"What?"_

"Push myself round on a raft in the orchard-swamp; it's real fun."

"Why, I never heard of such a thing!" said Joy, looking shocked.

"Well, it's splendid; you ought to come up to Yorkbury, and go out with
me. Tom would make you a raft."

"What _do_ the people say?" said Joy, looking at her mother.

"Oh, there aren't any people there to see. If there were, they wouldn't
say anything. I have just the nicest times. Winnie a