's pet aversion, Mrs. Surly, from a shop-door
somewhere--

"Gypsy Breynton, what a sight you be! I believe you've gone clear
crazy--Gypsy!"

"Can't stop!" shouted Gypsy, "it's a fire or something somewhere."

Eight small boys at the word "fire" appeared on the instant from nobody
knew where, and ran after her with hoarse yells of "fire! fire! Where's
the engine? Vi----ir-r-!" By this time, too, three dogs and a
nanny-goat were chasing her; the dogs were barking, and the nanny-goat
was baaing or braying, or whatever it is that nanny-goats do, so she
swept up to the house in a unique, triumphal procession.

Winnie came out to meet her as she came in at the gate panting and
scarlet-faced.

Fifty years instead of five might Winnie have been at that moment, and
all the cares of Church and State on the shoulders of his pinafore, to
judge from the pucker in his chin. There was always a pucker in Winnie's
chin, when he felt--as the boys call it--"big."

"What do s'pose, Gypsy?--don't you wish you knew?"

"What?"

"Oh, no matter. _I_ know."

"Winnie Breynton!"

"Well," said Winnie, with the air of a Grand Mogul feeding a chicken, "I
don't care if I tell you. We've had a temmygral."

"A telegram!"

"I just guess we have; you'd oughter seen the man. He'd lost his nose,
and----"

"A telegram! Is there any bad news? Where did it come from?"

"It came from Bosting," said Winnie, with a superior smile. "I s'posed
you knew _that_! It's sumfin about Aunt Miranda, I shouldn't wonder."

"Aunt Miranda! Is anybody sick? Is anybody dead, or anything?"

"I don't know," said Winnie, cheerfully. "But I guess you wish you'd
seen the envelope. It had the funniest little letters punched through on
top--it did now, really."

Gypsy ran into the house at that, and left Winnie to his meditations.

Her mother called her from over the banisters, and she ran upstairs. A
small trunk stood open by the bed, and the room was filled with the
confusion of packing.

"Your Aunt Miranda is sick," said Mrs. Breynton.

"What are you packing up for? You're not going off!" exclaimed Gypsy,
incapable of taking in a greater calamity than that, and quite
forgetting Aunt Miranda.

"Yes. Your uncle has written for us to come right on. She is very sick,
Gypsy."

"Oh!" said Gypsy, penitently; "dangerous?"

"Yes."

Gypsy looked sober because her mother did, and she thought she ought to.

"Your father and I are going in this noon train," proc