room and about her toilet was only one development of it, and by no means
a fixed or continued one. Gypsy could be, and half the time she was, as
orderly and lady-like as anybody. She did everything by fits and starts.
As Tom said, she was "always on the jump." If her dress didn't happen to
be torn and her room dusty, why, she had a turn of forgetting everything.
If she didn't forget, she was always getting hurt. If it wasn't that, she
lost her temper every five minutes. Or else she was making terrible
blunders, and hurting people's feelings; something was always the matter;
and some one was always on the _qui vive_, wondering what Gypsy was going
to do next.

Yet, in spite of it all, the person who did not love Gypsy Breynton
(provided he knew her) was not to be found in Yorkbury. Whether there was
any reason for this, you can judge for yourself as the story goes on.

After her mother had gone down, Gypsy went to work in earnest. She picked
up the beads, and put them back into the drawer which she left upon the
floor. Then she attacked Tom's image. It took her fully fifteen minutes
merely to get the thing to pieces, for the true boy-fashion in which it
was tied, pinned, sewed, and nailed together, would have been a puzzle to
any feminine mind. She would have called Tom up to help her, but she was
just a little bit too proud.

The broom she put out in the entry the first thing; then, remembering that
that was not systematic, she carried it down stairs and hung it on its
nail. The shoes and the dresses, the cape and the cloak, the tippet and
the hat, she put in their places; the torn apron and the unmended
stockings she tumbled into her basket, then went back and folded them up
neatly; she also made a journey into the woodshed expressly to put the
hatchet where it belonged, on the chopping-block. By this time it was