usual musical fashion.

"It's too bad!" said Gypsy. "Let him go, Tom--do."

"He should have stayed where he was told to," argued Tom, who, like most
boys of his age, had a sufficiently just estimate of the importance of his
own authority, and who would sometimes do a very selfish thing under the
impression that it was his duty to family and state, as an order-loving
individual and citizen.

"I know it isn't so pleasant to have him," said Gypsy, "but it does make
him so dreadfully happy."

That was the best of Gypsy;--she was as generous a child as poor, fallen
children of Adam are apt to be; as quick to do right as she was to do
wrong, and much given to this fancy of seeing people "dreadfully happy." I
have said that people loved Gypsy. I am inclined to think that herein lay
the secret of it.

Then Gypsy never "preached." If she happened to be right, and another
person wrong, she never put on superior airs, and tried to patronize them
into becoming as good as she was. She made her suggestions in such a
straightforward, matter-of-fact way, as if of course you thought so too,
and she was only agreeing with you; and was apt to make them so merrily
withal, that there was no resisting her.

Therefore Tom, while pretending to carry his point, really yielded to the
influence of Gypsy's kind feeling, in saying,--

"On the whole, Winnie, I've come to the conclusion to take you, on