years old. I'm goin' with cousin Joy, and I'll eat just as many
chestnots as you or anybody else, now!"

Gypsy had not the slightest doubt of that, and the three started off
together.

They met Sarah Rowe and Delia on the way, and Gypsy introduced them.

"This is my cousin Joy, and this is Sarah. That one in the shaker bonnet
is Delia Guest. Oh, I forgot. Joy's last name is Breynton, and Sarah is
Sarah Rowe."

Joy bowed in her prim, cityish way, and Sarah and Delia were so much
astonished thereat that they forgot to bow at all, and Delia stared
rudely at her black dress. There was an awkward silence.

"Why don't you talk, somebody?" broke out Gypsy, getting desperate.
"Anybody'd think we were three mummies in a museum."

"I don't think you're very perlite," put in Winnie, with a virtuous
frown; "if you don't let me be a dummy, too, I'll tell mother, and that
would make four."

This broke the ice, and Sarah and Delia began to talk very fast about
Monday's grammar lesson, and Miss Cardrew, and how Agnes Gaylord put a
green snake in Phœbe Hunt's lunch-basket, and had to stay after school
for it, and how it was confidently reported in mysterious whispers, at
recess, that George Castles told Mr. Guernsey he was a regular old fogy,
and Mr. Guernsey had sent home a letter to his father—not Mr.
Guernsey's father, but George's; he had now, true's you live.