"Order!" said Miss Cardrew, in a loud voice.

The girls stopped whispering, and Gypsy, in nowise reassured by their
sympathy, hurried out to put on her things. With her hat thrown on one
side of her head, the strings hanging down into her eyes, her sack
rolled up in a bundle under her arm, and her rubbers in her pocket, she
started for home on the full run. Yorkbury was pretty well used to
Gypsy, but everybody stopped and stared at her that morning; what with
her burning cheeks, and those rubbers sticking out of her pocket, and
the hat-strings flying, and the brambles catching her dress, and the mud
splashing up under her swift feet, it was no wonder.

"Miss Gypsy!" called old Mr. Simms, the clerk, as she flew by the door
of her father's book-store. "Miss Gypsy, my _dear_!"

But on ran Gypsy without so much as giving him a look, across the road
in front of a carriage, around a load of hay, and away like a bird down
the street. Out ran Gypsy'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