store!

Her dream might have ended there, nothing more than a fleeting
phantasm, had not Tess, the following week, come into possession of
Gypsy.

Gypsy was a black pony with a white star on her forehead and a long
wavy tail. She was a pony with a personality--from the start Missy
recognized the pony as a person just as she recognized Poppy as a
person. When Gypsy gazed at you out of those soft, bright eyes, or
when she pricked up her ears with an alert listening gesture, or
when she turned her head and switched her tail with nonchalant
unconcern--oh, it is impossible to describe the charm of Gypsy. That
was it--"charm"; and the minute Missy laid eyes on the darling she
succumbed to it. She had thought herself absurdly but deep-rootedly
afraid of all horseflesh, but Gypsy didn't seem a mere horse. She
was pert, coquettish, coy, loving, inquisitive, naughty; both Tess
and Missy declared she had really human intelligence.

She began to manifest this the very day of her arrival. After Tess
had ridden round the town and shown off properly, she left the pony
in the sideyard of the sanitarium while she and Missy slipped off to
the summerhouse to enjoy a few stolen chapters from "The Duchess."
There was high need for secrecy for, most unreasonably, "The
Duchess" had been put under a parental ban; moreover Tess feared
there were stockings waiting to be darned.

Presently they heard Mrs. O'Neill calling, but they just sat still,
stifling their giggles. Gypsy, who had sauntered up to the
summerhouse door, poked in an inquisitive nose. Mrs. O'Neill didn't