heard him saying:

"I don't know, Mr. Picker. She just came riding in--"

Mr. Picker strode to the centre of the stage and, by a simple
expedient strangely unthought-of before--by merely pulling away the
bucket, separated Gypsy from the candy.

Then he turned to Missy and eyed her disapprovingly.

"I think you'd better be taking the back cut home. If I was your
mamma, I'd give you a good spanking and put you to bed."

Spanking! Oh, shades of insouciance and swagger! And with Rev.
MacGill standing there hearing--and seeing! Tears rolled down over
her blushes.

"Here, I'll help you get her out," said Rev. MacGill, kindly. Missy
blessed him for his kindness, yet, just then, she felt she'd rather
have been stung to death than to have had him there. But he was
there, and he led Gypsy, quite tractable now the candy was gone, and
herself looking actually embarrassed, through the crowd and back to
the street.

High moments have a way, sometimes, of resolving their prime and
unreducible factors, all of a sudden, to disconcertingly simple
terms. Here was Gypsy, whose stubbornness had begun it all, suddenly
soft as silk; and there was the wasp, who had brought on the
horrendous climax, suddenly and mysteriously vanished. Of course
Missy was glad the wasp was gone--otherwise she might have stood