“After you have seen Mrs. Littlejohn, and explained why she went supperless last night,” said Mrs. Breynton, “I want you to do an errand for me.”

“What is it?” asked Gypsy, pleasantly. She felt very humble, and much ashamed, this morning, and anxious to make herself useful.

“I want you to find out where Peace Maythorne’s room is,—it is in the same house,—and carry her this, with my love.”

Mrs. Breynton took up a copy of “Harper’s Magazine,” and handed it to Gypsy.

“Tell her I have turned the leaf down at some articles I think will interest her, and ask her if the powder I left her put her to sleep.”

“Who is Peace Maythorne?” asked Gypsy, wondering. “Is she poor?”

“Yes.”

“How funny to send her a ‘Harper’s,’” said Gypsy. “Why don’t you give her some money, or something?”

“Some things are worth more than money to some people,” said Mrs. Breynton, smiling.

“Why! then you had been into that house before I found Mrs. Littlejohn?” said Gypsy, as the thought first struck her.

“Oh, yes; many times.”

Gypsy started off, with the Magazine under her arm, wondering if there were a house in town, filled with these wretched poor, in which her mother was not known as a friend.

Her heart sank a little as she climbed the dark stairs to Mrs. Littlejohn’s room. She had begged of her mother a tiny pailful of green peas, with which she hoped to pacify the old woman, but she was somewhat in dread of hearing her talk, and ashamed to confess her own neglect.

Mrs. Littlejohn was eating the very nice breakfast which Mrs. Rowe had sent over, and groaning dolefully over it, as Gypsy entered.

“Good morning,” said Gypsy.

“Good morning,” said Mrs. Littlejohn, severely.

“I went out to play in the hay with Sarah Rowe, and forgot all about your supper last night, and I’m just as sorry as I can be,” said Gypsy, coming to the point frankly, and without any attempt to excuse herself.

“Oh, of course!” said Mrs. Littlejohn, in the tone of a martyr. “It’s all I expect. I’m a poor lone widdy with a bone broke, and I’m used to bein’clock forgot. Little gals that has everything they want, and five dollars besides, and promises me salmon and such, couldn’t be expected to remember the sufferin’clock and afflicted,—of course not.”

It was not an easy nor a pleasant thing to apologize to a person to whom she had played the charitable lady the day before; and Mrs. Littlejohn’s manner of receiving the explanation certainly made it no easier. But Gypsy, as the saying goes, “swallowed her pride,” and felt that she deserved it.

“I’ve brought you some peas,” she said, meekly.

“Oh!” said the old woman, relenting a little, “you have, have you? Well, I’m obleeged to you, and you can set ’em in the cupboard.”

Gypsy emptied her peas into a yellow bowl which she found in the cupboard, and then asked,—

“Can I do anything for you?”

“I’m terrible thirsty!” said Mrs. Littlejohn, with a long groan. “There’s some water in that air pail.”

Gypsy went into the corner where the pail stood, and filled the mug with water; then, not being able to think of anything more to say, she concluded to go.

“Good mornin’clock,” said Mrs. Littlejohn, in a forgiving tone; “I hope you’ll come agin.”

Gypsy secretly thought it was doubtful if she ever did. Her charity, like that of most young people of her age and experience, was not of the sort calculated to survive under difficulties, or to deal successfully with shrewish old women.

After inquiring in vain of the group of staring children where Peace Maythorne’s room was, Gypsy resorted to her friend, the red-faced woman, who directed her to a door upon the second story.

It was closed, and Gypsy knocked.

“Come in,” said a quiet voice. Gypsy went in, wondering why Peace Maythorne did not get up and open the door, and if she did not know it was more polite. She stopped short, as she entered the room, and wondered no longer.

It was a plain, bare room, but neat enough, and not unpleasant nor unhomelike, because of the great flood of morning sunlight that fell in and touched everything to golden warmth. It touched most brightly, and lingered longest, on a low bed drawn up between the windows. A girl lay there, with a pale face turned over on the pillows, and weak, thin hands, folded on the counterpane. She might, from her size, have been about sixteen years of age; but her face was like the face of a woman long grown old. The clothing of the bed partially concealed her shoulders, which were cruelly rounded and bent.

So Peace Maythorne was a cripple.

Gypsy recovered from her astonishment with a little start, and said, blushing, for fear she had been rude,—

“Good morning. I’m Gypsy Breynton. Mother sent me down with a magazine.”

“I am glad to see you,” said Peace Maythorne, smiling. “Won’t you sit down?”

Gypsy took a chair by the bed, thinking how pleasant the old, pale face, was, after all, and how kindly and happy the smile.

“Your mother is very kind,” said Peace; “she is always doing something for me. She has given me a great deal to read.”

“Do you like to read?—I don’t,” said Gypsy.

“Why, yes!” said Peace, opening her eyes wide; “I thought everybody liked to read. Besides I can’t do anything else, you know.”

“Nothing at all?” asked Gypsy.

“Only sometimes, when the pain isn’t very bad, I try to help aunt about her sewing, I can’t do much.”

“Oh, you live with your aunt?” said Gypsy.

“Yes. She takes in sewing. She’s out, just now.”

“Does your back pain you a great deal?” asked Gypsy.

“Oh, yes; all the time. But, then, I get used to it, you know,” said Peace.

“All the time!—oh, I am so sorry!” said Gypsy, drawing a long breath.

“Oh, it might be worse,” said Peace, smiling.

“I’ve only lain here three years. Some people can’t move for forty. The doctor says I sha’n’t live so long as that.”

Gypsy looked at the low bed, the narrow room, the pallid face and shrunken body cramped there, moveless, on the pillows. Three years! Three years to lie through summer suns and winter snows, while all the world was out at play, and happy!

“Well,” said Gypsy, as the most appropriate comment suggesting itself; “you are rather different from Mrs. Littlejohn!”

Peace smiled. There was something rare about Peace Maythorne’s smile.

“Poor Mrs. Littlejohn! You see, she isn’t used to being sick, and I am; that makes the difference.”

“Oh, I forgot!” said Gypsy, abruptly, “mother said I was to ask if those powders she left you put you to sleep.”

“Nicely. They’re better than anything the doctor gave me; everything your mother does seems to be the best sort, somehow. She can’t touch your hand, or smooth your pillow, without doing it differently from other people.”

“That’s so!” said Gypsy, emphatically. “There isn’t anybody else like her. Do you lie awake very often?”

Peace answered in the two quiet words that were on her lips so often, in the quiet voice that never complained,—

“Oh, yes.”

There was a little silence. Gypsy was watching Peace. Peace had her eyes turned away from her visitor, but she was conscious of every quick, nervous breath Gypsy drew, and every impatient little flutter of her hands.

The two girls were studying each other. Gypsy’s investigations, whatever they were, seemed to be very pleasant, for she started at last with a bit of a sigh, and announced the result of them in the characteristic words,—

“I like you!”

To her surprise, Peace just turned up her eyes and turned them away, and the eyes were full of tears. After a moment,—

“Thank you. I don’t see many people so young—except the children. I tell them stories sometimes.”

“But you won’t like me,” said Gypsy.

“I rather think I shall.”

“No you won’t,” said Gypsy, shaking her head decidedly; “not a bit. I know you won’t. I’m silly,—well, I’ll tell you what I am by-and-by. First, I want to hear all about you,—everything, I mean,” she added, with a quick delicacy, of which, for “blundering Gypsy,” she had a great deal,—“everything that you care to tell me.”

“Why, I’ve nothing to tell,” said Peace, smiling, “cooped up here all the time; it’s all the same.”

“That’s just what I want to hear about. About the being cooped up. I don’t see how you bear it!” said Gypsy, impetuously.

Peace smiled again. Gypsy had a fancy that the smile had stolen one of the sunbeams that lay in such golden, flickering waves, upon the bed.

Too much self-depreciation is often a sign of the extremest vanity. Peace had nothing of this. Seeing that Gypsy was in earnest in her wish to hear her story, she quietly began it without further parley. It was very simple, and quickly told.

“We used to live on a farm on the mountains—father and mother and I. There were a great many cattle, and so much ground it tired me to walk across it. I always went to school, and father read to us in the evenings. I suppose that’s the way I’ve learned to love to read, and I’ve been so glad since. I was pretty small when they died,—first father, then mother. I remember it a little; at least I remember about mother,—she kissed me so, and cried. Then Aunt Jane came for me, and brought me here. We lived in a pleasant house up the street, at first. I used to work in the mill, and earned enough to pay aunt what I cost her. Then one day, when I was thirteen years old, we were coming out at noon, all of us girls, in a great hurry and frolic, and I felt sick and dizzy watching the wheels go round, and,—well, they didn’t mean to,—but they pushed me, and I fell.”

“Down stairs?”

“All the way,—it was a long, crooked flight. I struck my spine on every step.”

“Oh, Peace!” said Gypsy, half under her breath.

“I was sick for a little while; then I got better. I thought it was all over. Then one day I found a little curve between my shoulders, and so,—well, it came so slowly I hardly knew it, till at last I was in bed with the pain. We had come here because it was hard times, and aunt had to support me,—and then there were the doctor’s bills.”

“Doesn’t he say you can ever get well? never sit up a little while?”

“Oh, no.”

Gypsy gasped a little, as if she were suffocating.

“And your aunt,—is she kind to you?”

“Oh, yes.”

A certain flitting expression, that the face of Peace caught with the words, Gypsy could not help seeing.

“But I mean, real kind. Does she love you?”

The girl’s cheek flushed to a pale, quick crimson, then faded slowly.

“She is very good to me. I am a great trouble. You know I am not her own. It is very hard for her that I can’t support myself.”

Gypsy said something just then, in her innermost thought of thoughts, about Aunt Jane, that Aunt Jane would not have cared to hear.

“If I could only earn something!” said Peace, with a quick breath, that sounded like a sigh. “That is hardest of all. But it’s all right somehow.”

“Peace Maythorne!” said Gypsy, in a little flash, “I don’t see! never to go out in the wind and jump on the hay, and climb the mountains, and run and row and snowball,—why, it would kill me! And you lie here so sweet and patient, and you haven’t said a cross word all the while you’ve been telling me about it. I don’t understand! How can you, can you bear it?”

“I couldn’t, if I didn’t tell Him,” said Peace, softly.

“Whom?”

“God.”

There was a long silence. Gypsy looked out of the window, winking very hard, and Peace lay quite still upon the bed.

“There!” said Gypsy, at last, with a jump. “I shall be late to school.”

“Oh,” said Peace, “you haven’t told me anything about yourself; you said you would.”

“Well,” said Gypsy, tying on her hat, “that’s easy enough done. I’m silly and cross, and forgetful and blundering.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Peace, laughing.

“I am,” said Gypsy, confidentially; “it’s all true; and I’m always tearing my dresses, and worrying father, and getting mad at Winnie, and bothering Miss Melville, and romping round, and breaking my neck! and then, when things don’t go right, how I scold!”

Peace smiled, and looked incredulous.

“It’s just so,” said Gypsy, giving a little sharp nod to emphasize her words. “And here you lie, and never think of being cross and impatient, and love everybody and everybody loves you, and—well, all I have to say is, if I were you I should have scolded everybody out of the house long before this!”

“You mustn’t talk so about me,” said Peace, a faint shadow of pain crossing her face. “You don’t know how wicked I am—nobody knows; I am cross very often. Sometimes when my back aches as if I should scream, and aunt is talking, I hide my face under the clothes, and don’t say a word to her.”

“You call that being cross!” said Gypsy, with her eyes very wide open. She buttoned on her sack, and started to go, but stopped a minute.

“I don’t suppose you’d want me to come again—I’m so noisy, and all.”

“Oh, I should be so glad!” said Peace, with one of those rare smiles: “I didn’t dare to ask you.”

“Well; I’ll come. But I told you you wouldn’t like me.”

“I do,” said Peace. “I like you very much.”

“How funny!” said Gypsy. Then she bade her good-by, and went to school.

“Mother,” she said, at night, “did you have any particular reason in sending me to Peace Maythorne?”

“Perhaps so,” said Mrs. Breynton, smiling. “Why?”

“Nothing, only I thought so. You were a very wise woman.”

A while after she spoke up, suddenly.

“Mother, don’t the Quakers say good matches are made in heaven?”

“Who’s been putting sentimental ideas into the child’s head?” said her father, in an undertone.

“Why, Gypsy Breynton!” said Winnie, looking very much shocked; “you hadn’t ought to say such things. Of course, the brimstone falls down from hell, and they pick it up and put it on the matches!”

“What made you ask the question?” said Mrs. Breynton, when the laugh had subsided.

“Oh, I was only thinking, I guessed Peace Maythorne’s name was made in heaven. It so exactly suits her.”

After that, the cripple’s little quiet room became one of the places Gypsy loved best in Yorkbury.

Two or three weeks after that Mrs. Littlejohn, who had been gaining rapidly in strength and good temper under Mrs. Breynton’s wise and kindly care, took it into her head one morning, when she was alone, to walk across the room, and look out of the window. The weakened limb was not in a fit state to be used at all, and the shock given to it was very great. Inflammation set in, and fever, and the doctor shook his head, and asked if the old woman had any friends living anywhere; if so, they had better be sent for. But the poor creature seemed to be desolate enough; declared she had no relatives, and was glad of it; she only wanted to be let alone, and she should get well fast enough.

She never said that when Mrs. Breynton was in the room. Gypsy went down one evening with her mother, to help her carry a bundle of fresh bed-clothing, and she was astonished at the gentleness which had crept into the old withered face and peevish voice. Mrs. Littlejohn called her up to the bed, just as she started to go.

“I say, little gal, I told ye a fib the day ye fust come. I did have a dinner, though it war a terrible measly one—Mrs. Breynton, marm!”

Mrs. Breynton stepped up to her.

“What was that ye read t’other day, ’bout liars not goin’clock into the kingdom of heaven?—I ’most forgot.”

Gypsy crept out, softly. She was wondering how her mother had managed her charity to this fretful old woman so wisely, that her words, unfitly spoken, were becoming a trouble to herself, and her hours of increasing pain turned into hours of late, faint repentance. Perhaps the charm lay in a certain old book, dog-eared and worn, and dusty from long disuse on the cupboard shelf. This little book Mrs. Breynton had found, and she had read in it many times, until that painful groaning ceased.

And so one night it chanced that the old yellow cat sat blinking at the light, and the yellow, furrowed face turned over on the pillow and smiled, and lay still. The light burned out, and the morning came; the cat jumped purring upon the bed, and seeing what was there, curled up by it, with a mournful mewing cry.

“Peace Maythorne says,” said Gypsy, “that if Mrs. Littlejohn went to heaven, she will be so happy to find she doesn’t scold! Isn’t it funny, in Peace, to think of such things?”