“We have missed you up at the store, my dear,” he said, after a while.
“Have you? I’m glad. Oh! who’s that with Miss Melville out walking under the elm-trees?”
“I guess it’s Mr. Hallam.”
“Oh, to be sure,” interrupted Gypsy, looking very bright. “I see,—Mr. Guy Hallam. Now I guess I know why she wouldn’t teach school!”
“They are to be married in the spring,” said Mr. Simms.
“Just think!” said Gypsy. “How funny! Now she’ll have to stay at home and keep house all day,—I think she’s real silly, don’t you?”
Of all the many remarkable things that Miss Gypsy had ever said, Mr. Simms thought this capped the climax.
Now the coach had rattled up the hill, and lumbered round the corner, and there was the old house, looking quiet and pleasant and dear, in the morning sunlight. Gypsy was so excited that she could not sit still, and kept Mr. Simms in a fever of anxiety, for fear she would tumble out of the coach windows. It seemed to her as if she had been gone a year, instead of just one week.
She sprang down the carriage-steps at a bound, and ran into the house. Her mother was out in the kitchen helping Patty about the dinner. She heard such a singing and shouting as no one had made in the house since Gypsy went away, and hurried out into the front entry to see what had happened. Tom ran in from the garden, and Winnie slid down on the banisters, and Mr. Breynton was just coming up the yard, and Patty put her head in at the entry door, wiping her hands on her apron, and everybody must be kissed all round, and for a few minutes there was such a bustle, that Gypsy could hardly hear herself speak.
“What has brought you home so soon?” asked her mother, then. “We didn’t look for you for a week yet.”