There was a great awe and a great joy in this thought; but sharp upon it came another, as a pleasure is followed by a sudden pain,—a thought that came all unbidden, and talked with Gypsy, and would not go away. It was, that she had gone to bed that night without a prayer. She was tired and sleepy, and the lamp went out, and so,—and so,—well, she didn’t know exactly how it came about.
Gypsy’s bowed head fell into her hands, and there, crouched in the lonely boat, under the lonely sky, she put this thought into a few whispered words, and I know there was One to hear it.
Other thoughts had Gypsy after this; but they were those she could not have put into words. For three of those solemn, human syllables had sounded from the distant clock, and far over the mountain-tops the sweet summer dawn was coming. Gypsy had never seen the sun rise. She had seen, to be sure, many times, the late, winter painting of crimson and gold in the East, which unfolded itself before her window, and chased away her dreams. But she had never watched that slow, mysterious change from midnight to morning, which is the only spectacle that can properly be called a sunrise.
There was something in Gypsy that made her sit like a statue there, wrapped in Tom’s old coat, her face upturned, and her very breath held in, as the heavy shadows softened and melted, and the stars began to dim in a pale, gray light, that fell and folded in the earth like a mist; as the clouds, that floated faintly over the mountains, blushed pink from the touch of an unseen sun; as the pink deepened into crimson, and the crimson burned to fire, and the outlines of the mountains were cut in gold; as the gold broadened and brightened, and stole over the ragged peaks, and shot down among the forests, and filtered through the maple-leaves, and chased the purple shadows far down among the valleys; as the birds twittered in unseen nests, and the crickets chirped in the meadows, and the dews fell and sparkled from nodding grasses, and “all the world grew green again.”
Gypsy thought it was worth an ugly dream and a little fright, to see such a sight. She wondered if those old pictures of the great masters far away over the sea, of which she had heard so much, were anything like it. She also had a faint, flitting notion that, in a world where there were sunrises every day, it was very strange people should ever be cross, and tear their dresses, and forget to lock boats. It seemed as if they ought to know better.
Just then Gypsy fell asleep, with her head on the bottom of the boat; and the next she knew it was broad day, and a dear, familiar voice, from somewhere, was calling,—
“Gypsy!—Why, Gypsy!”
“How do you do?” said Gypsy, sleepily, sitting up straight.
Tom was standing on the shore. He did not say another word. He jumped into an old mud-scull, that lay floating among the bushes, and paddled up to her before she was wide enough awake to speak.
“Why, Gypsy Breynton!”