CHAPTER VI
WHO PUT IT IN?
On Monday Joy went to school. Gypsy had been somewhat astonished, a little hurt, and a little angry, at hearing her say, one day, that she "didn't think it was a fit place for her to go—a high school where all the poor people went."
But, fit or not, it was the the only school to be had, and Joy must go. Perhaps, on some accounts, Mrs. Breynton would have preferred sending the children to a private school; but the only one in town, and the one which Gypsy had attended until this term, was broken up by the marriage of the teacher, so she had no choice in the matter. The boys at the high school were, some of them, rude, but the girls for the most part were quiet, well-behaved, and lady-like, and the instruction was undoubtedly vastly superior to that of a smaller school. As Gypsy said, "you had to put into it and study like everything, or else she gave you a horrid old black mark, and then you felt nice when it was read aloud at examination, didn't you?"
"I wouldn't care," said Joy.
"Why, Joyce Miranda Breynton!" said Gypsy. But Joy declared she wouldn't, and it was very soon evident that she didn't. She had not the slightest fancy for her studies; neither had Gypsy, for that matter; but Gypsy had been brought up to believe it was a disgrace to get bad marks. Joy had not. She hurried through her lessons in the quickest possible fashion, anyhow, so as to get through, and out to play; and limped through her recitations as well as she could. Once Gypsy saw—and she was thoroughly shocked to see—Joy peep into the leaves of her grammar when Miss Cardrew's eyes were turned the other way.
Altogether, matters did not go on very comfortably. Joy's faults were for the most part those from which Gypsy was entirely free, and to which she had a special and inborn aversion. On the other hand, many of Gypsy's failings were not natural to Joy. Gypsy was always forgetting things she ought to remember. Joy seldom did. Gypsy was thoughtless, impulsive, always into mischief, out of it, sorry for it, and in again. Joy did wrong deliberately, as she did everything else, and did not become penitent in a hurry. Gypsy's temper was like a flash of lightning, hot and fierce and melting right away in the softest of summer rains. When Joy was angry she sulked. Joy was precise and neat about everything. Gypsy was not. Then Joy kept still, and Gypsy talked; Joy told parts of stories, Gypsy told the whole; Joy had some foolish notions about money and dresses and jewelry, on which Gypsy looked with the most supreme contempt—not on the dresses, but the notions. Therefore there was plenty of material for rubs and jars, and of all sad things to creep into a happy house, these rubs and jars are the saddest.
One day both the girls woke full of mischief. It was a bracing November day, cool as an ice-cream and clear as a whistle. The air sparkled like a fountain of golden sands, and was as full of oxygen as it could hold; and oxygen, you must know, is at the bottom of a great deal of the happiness and misery, goodness and badness, of this world.