"Did you come down just for that? How queer! Well, let me see."
Peace stopped a minute, her quiet eyes looking off through the window, but seeming to see nothing—away somewhere, Gypsy, even in her hurry stopped to wonder where.
"I think—it isn't one you'd care much about, perhaps—I think I like this. Yes, I think I can't help liking it best of all."
Peace touched her finger to a page of her Bible that lay open. Gypsy, bending over, read:
"And the inhabitants shall not say I am sick."
When she had read, she stooped and kissed Peace with a sudden kiss.
From that time until Christmas Gypsy was very busy in her own room with her paint box, all the spare time she could find. On Christmas Eve she went down just after dusk to Peace Maythorne's room, and called Miss Jane out into the entry.
"This is for Peace, and I made it. I don't want her to see a thing about it till she wakes up in the morning. Could you please to fasten it up on the wall just opposite the bed where the sun shines in? sometime after she's gone to sleep, you know."
Miss Jane, somewhat bewildered, took the thing that Gypsy held out to her, and held it up in the light that fell from a neighbor's half-open door.
It was a large illuminated text, painted on Bristol board of a soft gray shade, and very well done for a non-professional artist. The letters were of that exquisite shade known by the artists as smalt blue, edged heavily with gold, and round them a border of yellow, delicate sprays of wheat. Miss Jane spelled out in German text: