"'Pon honor, now?"
"Oh, Gipsy, my love, I'm very sorry to think you could have degraded yourself in such a way!" said Lizzie, with a shockingly shocked expression of countenance.
"Degraded, Aunt Lizzie!" exclaimed Gipsy, indignantly. "I'd like to know whether it's more degrading to earn one's living, free and merry, as a respectable, 'sponsible, danceable dancer, as Totty would say, or to stay depending on any one, to be called a beggar, and kicked about like an old shoe, if you didn't do everything a snappish old crab of an old gentleman took into his absurd old head. I never was made to obey any one—and what's more, I won't neither. There, now!"
"Take care, Gipsy; don't make any rash promises," said Archie. "You've got to promise to 'love, honor, and obey' me, one of these days."
"Never-r-r! Obey you, indeed! Don't you wish I may do it?"
"Well, but, my love," said Lizzie, returning to the charge, "though it is too late to repair what you have done, you must be a dancing-girl no longer. You must return home with us to Sunset Hall."
"Return to Sunset Hall! Likely I'll go there to be abused again! Not I, indeed, Aunt Lizzie; much obliged to you, at the same time, for the offer."
"And I vow, Miss Flyaway, you shall go with us—there!"
"And I vow, Guardy, I sha'n't go with you—there!"
"I'll go to law, and compel you to come. I'm your rightful guardian!" said the squire, in rising wrath.