"Why, aunty, did I make you cry? Oh, I'm so sorry! Please don't cry, dear, dear aunty."
"Oh, Gipsy, it's so selfish of you not to return with us, when we are so lonesome at home without you," said Lizzie, fairly sobbing.
"Yes; and poor Mrs. Gower will break her heart when she hears about it—I know she will," said Louis, in a lachrymose tone.
"And I'll break mine—I know I will!" added Archie, rubbing his knuckles into his eyes, and with some difficulty squeezing out a tear.
"And I'll blow my stupid old brains out; and after that, I'll break my heart, too," chimed in the squire, in a very melancholy tone of voice.
"Well! la me! you'll have rather a smashing time of it if you all break your hearts. What'll you do with the pieces, Guardy?—sell them for marbles?" said Gipsy, laughing.
"There! I knew you'd relent; I said it. Oh, Gipsy, my darling, I knew you wouldn't desert your 'Guardy' in his old age. I knew you wouldn't let him go down to his grave like a miserable, consumptive old tabby-cat, with no wicked little 'imp' to keep him from stagnating. Oh, Gipsy, my dear, may Heaven bless you!"
"Bother! I haven't said I'd go. Don't jump at conclusions. Before I'd be with you a week you'd be blowing me up sky-high."
"But, Gipsy, you know I can't live without blowing somebody up. You ought to make allowance for an old man's temper. It runs in our family to blow up. I had an uncle, or something, that was 'blown up' at the battle of Bunker Hill. Then I always feel after it as amiable as a cat when eating her kittens. 'After a storm there cometh a calm,' as Solomon says."
"Well, maybe there's something in that," said Gipsy, thoughtfully.