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Exactly wherein lay the joke, in the fact that Miss Cardrew should have a letter, nobody but Delia was capable of seeing; but Delia was given to seeing jokes on all occasions, under all circumstances. Go wherever you might, from a prayer-meeting to the playground, you were sure to hear her little giggle. "A letter for you," repeated Delia Guest. "He, he!"
Miss Cardrew let the matter drop there and went on with her reading. Gypsy sat silent and sorry, her eyes on her Testament. Joy tried to whisper something to her once, but Gypsy turned away with a gesture of impatience and disgust. This thing Joy had done had shocked her so that she felt as if she could not bear the sight of her face or touch of her hand.
"Next!"—and down the first row went Miss Cardrew, asking the same question of every girl, and the second row, and the third. Gypsy sat on the end of the fourth settee. "Gypsy Breynton, did you put the kitten in my desk?" "No'm, I didn't," said Gypsy; which was true enough. It was Joy who did that part of it. "Did you have anything to do with the matter, Gypsy?"
Miss Cardrew laid down her arithmetic, opened the letter, and read it. "Gypsy Breynton." The arithmetic class stopped whispering, and there was a great lull in the schoolroom. "Why I never!" giggled Delia.
Miss Cardrew looked up again, round the room, over the platform, under the desk, everywhere but in it. "Girls, did any of you make that sound?" Nobody had. Miss Cardrew began to read again. All at once Joy pulled Gypsy's sleeve. "Just look there!" "Where?" "Trickling down the outside of the desk!" "You don't suppose she's upset the——" "Ink-bottle—yes."
"No'm." "And you know who did?" "Yes'm." Miss Cardrew never asked her scholars to tell of each other's wrong-doings. If she had, it would have made no difference to Gypsy. She had shut up her lips tight and not another word would she have said for anybody. She had told the truth about herself, but she was under no obligations to bring Joy into trouble. Joy might do as she liked.
As for her mother, she would have gone to her with the whole story that noon, if it hadn't been for Joy's part in it. "What is that she has in her hand, I wonder?" said Joy uneasily, peeping through a crack in the door as Miss Cardrew passed through the entry; "why, I declare! if it isn't a handkerchief, as true as you live—all—inky!" When Miss Cardrew had gone, Mrs.
Gypsy looked a little frightened. "Go home! Is anybody sick, Miss Cardrew?" "She doesn't say—she gives no reasons. You'd better not stop to talk, Gypsy." Gypsy went to her desk, and began to gather up her books as fast as she could. "I shouldn't wonder a bit if the house'd caught afire," whispered Agnes Gaylord.
Out flew the kitten, like popped corn from a shovel, glared over the desk in the nightcap and black apron, leaped down, and flew, all dripping with ink, down the aisle, out of the door, and bouncing downstairs like an India-rubber ball. Delia Guest and one or two of the other girls screamed. Miss Cardrew flung out some books and papers from the desk.
Gypsy, all in a flutter at having her name read right out in school, and divided between her horror lest the kitten she had tied to a spool of thread at recess, had been discovered, and an awful suspicion that Mr. Jonathan Jones saw her run across his plowed field after chestnuts, went slowly up to the desk. "Your mother has sent for you to come directly home," said Miss Cardrew, in a low tone.
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