Part 61

"And Mr. Gilroy," Patty echoed.

"Shall we run?" asked Conny, in a panic.

"No," said Patty, "pretend not to notice him at all."

The three advanced with eyes discreetly bent upon the ground, but Miss Jellings greeted them gaily as she passed. There was an intangible, excited, happy thrill about her manner--something electric, Patty said.

"Hello, you bad little Gypsies!"

It was a peculiarly infelicitous salutation, but she was smilingly unconscious of any slip.

"Gypsies?"

Mr. Gilroy repeated the word, and his benumbed faculties began to work. He stopped and scanned the trio closely. They were clothed in dainty muslin, three as sweet young girls as one would ever meet. But Patty and Conny, even in the failing light, were still noticeably brunette--it takes boiling water to get out coffee stain.

"Oh!"

He drew a deep breath of enlightenment, while many emotions struggled for supremacy in his face. Conny dropped her gaze embarrassedly to the ground; Patty threw back her head and faced him. He and she eyed each other for a silent instant. In that glance, each asked the other not to tell--and each mutely promised.

The breeze brought the chorus of the "Gypsy Trail"; and as they sauntered on, Miss Jellings fell softly to humming the words in tune with the distant singers:

"And the Gypsy blood to the Gypsy blood Ever the wide world over. Ever the wide world over, lass, Ever the trail held true Over the world and under the world And back at the last to you. Follow the Romany patteran--"

The words died away in the shadows.

Conny and Patty and Priscilla stood hand in hand and looked after them.

"The school has lost Jelly!" Patty said, "and I'm afraid that we're to blame, Con, dear."

"I'm glad of it!" Conny spoke with feeling. "She's much too nice to spend her whole life telling Irene McCullough to stand up straight and keep her stomach held in."

"Anyway," Patty added, "he has no right to be angry, because--without us--he never would have dared."

They kept on across the meadow till they came to the pasture bars, where they leaned in a row with their heads tipped back, scanning the darkening sky. Miss Jellings's mood was somehow catching; the little contretemps had stirred them strangely. They felt the thrill of the untried future, with Romance waiting around the corner.

"You know," Conny broke silence after a long pause--"I think, after all, maybe it will be sort of interesting."

"What?" asked Priscilla.

She stretched out her arm in a wide gesture that comprised the night.

"Oh, everything!"

Priscilla nodded understandingly, and presently added with an air of challenge:

"I've changed my mind. I don't believe I'll go to college."

"Not go to college!" Patty echoed blankly. "Why not?"

"I think--I'll get married instead."

"Oh!" Patty laughed softly. "I am going to do both!"

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