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worship and rest. There are six other days to work and play.”
    “We didn’t do anything but eat and talk. We didn’t play games.”
    Pa put his arm around me. “You’re getting old enough now to decide some things for yourself. How you spend your time is one of them. I hope you remember, though, that if you have to scheme to get something, you would probably be better off without it.”
    “Thanks, Pa. I’ll remember,” I said as I hugged him. Then I went off to bed, happier than I had been all day.

11
    Gypsies!
    “Whew! I don’t think it’s ever been this hot before!” Sarah Jane exclaimed.
    “You say that every summer,” I replied. “I try to think about something cool and not pay attention to the heat.”
    “It doesn’t do you much good,” Sarah Jane retorted. “Your face looks like a pickled beet.”
    We sat under the big tree at the end of our lane, facing the dry and dusty road. The heat seemed to rise from it in waves.
    Suddenly an unusual contraption appeared around the curve. It looked like a house on wheels. The sides of the wagon bed were built up, and a canvas was stretched over the top for a roof. A dark-haired man walked beside the horse, and a woman with a shawl over her head sat in the doorway of the back of the wagon. Two little boys ran along behind.
    We watched silently until the strange apparition disappeared from sight.
    “Did you see that, Mabel?” Sarah Jane asked. I nodded. “Good,” she said. “I thought maybe the heat was getting to me the way they say it does in the desert, when you start seeing things.”
    “A mirage,” I said.
    “A what?”
    “A mirage. That’s what you see in a desert. Only I don’t think it looks like a wagon. Who do you suppose they are?”
    “I don’t know,” Sarah Jane answered. “I’ve never seen them before. Do you imagine they live in that wagon?”
    “There’s not room enough in there to live,” I replied. “Where would they cook and eat and do the washing?”
    “It looked to me like they had all they owned on there. I saw cooking pots and clothes and everything.”
    “Maybe they’re moving from one farm to another,” I suggested.
    “I don’t think so,” she disagreed. “There wasn’t room for furniture in there. I think they live in it.”
    “Gypsies,” Pa said when we told him what we had seen. “They’re a group of wandering people. They stay awhile in one place, and then they move on.”
    “They’ll steal you blind, too,” Roy chimed in.
    Pa looked at him sternly. “That’s not fair to say. Not all Gypsies are thieves, just because an occasional one takes something. There are dishonest people in every walk of life.”
    Reuben returned from town with the announcement that the Gypsies were camped in the Gibbses’ back pasture, next to the creek.
    “Is it just one wagon?” Pa asked. “Usually they travel in caravans.”
    “Just one,” Reuben replied. “It doesn’t look like a very large family. I only saw two children.”
    “What do they do for a living?” I asked Pa. “How can they work if they don’t live in one place very long?”
    “Some of the men are silversmiths,” Pa told me.
    “And I’ve seen beautiful handwork the women do,” Ma said. “I don’t think I’d want to be on the go all the time, though. I feel more comfortable on a piece of land that belongs to me and in a house that stands still.”
    “I’d like it,” I said. “Think of all the places you’d see.”
    “If you’ve seen one back road, you’ve seen them all,” Roy said. “And besides, Gypsies aren’t very well liked. You’d get pretty lonesome.”
    Sarah Jane agreed when I discussed it with her the next morning. “You couldn’t live in a wagon, Mabel. There wouldn’t be room enough for all your stuff. You’ve still got the wood chips we used for dishes when we played house.”
    “They are memorabilia,” I told her loftily. “I wouldn’t take everything I owned with me. Just the necessities.”
    “You’d