Judy Part 3

Perhaps something of her feeling showed in her face, for as they went up-stairs, Judy said repentantly, "Don't mind me, Anne. I'm not a bit nice sometimes--but--but--I was born that way, I guess, and I can't help it."

Anne smiled faintly. She wondered what the little grandmother would have said to such a confession of weakness. "There isn't anything in this world that you can't help," the dear old lady would say, "and if you're born with a bad temper, why, that's all the more reason you should choose to live with a good one."

But Anne was not there to read moral lectures to her friend, and in fact as Judy opened the door of her room, the little country girl forgot everything but the scene before her.

"Oh, Judy, Judy," she cried, "how did you make it look like this? I have never seen anything like it. Never."

From where they stood they seemed to look out over the sea--a sea roughened by a fresh wind, so that tumbling whitecaps showed on the tops of the green waves. Not a ship was to be seen, not a gull swept across the hazy noon-time skies. Just water, water, everywhere, and a sense of immeasurable distance.

"It's a mirror," Judy explained, "and it reflects a picture on the other wall."

"It seems just as if I were looking out of a window," said Anne. "I have never seen the sea, Judy. Never."

"I love it," cried Judy, "there is nothing like it in the whole world--the smell of it, and the slap of the wind against your cheeks.

Oh, Anne, Anne, if we were only out there in a boat with the wind whistling through the sails." Her face was all animation now, and there was a spot of brilliant color in each cheek.

"How beautiful she is," Anne thought to herself. "How very, very beautiful."

"You must have hated to leave it," she said, presently.

"I shall never get over it," said Judy with a certain fierceness. "I want to hear the 'boom--boom--boom' of the waves--it is so quiet here, so deadly, deadly quiet--"

"How sweet your room is," said tactful little Anne, to change the subject.

"Yes, I do like this room," admitted Judy reluctantly.

There were pictures everywhere---here a dark little landscape, showing the heart of some old forest, there a flaming garden, all red and blue and purple in a glare of sunlight. In the alcove was an etching--the head of a dream-child, and a misty water-color hung over Judy's desk.

"I did that myself," she said, as Anne examined it.

"Oh, do you paint?"

"Some," modestly.

"And play?" Anne's eyes were on the little piano in the alcove.

"Yes."

"Play now," pleaded Anne.

But Judy shook her head. "After dinner," she said. "The bell is ringing now."

Dinner at Judge Jameson's was a formal affair, commencing with soup and ending with coffee. It was served in the great dining-room where silver dishes and tankards twinkled on the sideboard, and where the light came in through stained-gla.s.s windows, so that Anne always had a feeling that she was in church.

The Judge sat at the head of the table, and his sister, Mrs. Patterson, at the foot. Judy was on one side and Anne on the other, and back of them, a silent, competent butler spirited away their plates, and subst.i.tuted others with a sort of sleight-of-hand dexterity that almost took Anne's breath away.

Anne and the Judge chatted together happily throughout the meal. The Judge was very fond of the earnest maiden, whose grandmother had been the friend of his youth, and his eyes went often from her sunny face to that of the moody, silent Judy. "It will do Judy good to be with Anne," he thought. "I am going to have them together as much as possible."

"Why don't you get up a picnic to-morrow?" he suggested, as Perkins pa.s.sed the fingerbowls--a rite which always tried Anne's timid, inexperienced soul, as did the mysteries of the half-dozen spoons and forks that had stretched out on each side of her plate at the beginning of the meal.

"You could get some of Anne's friends to join you," went on the Judge, "and I'll let you have the three-seated wagon and Perkins; and Mary can pack a lunch."

Judy raised two calm eyes from a scrutiny of the table-cloth.

"I hate picnics," she said.

Then as the Judge, with a disappointed look on his kind old face, pushed back his chair, Judy rose and trailed languidly through the dining-room and out into the hall.

Anne started to follow, but the hurt look on the Judge's face was too much for her tender heart, and as she reached the door she turned and came back.

"I think a picnic would be lovely," she said, a little surprised at her own interference in the matter, "and--and--let's plan it, anyhow, and Judy will have a good time when she gets there."

"Do you really think she will?" said the Judge, with the light coming into his eyes.

"Yes," said Anne, "she will, and you'd better ask Nannie May and Amelia Morrison."

"And Launcelot Bart?" asked the Judge. For a moment Anne hesitated, then she answered with a sort of gentle decision.

"We can't have the picnic without Launcelot. He knows the nicest places. You ask him, Judge, and--and--I'll tell Judy."

"We will have something different, too," planned the Judge. "I will send to the city for some things--bonbons and all that. Perkins will know what to order. I haven't done anything of this kind for so long that I don't know the proper thing--but Perkins will know--he always knows--"

"Anne, Anne," came Judy's voice from the top of the stairway.

Anne fluttered away, rewarded by the Judge's beaming face, but with fear tugging at her heart. What would Judy say? Judy who hated picnics and who hated boys?

"Don't you want to come down and take a walk?" she asked coaxingly, from the foot of the stairs. It would be easier to break the news to Judy out-of-doors, and then the Judge would be in the garden, a substantial ally.

"I hate walks," said Imperiousness from the upper hall.

"Oh," murmured Faintheart from the lower hall, and sat down on the bottom step.

"I won't tell her till we are ready for bed," was her sudden conclusion.

It was getting dark, but Judy hanging over the rail could just make out the huddled blue gingham bunch.

"Aren't you coming up?" she asked, ominously.

"Yes," and with her courage all gone, Anne rose and began the long climb up the stately stairway.

CHAPTER III

IN THE JUDGE'S GARDEN

The Judge's garden was not a place of flaming flower beds and smooth clipped lawns open to the gaze of every pa.s.ser-by.