Judy | Page 5

mauve clusters from the upper porch, she could not restrain her enthusiasm.
"What a lovely old place it is, Judy, what a lovely, lovely place."
But Judy's clenched fist beat against the cushions. "No, it isn't, it isn't," she declared in a tense tone, so low that the Judge could not hear, "it isn't lovely. It's too big and dark and lonely, Anne--and it isn't lovely at all."
As the Judge helped them out, there came over Anne suddenly a wave of homesickness. Judy was so hard to get along with, and the Judge was so stately, and after Judy's words, even the old mansion seemed to frown on her. Back there in the quiet fields was the little gray house, back there was peace and love and contentment, and with all her heart she wished that she might fly to the shelter of the little grandmother's welcoming arms.
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-glass 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 substituted 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 passed 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