Judy | Page 6

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 passer-by.
It was a quiet spot. A place where old-fashioned flowers bloomed modestly in retired corners, veiled from curious stares by a high hedge of aromatic box.
There was a fountain in the Judge's garden, half-hidden by an encircling border of gold and purple fleur-de-lis, where a marble cupid rode gaily on the back of a bronze dolphin, from whose mouth spouted a stream of limpid water.
There was, too, in summer, a tangled wilderness of roses--hundred-leaved ones, and little yellow ones, and crimson ones whose tall bushes topped the hedge, and great white ones that clung lovingly to the old stone wall that was the western barrier of the garden. And there was a bed of myrtle, and another one of verbenas, over which the butterflies hovered on hot summer days, and another of pansies, and along the wall great clumps of valley lilies. And at the end of the path was a lilac bush that the Judge's wife had planted in the first days of bridal happiness.
For years it had been a lonely garden, as lonely as the old Judge's heart--for fifteen years, ever since the death of his wife, and the departure of his only son to sail the seas, the darkened windows of the old house had cast a shadow on the garden, a shadow that had fallen upon the Judge as he had walked there night after night in solitude.
But this evening as he sat on the bench under the lilac bush, a broad bar of golden light shone down upon the gay cupid and the sleeping flowers, and from the open window came the lilt of girlish laughter and the rippling strain of the "Spring Song," as Judy's fingers touched the keys of the little piano lightly.
Presently the music changed to a wild dashing strain.
"It's a Spanish dance," Judy explained to Anne. She was swaying back and forth, keeping time with her body to the melodies that tinkled from her fingers.
"I can dance it, too," she added.
"Oh, do dance it, Judy--please," cried Anne. She was living in a sort of Arabian Nights' dream. Hitherto the girls that she had known had been demure and unaccomplished, so that Judy seemed