Judy | Page 6

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 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