ANNE GOES TO TOWN
"Grandfather," said Judy, at the lunch-table, "I want to take Anne home
with us."
A little shiver went up and down Anne's spine. She wasn't sure whether
it would be pleasant to go with Judy or not. Judy was so different.
"I don't believe Anne could leave Becky and Belinda," laughed the
Judge. "She would have to carry her family with her."
"Of course she can leave them," was Judy's calm assertion, "and I want
her, grandfather."
She said it with the air of a young princess who is in the habit of
having her wishes gratified. The Judge laughed again.
"How is it, Mrs. Batcheller?" he asked.
"May Anne go?"
The little grandmother shook her head.
"I don't often let her leave me," she said.
"But I want her," said Judy, sharply, and at her tone the little
grandmother's back stiffened.
"Perhaps you do, my dear," was her quiet answer, "but your wants must
wait upon my decision."
The mild blue eyes met the frowning dark ones steadily, and Judy gave
in. Much as she hated to own it, there was something about this little
lady in faded calico that forced respect.
"Oh," she said, and sat back in her chair, limply.
The Judge looked anxiously at her disappointed face.
"Judy is so lonely," he pleaded, and Mrs. Batcheller unbent.
"Anne has her lessons."
"But to-morrow is Saturday."
"Well--she may go this time. How long do you want her to stay?"
"Until Sunday night," said the Judge. "I will bring her back in time
for school on Monday."
Anne went up-stairs in a flutter of excitement. Visits were rare
treats in her uneventful life, and she had never stayed at Judge
Jameson's overnight, although she had often been there to tea, and the
great old house had seemed the palace beautiful of her dreams.
But Judy!
"She is so different from any girl I have ever met," she explained to
the little grandmother, who had followed her to her room under the
eaves, and was packing her bag for her.
"Different? How?"
"Well, she isn't like Nannie May or Amelia Morrison."
"I should hope not," said the little grandmother with severity. "Nan
is a tomboy, and Amelia hasn't a bit of spirit--not a bit, Anne."
Anne changed the subject, skilfully. "Do you like Judy?" she
questioned.
"She is very much spoiled," said the little grandmother, slowly, "a
very spoiled child, indeed. Her mother began it, and the Judge will
keep it up. But Judy is like her grandmother at the same age, Anne,
and her grandmother turned out to be a charming woman--it's in the
blood."
"She says she is going to live with the Judge." Anne was folding her
best blue ribbons, with quite a grown-up air.
"Yes. I have never told you, Anne, but the Judge's son was in the
navy, and four years ago he went for a cruise and never came back."
"Was he drowned?"
"He was washed overboard during a storm, and every one except Judy
believes that he was drowned. Even Judy's mother believed it in time,
but Judy won't. She thinks he will come back, and so she has lived on
in her old home by the sea, with a cousin of her father's for a
companion--always with the hope that he will come back. But the cousin
was married in the winter, and so Judy is to live with the Judge. He
has always wanted it that way--but Judy clung desperately to the life
in the old house by the sea. The Judge will spoil her--he can't deny
her anything."
"What pretty things she has," said Anne, looking down distastefully at
the simple gown and neat but plain garments that the little grandmother
was packing into a shiny black bag.
The little grandmother gave her a quick look. "Never mind, dearie,"
she said, "just remember that you are a gentlewoman by birth, and try
to be sweet and loving, and don't worry about the clothes."
But as she tied the shabby old hat with its faded roses on the fair
little head, her own old eyes were wistful. "I wish I could give you
pretty things, my little Anne," she whispered.
Anne gave a remorseful cry. "I don't mind, little grandmother," she
said, "I don't really," and for a moment her warm young cheek lay
against the soft old one.
A tiny mirror opposite reflected the two faces. "How much we look
alike," cried Anne, noticing it for the first time. Then she sighed.
"But my hair doesn't curl like yours, little grandmother," and in that
lament was voiced the greatest trial, that had, as yet, come to Anne.
"Neither does Judy's," said Mrs. Batcheller, and Anne brightened up,
but when she went down-stairs and saw Judy's bronze locks giving out
wonderful lights where they were looped up with a broad black ribbon
she sighed again.
When the carriage drove around, Anne caught Belinda up in her arms.
"Good-bye, pussy cat, pussy cat," she cried, "take care of grandmother,
and don't catch any birds."
Belinda crooned a loving song, and tucked her pretty head under her
little mistress' chin.
"You're a dear, Belinda," said Anne, "and so is Becky," and at the
sound of her name the tame crow flew to Anne's shoulder and gave her a
pecking kiss.
"Oh, come on," said Judy, impatiently, and the Judge lifted the shiny
bag and put it on the front seat; then they waved their hands to the
little grandmother and were off.
It was five miles to town, but the ride did not seem long to Anne. She
pointed out all the places of interest to Judy.
"That is where I go to school," she said, as they passed a low white
building at the crossroads, and later when the setting sun shone red
and gold on two low glass hothouses set in the corner of a scraggly
lawn, she explained their use to Judy.
"That's where Launcelot Bart raises violets," she said.
"What a funny name!" was Judy's careless rejoinder.
"Launcelot is a funny boy," said Anne, "but I think you would like him,
Judy."
"I hate boys," said Judy, and settled back in the corner of the
carriage with a bored air.
But Anne was eager in the defence of her friend. "Launcelot isn't like
most boys," she protested, "he is sixteen, and he lived abroad until
his father lost all his money, and they had to come out here, and they
were awfully poor until Launcelot began to raise violets, and now he is
making lots of money."
"Well, I don't want to meet him," said Judy, indifferently, "he is sure
to be in the way--all boys are in the way--"
Anne did not talk much after that; but when they reached the Judge's
great red brick mansion, with the white pillars and with wistaria
drooping in pale 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 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.