The girl told her father nothing of this, but kept it hoarded in her heart with the secret of her novel-reading. But he saw that she grew brighter and more cheerful every day, that her curt manner toward himself had become almost caressing, and that the house had never been so well cared for before. So he thanked God for the change, and went to his work more cheerfully.
No, it was not for the old father that worshipped her that Judith stood on the porch that day. The meagre affection she felt for him was as nothing to the one grand passion that had swallowed up everything but the intense self-love that it had warmed into unwholesome vigor.
She was only watching for her father because of her hope that another and a dearer one was coming with him.
"Dear me, it seems as if the sun would never set!" she exclaimed, stepping impatiently down from the wooden stool. "What shall I do till they come? I wonder, now, if there would be time to run out and pick a few more berries? The dish isn't more than half full, and father hinted that some were getting ripe on the bushes by the lower wall. I've a good mind to go and see. I hate to have them look skimpy in the dish. Anyway I'll just get my sun-bonnet and try. Father seemed to think that I might pick them for our tea. As if I'd a-gone out in the hot sun for the best father that ever lived! But let him think so if he wants to. One may as well please the poor old soul once in a while."
Judith went into the kitchen, took a bowl from the table, and hurried down toward the orchard-fence, where she found some wild bushes clambering up the stonework, laden with fruit. A flock of birds fluttered out from the bushes at her approach, each with his bill stained blood-red and his feathers in commotion.
Judith laughed at their musical protests, and fell to picking the ripe berries, staining her own lips with the largest and juiciest now and then, as if to tantalize the little creatures, who watched her longingly from the boughs of a neighboring apple tree.
All at once a shadow fell upon the girl, who looked up and saw that the golden sunshine was dying out from the orchard.
"Dear me, they may come any minute!" she said, shaking up the berries in her bowl. "A pretty fix I should be in then, with my mouth all stained up and my hair every which way; but it is just like me!"
Away the girl went, spilling her berries as she ran. Leaving them in the kitchen, she hurried up to her own room and gave herself a rapid survey in the little seven-by-nine looking-glass that hung on the wall.
"Well, if it wasn't me, I should almost think that face was going to be handsome one of these days," she thought, striving to get a better look at herself by a not ungraceful bend of the neck. The mirror took in her head and part of the bust on which the scarlet ribbon flamed. The face was radiant. The eyes full of happy light, smiled upon her until dimples began to quiver about the mouth, and she laughed outright.