“Judy!” he cried, “Judy, it’s got to be did! Ye’ve got to do it!”
“Of course,” Judy answered, with rapt little brown face. “I’m going to, Uncle Jem. But you must help me find a way.”
“Wal,”—slowly, as Uncle Jem thought with wrinkled brows—“Wal, I guess about the fust thing to do is to go an’ ask that hotel child’s ma how much it cost her to go acrost. Then we’ll have that to go by. We ain’t got nothin’ to go by now, deary.”
“No,” Judith answered, dreamily. She was looking out of the little, many-paned window across the distant water. It looked like a very great way.
“I suppose it’s—pretty far,” she murmured wistfully.
“Oh, consid’able—consid’able,” the old man agreed vaguely. “But ye won’t mind that. It won’t be fur comin’ home!”
The faith of the old child and the young was good that this beautiful miracle could be brought about. Judith went home with elastic step and lifted, trustful face.
Jem Three, scuffing barefoot through the sandy soil, met this radiant dream-maiden with the exalted mien. Jem Three was not of exalted mien, and he never dreamed. He was brown up to the red rim of his hair, and big and homely. But the freckles in line across the brownness of his face spelled h-o-n-e-s-t-y. At least, they always had before to Judith Lynn and all the world. To-night Judith was to read them differently.
“Hullo, Jude!”
It is hard to come out of a beautiful dream, plump upon a prosaic boy who says, “Hullo!” It is apt to jolt one. It jolted Judith.