“Well, why should they speak to you any more than you speak to them? Aren’t you as good as they are? Surely, and a great deal prettier. You are as much prettier than Mrs. 102 Bucknor as a day lily is prettier than a cabbage rose,” declared Judith.
“Oh, how you do talk, Judy! Of course, when I say they didn’t ever speak I mean they never went out of their way to speak. When we had deaths over here they kind of acted neighborly like and sent word to call on them if we needed anything, but we never did, as my mother and I always saved mourning from time to time. I guess they’d have been a little more back-and-forth friendly if it hadn’t have been for your Grandfather Buck. He was kind of difficult like when he was drinking and that was most times. He was either drinking or getting over drunks as a general thing. Then he was mighty lazy and shiftless.”
“Poor Mumsy! You’ve had a right hard time with us Bucks. Grandfather Buck was so lazy he worried you to death and I’m so energetic I know I annoy you terribly. But all this talking isn’t selling toilet articles to house parties. By the way, I got a ’phone message from my motormen. They want six suppers this evening. That means I must run into Ryeville and buy some more baskets and lay in provisions of all kinds. I wish I’d been triplets, or at least twins. I could accomplish so much more.” 103
“Land sakes, Judy! Surely you do enough as it is. All six dinners at once?”
“Oh no! Two on the six, two on the six-thirty and two for the seven. I’m afraid I’ll wear the path into a ditch. I’m glad to see the beets are big enough to eat and before you know it we’ll have some snap beans and peas. I’m going to get a little darkey to work the garden, because I simply can’t give the time for it. Besides, my time is really too valuable for digging just now. Did I tell you I had taken the contract to develop all the amateur photographic films for Baker & Bowles? I saw them about it the other day. They have an awful time getting it done right and they knew I had done a lot of that work for school, so they asked me to try. Of course I couldn’t let such a chance slip and since I can do it at night I accepted. It will take only one or two evenings a week. They furnish all the chemicals and it pays very well. I’ll do it through the summer anyhow, until school starts.”
“What a child! What a child!” was all Mrs. Buck could say. “I don’t believe even the Norse sailor could have beat her.”
Again the old men on the hotel porch were treated to a sight of Judith Buck. She parked her little blue car directly across the street from 104 the Rye House and began the business of shopping.
“What you reckon that Judy gal is up to now?” queried Judge Middleton. “I betcher she’s goin’ in the butcher shop.”
“I betcher she ain’t,” said Pete Barnes for the sake of argument. “I betcher she’s going in the Emporium to buy herself a blue dress.”
“Maybe,” ruminated Major Fitch. “I always did hold to women folks that had sense enough to wear blue. That blue that Miss Judith Buck wears is just my kind of blue too—not too light and not too dark—kinder betwixt and between, like way-off hills or—”