Cephas replied that the parsonage folks were not going out into the world, but bringing the world in and consecrating it; she must not forget that “God so loved the world.”
Aunt Rody retorted that He commanded his people not to love it, anyway. In his slow way Cephas replied: “He never told His people not to love it His way.”
The worldliness was not hurting Judith; nothing was hurting the little girl her mother left, when she shut her eyes upon all that would ever happen to her.
How it happened that she went to boarding-school she never knew; she knew Aunt Affy cried and could not sleep all one night, that for once in his sweet-tempered life Uncle Cephas was angry, and as he told the minister, “talked like a Dutch uncle to Rody”; she knew a letter came from cousin Don to Aunt Rody herself, and that Aunt Rody did not speak to anybody in the house, excepting innocent Joe, for three whole weeks.
In spite of Aunt Rody, Agnes Trembly made new dresses from the materials Miss Marion took Judith to New York to select, and a box of school books was sent by express, and another box with every latest thing in the way of school-room furnishing. A bureau in Miss Marion’s room was placed at the disposal of her goods, and one corner of a wardrobe was made ready for her dresses.
Still, with all her happy privileges, there was no place she called home; she said: “Aunt Affy’s” and “the parsonage.”
Once, speaking of Summer Avenue, she said “home” unconsciously. She rarely spoke of her mother. All her loneliness and desolation and heartaches she poured out in her letters to cousin Don. He understood. She never thought that she must be “brave” for him.
Nothing since her mother went away comforted her like her boarding-school.
During one heart-opening twilight she confided to Marion about casting lots in the Bible to find out if she would ever go to boarding-school.
“What did you find?” asked Marion.