“Aunt Affy and Cousin Don will decide about boarding-school. Cousin Don and I have talked about it, and I will tell Aunt Affy what I think about it,” her mother decided with an unusual touch of firmness.
“But I wouldn’t leave you, mother, for all the boarding-schools in the world.”
“And I wouldn’t let you for all the schools in the world.”
“Well, it’s only a dream, like Jean Draper’s outing. You like pictures better than dreams. I think Don’s friend, Roger Kenney, is the minister in the pulpit; Don said he had preached there almost all winter, coming home every Tuesday—Monday he visits the people. Don is sure Bensalem will give him a call. Uncle Cephas likes him so much, and Uncle Cephas is an elder. Now, here’s another picture: on the same side of the street as the church, with only the church-yard and the locust grove between, it is the dear, dainty Queen Anne parsonage—only two years old, and so new and pretty; Jean Draper went with me through it—there was nobody there then—and nobody has lived there all this year; there’s a furnace in the cellar like a city house, and a bay-window in the study, and a pretty hall with stained-glass windows, and a cunning kitchen, a cunning sitting-room, and sliding doors into the parlor, and a piazza in the front, and at the side—and out every window is the beautiful country. I hope I may go again. Mother, you like this picture?” she asked earnestly, “that house is another dream of mine. O, mother,” with a comical little cry, “I’m so full of dreams, I’m full to bursting.”
“I like that picture. I like to think of Don’s friend there living a strong life; he has no worldly ambition. Don says it has been wholly rooted out of him. He was very fine in college, working beyond his strength—eaten up with ambition. Then he had an experience; Don said the fountains of the great deep were broken up in him, and he came out of it another man—as humble and teachable as any child. Don is afraid he will go there and be satisfied to stay.”
“Now, here’s another face,” said Judith, with a new reverence for Don’s friend: “brown eyes, and a brown curly beard, and a brown head, with laughing eyes, unless he is talking about grave things—he doesn’t make you afraid to be good, but to love to. Still, I am so afraid he will talk to me some day and ask me questions; I don’t know how to answer questions. Now, you know, I mean Don’s friend, Mr. Kenney.”
“Your pictures are very cheery. I hope you may tell some to poor old Aunt Rody.”
“I shall never dare. She snaps at me. She shuts me up and makes me forget what I want to say. Her eyes go through me. I don’t love Aunt Rody; I don’t want to love Aunt Rody. She doesn’t like baby girls,” contended Judith, shaking her yellow head. “She doesn’t like me and Doodles. We are shaggy and a nuisance.”
“You will not always stay a baby girl.”
“No; I want to grow up faster; I wish I might braid my hair. I want to write books and paint real pictures on canvas to earn money to take you to Switzerland. I’m sure you would get well in Switzerland. I see the pictures I would paint, and I think the books; but I am so slow about it. Sweeping, and washing dishes, and doing errands, do not help at all,” she said with a laugh that had no discouragement in it.