"Bless your little heart!" exclaimed the doctor. "If I've said a word that you don't like, I'm ready to go right down on my knees in the dust—here and now—in the middle of the big road."
Miss Judy smiled, shaking her little head till the thin curls behind her pretty ears were more like silver mist than ever. In gentle confusion she began dividing the bunch of blush roses into halves, giving one to the doctor and the other to Lynn. She had known his father, she said shyly to the young man, and his mother also, although not so well, since the latter had not been brought up in Oldfield as his father was.
"But, Miss Judy, I want to talk to you seriously about card-playing," the doctor persisted. "You see you have got us all into the selfish habit of bringing every one of our burdens to lay them on your little shoulders. Unselfishness like yours does harm; it breeds selfishness in others."
Miss Judy protested that she had not the least idea of what he was talking about; but she saw that he was in earnest, and she straightway forgot all her quaint airs, and listened with deepest interest and tenderest sympathy to his story of his perplexity over the hopeless case of Tom Watson, and over the unbending attitude of Anne.
"The passion for gaming is just as strong in that poor fellow as it ever was. I had suspected it before, but I wasn't sure until to-day," the doctor went on, looking across the way at the sick man's window. "I disapprove of gambling as much as any one, but I can't for the life of me see any harm that could possibly come now to that poor unfortunate, from any sort of a game—if anybody can possibly stand it to play with him."
Miss Judy looked puzzled and a little alarmed. "Were you—do you wish me to play with him?" she faltered, rather shocked, yet wondering if she could learn, and quite ready to try.
The doctor was too deeply absorbed—too seriously troubled—to smile as he usually did at Miss Judy's sweet absurdities, appreciating them almost as much as he valued her heart of gold. In truth he hardly heard what she said.
"Maybe you can make Anne see how different things are now," he went on musingly, and somewhat hesitatingly, as though the possibility had suddenly occurred to him. "Women understand one another," he added, uttering a fallacy accepted by many a sensible man and rejected by every sensible woman.
The fair old face on the other side of the gate grew grave in its perplexity. Quick to decide for herself in any matter of principle, Miss Judy was slow to decide for any one else. She did not consider herself wise, and it was hard, she thought, for the wisest to put herself in another's place, and no one—so she believed—could judge justly without so doing. She knew Anne's prejudice, that had been well known always to all the Oldfield people; but she had never ventured to form an opinion as to whether Anne had ever been justified in taking such a stand, which appeared strange to Miss Judy even in the beginning, and stranger now in Tom's extremity. She had merely wondered, as everybody had; but it was always harder for Miss Judy than for almost any one else to understand how there ever could be any actual conflict between love and faith, which were always and inseparably one and the same to her.
"I am not sure," she faltered, with a flutter of timidity, and blushing again. "Anne is such a good woman—so much better and wiser than I am—and so very reserved. I should hardly dare approach her, even if I were sure of being in the right. And I am far from being sure. Suppose we consult sister Sophia?" she said suddenly and with her pretty face lighting at the happy thought. "You know, doctor, that her judgment is much sounder, much more practical, than mine. She sometimes has very valuable ideas—when I don't at all know what to do."