"It is that," answered Perkins, "and yet there isn't half as much of it as there is at the Judge's in Fairfax. Only the Judge keeps his locked up in a safe, all except the things we uses every day. But here they just puts it on the sideboard, where it is a temptation to burglars—with them long windows opening out on the porch, and the curtains drawn back half the time. I don't call it safe, Miss, I surely don't."
"But there aren't any burglars around here, are there, Perkins?" and
Anne stopped rubbing the cups to look at him anxiously.
"Nobody knows whether there is or not," grumbled Perkins. "There might be for all they know. It ain't fair to the servants, Miss, for to let them lie around loose this way. Mrs. Adams says so, too, but the Judge don't pay no attention to things since the Captain left, and Miss Judy is too young to bother."
"They wouldn't like to lose these cups," said Anne, as she finished the last one, and arranged them in a squat little row on the shelf.
"They wouldn't like to lose any of it," returned Perkins, putting a great soup-ladle back into its flannel bag. "It's all old and it's all family silver, and people ought to take care of it, and when the Judge comes back I am going to tell him so, Miss."
"Anne," said Judy, peeping in at the door, "I'm back, and Lutie Barton is with me. Come on in and see her."
"Oh, dear," said Anne, with a dismayed glance at her spattered apron,
"I look like a sight."
"Run up the back way and fix up," said Judy, "and I'll talk to her until you come down."
Lutie Barton brought with her the gossip of the town. There had been a dance at the big hotel the night before, a sailing party down the bay in the afternoon had been caught in a thunder shower, and all the girls' hats had been ruined, and there had been a burglary at one of the cottages in an outlying district.
Anne jumped when they said that. "What did they steal?" she faltered, with her conversation with Perkins fresh in her mind.