"Oh, do you paint?"
"Some," modestly.
"And play?" Anne's eyes were on the little piano in the alcove.
"Yes."
"Play now," pleaded Anne.
But Judy shook her head. "After dinner," she said. "The bell is ringing now."
Dinner at Judge Jameson's was a formal affair, commencing with soup and ending with coffee. It was served in the great dining-room where silver dishes and tankards twinkled on the sideboard, and where the light came in through stained-glass windows, so that Anne always had a feeling that she was in church.
The Judge sat at the head of the table, and his sister, Mrs. Patterson, at the foot. Judy was on one side and Anne on the other, and back of them, a silent, competent butler spirited away their plates, and substituted others with a sort of sleight-of-hand dexterity that almost took Anne's breath away.
Anne and the Judge chatted together happily throughout the meal. The Judge was very fond of the earnest maiden, whose grandmother had been the friend of his youth, and his eyes went often from her sunny face to that of the moody, silent Judy. "It will do Judy good to be with Anne," he thought. "I am going to have them together as much as possible."
"Why don't you get up a picnic to-morrow?" he suggested, as Perkins passed the fingerbowls—a rite which always tried Anne's timid, inexperienced soul, as did the mysteries of the half-dozen spoons and forks that had stretched out on each side of her plate at the beginning of the meal.