“I don’t want any lunch,” said Judy, listlessly.  “Don’t worry about me, Anne.”

But Anne went to the cupboard and brought out a precious store of peach preserves, and dished them in the little glass saucers that had been among her grandmother’s wedding things.  Then she cut the bread in thin slices and brought in a pitcher of milk.

“Why don’t you have some flowers on the table?” said Judy.  “Flowers are better than food, any day—­”

Like a flame the color went over Anne’s fair face.  “Oh, do you like flowers, Judy?” she said, joyously.  “Do you, Judy?”

Judy nodded.  “I love them,” she said.  “Give me that big blue bowl, Anne, and I’ll get you some for the table.”

“Wouldn’t you like a vase, Judy?” asked Anne.  “We have a nice red one in the parlor.”

Judy drew her shoulders together in a little shiver of distaste.  “Oh, no, no,” she shuddered, “this bowl is such a beauty, Anne.”

“But it is so old,” said Anne, “it belonged to my great-grandmother.”

“That is why it is so beautiful,” said Judy, as she went out of the door into the garden.

When she came in she had filled the bowl with yellow tulips, which, set in the center of the table, seemed to radiate sunshine, and to glorify the plain little room.  “I should never have thought of the tulips, Judy,” exclaimed Anne, “but they look lovely.”

There was such genuine admiration in the tender voice, that Judy looked at Anne for the first time with interest—­at the plain, straight figure in the unfashionable blue gingham, at the freckled face, with its tip-tilted nose, and at the fair hair hanging in two neat braids far below the little girl’s waist.

“Do you like to live here, Anne?” she asked, suddenly.

Anne, still bending over the tulips, lifted two surprised blue eyes.

“Of course,” she said.  “Of course I do, Judy.”

“I hate it,” said Judy.  “I hate the country, Anne—­”

And this time she did not express her dislike indifferently, but with a swift straightening of her slender young body, and a nervous clasping of her thin white fingers.

“I hate it,” she said again.

Anne stood very still by the table.  What could she say to this strange girl who hated so many things, and who was staring out of the window with drawn brows and compressed red lips?

“Perhaps I like it because it is my home,” she said at last, gently.

Judy caught her breath quickly.  “I am never going back to my home, Anne,” she said.

“Never, Judy?”

“No—­grandfather says that I am to stay here with him—­” There was despair in the young voice.

Anne went over to the window.  “Perhaps you will like it after awhile,” she said, hopefully, “the Judge is such a dear.”

“I know—­” Judy’s tone was stifled, “but he isn’t—­he isn’t my mother—­Anne—­”

For a few minutes there was silence, then Judy went on: