Part 34 (1/2)

”I know,” sighed Anne. ”Poor Judy.”

”When will the Judge be back?” she asked after awhile.

But at that Perkins shut up like a clam. ”I don't know, Miss,” he snapped. ”It's best for you not to ask too many questions, Miss.”

Anne flushed. ”Oh, of course I won't, Perkins,” she said, ”if you don't like to have me--” and she was very quiet, until the old butler, with a glance at her troubled face, said, ”I don't care how many questions you axes, Miss, but the Judge might.”

And Anne smiled at him, with radiant forgiveness.

”Isn't all this silver a lot of care, Perkins?” she asked, to clear the air.

”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.

”n.o.body 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 ap.r.o.n, ”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.

”_Everything_, my dear,” said Lutie, who did everything by extremes, and who wore the highest pompadour, and the highest heels, and who had the smallest waist and the largest hat that Anne had ever seen, and who always used the superlative when telling a tale.

”They stole _every single thing_ down to the very shoes, and the kitten from the rug.”

”Oh,” said Anne, thinking of Belinda, ”the dear little kitten. What did they want with it?”

”It was a Persian, and this morning it came back, but the silver collar was gone from its neck, and they took even a thimble from a work-basket, and a box of candy and a cake!”

”Did they get anything valuable?” asked Anne.

”All of Mrs. Durant's diamonds and the family silver,” said Lutie. ”My dear, Mrs. Durant is ill, _absolutely ill_, and the worst of it is that she saw the burglar, and it frightened her so that she hasn't gotten over it yet.”

”How dreadful,” said little Anne, thinking of the great sideboard and all of the Jameson silver that she and Perkins had cleaned. ”Oh, Judy, suppose they should come here!”

But Judy was standing by the window, watching a figure that slipped from the boat-house to the wharf with a bundle on his shoulder, the figure of a small boy, with his cap pulled low.

”Such things are like lightning; they never strike twice in the same place,” she said, indifferently. ”Don't go, Lutie.”

”Oh, I _must_,” gushed Lutie. ”I was just _dying_ to see you, Anne, for a minute, so I came with Judy. But I _must_ go. They will think I am _dead_.”