Judith Lynn Part 2

She sat a long time with her brown chin in her brown palms, her eyes on the splendid expanse of s.h.i.+ning, undulating sea before her. It reached _'way across to him_--to that tender doctor who made little children walk! If one were to cross it--she and Blossom in the old black dory--and to find _him_ somewhere over across there and say to him--if one were to hold out little Blossom and say--"Here's Blossom; oh, please teach her little legs to walk!"--if one were to do that--

Judith sunk her brown chin deeper into the little scoop of her brown, hard palms. Her eyes were beginning to s.h.i.+ne. She began to rock herself back and forth and to hum a little song of joy, as if already it had happened. The fancy took her that it had happened--that when she went up the beach, home, she would come on Blossom walking to meet her! "See me!" Blossom would call out gayly.

The fancy faded by and by, as did all Judith's dreams. And Judith went plodding home alone--no one came walking to meet her. But there was hope in her heart. How it could ever be, she did not know--she had not had time to get to that yet--but somehow it would be. It should be!

"I won't tell mother--I'll tell Uncle Jem," she decided. "Mother must not be worried--she must be surprised!" Judith had decided that. Some day, some way, Blossom must walk in on the worn, weary little mother and surprise her.

"I'll ask Uncle Jem how," Judith nodded, as she went. Uncle Jem was the old bed-ridden fisherman that Judith loved and trusted and consulted. She had always consulted Uncle Jem. He lived with Jem Three in a tiny, weather-worn cabin near the Lynns. Jem Three was Judith's age--Jem Two was dead.

"I'll go over to-night after supper," Judith said.

Uncle Jem lay in the cool, salt twilight, listening, as he always did, to the sound of the waves. It was his great comfort. He wouldn't swop his "pa'r o' ears," he said, for a mint o' money--no, sir! Give him them ears--Uncle Jem had never been to school--an' he'd make out without legs nor arms nor _head!_ That was Uncle Jem's favorite joke.

"Judy! I hear ye stompin' round out there. I'm layin' low fur ye!"

the cheerful voice called, as Judith entered the little cabin.

"Is Jem Three here?" demanded Judith.

"_Here?_--Jemmy Three! I guess you're failin' in your mind, honey."

"Well, I'm glad he isn't. I don't want anybody but you--Uncle Jem, how can I get Blossom across the sea?" Judith's eager face followed up this rather astonis.h.i.+ng speech. Uncle Jem turned to meet them both.

"Wal, there's the old dory--or ye mought swim," he answered gravely.

He was used to Judy's speeches.

"Because there's a great man over there that makes lame little children walk--he can make Blossom. There's a little child down at the hotel that he made walk. I've got to take her across, Uncle Jem--I mean Blossom. But I don't know how."

"No, deary, no; I do' know's I much wonder. It would be consid'able great of a job fur ye. An' I allow it would take a mint o' money."

Strange Judith had not thought of the money! Money was so very hard indeed to get, and a _mint_ of it--

"Not a mint--don't say a mint, Uncle Jem!" she pleaded. She went up close to the bed and took one of the gnarled old hands in hers and beat it with soft impatience up and down on the quilt.

"Not a _mint!_" she repeated.

"Wal, deary, wal, we'll see," comforted the old man. "You set down in that cheer there an' out with it, the hull story! Mind ye don't leave out none o' the fixin's! Ye can't rightly see things without ye have all the fixin's by ye. Now, then, deary--"

Judith told the thrilling little story with all the details at her command. At its end Uncle Jem's eyes were s.h.i.+ning as hers had shone.

"Judy!" he cried, "Judy, it's got to be did! Ye've got to do it!"

"Of course," Judy answered, with rapt little brown face. "I'm _going_ to, Uncle Jem. But you must help me find a way."

"Wal,"--slowly, as Uncle Jem thought with wrinkled brows--"Wal, I guess about the fust thing to do is to go an' ask that hotel child's ma how much it cost her to go acrost. Then we'll have that to go by. We ain't got nothin' to go by now, deary."

"No," Judith answered, dreamily. She was looking out of the little, many-paned window across the distant water. It looked like a very great way.

"I suppose it's--pretty far," she murmured wistfully.

"Oh, consid'able--consid'able," the old man agreed vaguely. "But ye won't mind that. It won't be fur _comin' home!_"

The faith of the old child and the young was good that this beautiful miracle could be brought about. Judith went home with elastic step and lifted, trustful face.

Jem Three, scuffing barefoot through the sandy soil, met this radiant dream-maiden with the exalted mien. Jem Three was not of exalted mien, and he never dreamed. He was brown up to the red rim of his hair, and big and homely. But the freckles in line across the brownness of his face spelled h-o-n-e-s-t-y. At least, they always had before to Judith Lynn and all the world. To-night Judith was to read them differently.

"Hullo, Jude!"

It is hard to come out of a beautiful dream, plump upon a prosaic boy who says, "Hullo!" It is apt to jolt one. It jolted Judith.

"Oh! Oh, it's you!" she came out enough to say, and then went back.

The prosaic boy regarded her in puzzled wonder. Head up, shoulders back, eyes looking right through you--what kind of a Jude was this!

Was she walking in her sleep?

"Hullo, I _said_," he repeated. "If you've left your manners to home--"

"Oh!--oh, h.e.l.lo, Jem! I guess I was busy thinking."

"Looked like it. Bad habit to get into. Better look out! I never indulge, myself. Well, how's luck?"

"Luck? Oh, you mean lobsters?" Judith had not been busy thinking of lobsters, but now her grievance came back to her. "Oh, Jem! I never got but three! All my pains for three lobsters! And two of those just long enough not to be short. It means--I suppose it means a bad season, doesn't it?"

Jem Three pursed his lips into a whistle. Afterward, when Judith's evil thoughts had invaded her mind, she remembered that Jem Three had avoided looking at her; yes, certainly he had s.h.i.+fted his bare toes about in the sand. And when he spoke, his voice had certainly sounded muttery.

"Guess somethin' ails your traps," he had said. "Warn't nothin' the matter with mine."

"Did you get more than three?"

"Got a-plenty."

"Jemmy Three, how many's a-plenty?"

"'Bout twenty-four."

Jemmy Three had got twenty-four! Judith turned away in bitterness and envy, and afterwards suspicion.

There was nothing the matter with her traps. If Jem Three got twenty-four lobsters in his, why did she get only three in hers?

Twenty-four and three. What kind of fairness was that! She could set lobster-traps as well as any Jem Three--or Jem Four--or Five--or Six.

There had always been good-natured rivalry between the fisher-boy and the fisher-girl, and Judith had usually held her own jubilantly.

There had never been any such difference as this.

Suddenly was born the evil thought in Judith's brain. It crept in slinkingly, after the way of evil things. "How do you know but he helped himself out o' your traps?" That was the whisper it whispered to Judith. Then, well started, how it ran on! "When you and he quarreled a while ago, didn't he say, 'I'll pay you back'?--didn't he?

You think if he didn't."

"Oh, he did," groaned Judith.

"Well, isn't helping himself to your lobsters paying you back?"

"Yes--oh, yes, if he _did_. But Jemmy Three never--"