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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/27986-h.zip b/27986-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..444d8ad --- /dev/null +++ b/27986-h.zip diff --git a/27986-h/27986-h.htm b/27986-h/27986-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d390caf --- /dev/null +++ b/27986-h/27986-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2122 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII"> + <title>Judith Lynn: A Story of the Sea</title> +<style type="text/css"><!-- +body {padding-right: 10%; padding-left: 10%;} +div.titlepage {text-align: center; line-height: 2.0; margin-top: 4em;} +h3 {text-align: center; font-size: 1.2em; padding-top: 4em; margin-bottom: 2em;} +hr {width: 20%;} +--></style> +</head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Judith Lynn, by Annie Hamilton Donnell + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Judith Lynn + A Story of the Sea + +Author: Annie Hamilton Donnell + +Release Date: February 4, 2009 [EBook #27986] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JUDITH LYNN *** + + + + +Produced by Jeff Kaylin + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div class="titlepage"> +<h1>Judith Lynn</h1> + +<h2>A Story of the Sea</h2> + +<h3>By Annie Hamilton Donnell</h3> + + <p>Copyright, 1906,<br> + By David C. Cook Publishing Co.,<br> + Elgin, Illinois.</p></div> + + + + +<h3><a name="jl1">Chapter I.</a></h3> + + +<p>In Tarpaulin and oilskins she did not look like a Judith. Easily +she might have been a Joseph or a James. So it was not really to be +wondered at that the little girl in the dainty clothes—the little +girl from The Hotel—should say, “Why!”</p> + +<p>“What is your name?” the Dainty One had asked.</p> + +<p>“Judith Lynn,” had answered the boy-one in oilskins.</p> + +<p>“Why!” Then, as if catching herself up at the impoliteness of such a +little word in such a surprised tone—“I mean, please excuse me for +thinking you were a boy,” the little Dainty One had added, in +considerable embarrassment. And Judith had laughed—Judith’s laughs +were rare, but the crisp, salty brightness of the sea was always in +them. The sea was in everything about Judith.</p> + +<p>“I don’t wonder!” laughed Judith. “Me, with these togs on! But I +guess <em>you’d</em> be a boy when you went out to your traps—you can’t +’tend traps in skirts. Blossom calls me Judas with these on!”</p> + +<p>It was strange how suddenly the rather big voice—a voice has to be +big to compete with the voice of the sea—grew soft and tender at the +name of Blossom.</p> + +<p>In Judith Lynn’s rough, hard, salt-savored life Blossom was the one +thing sweet and beautiful. Blossom was the little frail wisp of a +child that Judith loved. This other child, here on the sand, watching +her with friendly wonder, reminded her a little of Blossom. Anyway, +they were both sweet and beautiful.</p> + +<p>“Traps?” queried this other child. “I didn’t know there were mice in +the ocean!—you were going out on the ocean, weren’t you?”</p> + +<p>Again Judith’s rare, bright laugh. Children were such funny +things!—Blossom was, too.</p> + +<p>“Lobster-traps,” she explained, when the laugh had laughed itself +out. “I’m going out to mine to get the lobsters. Out there where +those little specks of white are bobbing ’round on the water—don’t +you see?”</p> + +<p>“I see some little specks—yes, they’re a-bobbing! Are those <em>traps?</em>”</p> + +<p>“Mercy, no! The traps are sunk ’way down to the bottom o’ the sea! +Those are nothing but the little wooden floats that tell me where the +traps are. I couldn’t go hunting all over the bay, you know.”</p> + +<p>“No—oh, no, you couldn’t go hunting all over the bay,” repeated the +small, puzzled voice. The Dainty One was distinctly interested. “I +s’pose, prob’ly, every one of those little white specks has got a +fish line to it. I hope they’ve all got <em>bites</em>. Oh, my suz! Here +comes Elise. Elise is always a-coming!” with a long sigh.</p> + +<p>Elise was slender and tall, in cap and apron. She walked with the +stride of authority. A frown of displeasure was getting visibler and +visibler on her face, the child noticed with another sigh. Elise was +’most always a-frowning.</p> + +<p>“Good-by. I—I guess I’d better go and meet her,” the Dainty One said +hurriedly. “She isn’t quite as cross when you go and meet her. It +helps.”</p> + +<p>But the child came back again to Judith Lynn. She held out one little +sun-browned, sea-browned hand.</p> + +<p>“I’m happy to have seen you,” she said, with soft graciousness, as if +Judith were a duchess in laces instead of a boy-girl in fisherman’s +togs. “I’d be pleased to see you some more. I like you.”</p> + +<p>“Oh!” stammered the boy-girl in fisherman’s togs, a flush of pleasure +reddening her brown face. No one had even said “I’d be pleased to see +you,” to her before, though Blossom, of course, <em>was</em> always pleased. +No one but Blossom had ever said, “I like you,” and Blossom’s way +was, “I love you.”</p> + +<p>“I must go—she’s ’most here,” went on the child, rather anxiously. +“But first I wish you’d tell me who Blossom is. You spoke about +Blossom, didn’t you?”</p> + +<p>“Yes. She’s my little sister. Her regular name is Janet. It’s only me +calls her Blossom.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, but that’s lots the prettiest name! <em>I’m</em> going to call her +that, too. I’d be pleased to see Blossom. Is she about my tallness?”</p> + +<p>Judith’s face had undergone one of its swift changes. It had grown +defensive and a little fierce. She should not see Blossom!—this other +child who could walk away over the sand to meet Elises, whoever +Elises were. She should not see Blossom! Blossom should not see her!</p> + +<p>“But, maybe—prob’ly she’s a baby—”</p> + +<p>“No, she’s six. She’d be about as tall as you are, if she was +straightened—I mean if she could stand up beside o’ you. I guess +you better go to that woman in the cap or she’ll scold, won’t she?”</p> + +<p>“Goodness, yes! Elise always scolds. But I’d rather be scolded than +not hear about that little Blossom girl—”</p> + +<p>“Mademoiselle!” called the woman in the cap sharply. She came up +puffing with her hurry. “Mademoiselle has escape again—Mademoiselle +is ba-ad!” she scolded.</p> + +<p>“I didn’t ex-scape, either—I only walked. You don’t walk when you +ex-scape. You sat and sat and sat, and I wanted to walk.”</p> + +<p>The child’s voice was full of grievance. Sometimes she dreaded +Elise—when she saw her coming down the beach—but she was never +afraid of her “near to.”</p> + +<p>“But it is not for Mademoiselle to walk so far—what is it the doctor +say? Mademoiselle is ba-ad when she walk so far!”</p> + +<p>With a sudden gesture of defiance the Dainty One sprang away across +the sand, looking over her shoulder willfully. “But it’s so good to +walk!” she cried. “You’d walk if you was me, Elise—you’d walk and +walk and walk! Like this—see me! See me run—like this!”</p> + +<p>The eyes of the woman in the white nurse’s cap met for an instant the +eyes of the boy-girl in the oilskins, and Judith smiled. But Elise +was gravely tender—Elise’s face could undergo swift changes, too.</p> + +<p>“Yes, certainment I would,” muttered Elise, looking away to the +naughty little figure. It was running back now.</p> + +<p>“And then you’d be goody again—see me!” chanted the child. “And +you’d go right straight back to Elise—that would be <em>me</em>, if you +were I—and you’d put your arms round her, so, and say, ‘’Scuse +me,’—hear me!”</p> + +<p>Judith Lynn got into the old brown dory and rowed away to her +lobster-traps. There was no laughter any more in her eyes; they were +fierce with longing and envy. Not for herself—Judith was sixteen, +but she had never been fierce or envious for herself. It had always +been—it would always be—for Blossom, the frail little wisp of a +girl she loved.</p> + +<p>She was thinking intensely, What if that were Blossom, running down +the beach? They were about of a “tallness”—why shouldn’t it be +Blossom? Why shouldn’t Blossom run down the beach like that and call +“See me!”</p> + +<p>She would walk and walk and walk—it would feel so good to walk! +Once she had said to Judith—the great oars stopped as Judith +remembered—once Blossom had said, “Oh, Judy, if I ever walk, I +shall walk right across the sea. You couldn’t stop me!”</p> + +<p>But Blossom would never walk. Judith bent to the great oars again and +toiled out into the bay. Her lips were set in the old familiar lines +of pain. In the distance was just visible a fleck of white and a +fleck of blue—Elise and the Dainty One on the sands.</p> + +<p>“I never want to set eyes on them again—not on her, anyway!” thought +Judith as she toiled. “What did she want to speak to me for, in her +nice little mincing voice! She belongs to hotels and I belong to +the—sea. Blossom and I—what has she got to do with Blossom!”</p> + +<p>But the little mincing voice had said, “I’d be pleased to see you—I +like you.” It had said, “I’d be pleased to see Blossom.”</p> + +<p>“She sha’n’t! I won’t have her! I won’t have Blossom see her!” Judith +stormed in her pain.</p> + +<p>The picture of the little frail wisp of a child who would never walk +was so distinct to her—and this other picture of the Dainty One who +walked and laughed, “See me!” The two little pictures, side by side, +were more than Judith could bear.</p> + +<p>The traps were nearly empty. It was going to be a poor lobster +season. To hotels like that one down the beach that would be a +disappointment. To Judith, who stood for fisher-folk, it would mean +serious loss. When the lobster season was a good one, more than one +little comfort and luxury found its way into more than one humble +fisher-home. And Blossom—Blossom would suffer if the lobster-traps +were empty. For Judith and her mother had agreed to set apart enough +of the lobster-money to get Blossom a wheel-chair. Judith had seen +one once on a trip to the nearest town, and ever since she had +dreamed about a little wheel-chair with Blossom in it. To wheel up +and down the smooth, hard sand, with Blossom laughing and crying, +“See me!”</p> + +<p>“There’s got to be lobsters!” Judith stormed, jerking up her traps +one after the other. “There <em>shall</em> be lobsters!”</p> + +<p>But she rowed back with the old brown dory almost as empty as when +she had rowed it toilsomely out to her traps.</p> + +<p>There were but three Lynns in the small home upshore. Two years ago +there had been six, but father and the boys, one day, had gone out of +sight beyond the bay and had never come into sight again. It is the +sad way with those “who go down to the sea in ships.”</p> + +<p>Judith was the only man left to ’tend the traps and fish in the safer +waters of the bay. At fourteen one is young to begin toil like that. +Even at sixteen one is not old. But Judith’s heart was as strong as +her pair of brown, boy-muscled arms. She and the old dory were well +acquainted with each other.</p> + +<p>To-day Judith did not hurry homeward across the stretch of bright +water. She let the old dory lag along almost at its own sweet will. +For Judith dreaded to go home with her news of the poor little “haul” +of lobsters. She knew so well how mother would sigh and how little +Blossom would try to smile. Blossom always tried to smile when the +news was bad. That was the <em>Blossomness</em> of her, Judith said fondly.</p> + +<p>“That’s Lynn luck,” mother would sigh. Poor mother, who was too worn +and sad to try to smile!</p> + +<p>“Never mind, Judy,” Blossom’s little, brave smile would say. “Never +mind—who cares!” But Judy knew who cared.</p> + +<p>Strange fancies came sometimes to the fisherman-girl in the great +dory, out there on the bay. Alone, with the sky above and the sea +beneath, the girl let her thoughts have loose rein and built her +frail castles in the salt, sweet air. Out there, she had been a +beautiful princess in a fairy craft, going across seas to her +kingdom; she had been a great explorer, traveling to unknown worlds; +she had been a pirate—a millionaire in his yacht—a sailor in a +man-of-war. She had always had a dream-Blossom with her, on her +wonder-trips, and sometimes they were altogether Blossom-dreams. Like +to-day—to-day it was a Blossom-dream, a wistful little one with not +much heart in it. They seemed to be drifting home, away from +something beautiful behind them that they had wanted very much. They +had been sailing after it—in the dream—with their hands stretched out +to reach it. And it had beckoned them on—and further on—with its +golden fingers, till at last it had vanished into the sunset, down +behind the sea, and left them empty-handed after all. They had had to +turn back without it. And Blossom—the little dream-Blossom in the +dream—had tried to smile.</p> + +<p>“Never mind, Judy,” she had said. “Never mind—who cares!” But they +had both cared so much!</p> + +<p>Then quite suddenly Judith’s fancy had changed the dream from a sad +one to a glad one. She had rested lazily on her great black oars and +painted another picture on her canvas of sea and sky—this time of +Blossom riding way over a beautiful glimmery sea-road in a little +wheel-chair, soft-cushioned and beautiful. She, Judith, followed in +the old dory, and Blossom laughed with delight and called back over +her shoulder, “See me! See me!”</p> + +<p>A whiff of night-breeze warned Judith that it was growing late and +the dream-fancies must stop. She leaned over the side of the dory and +pretended to drop them, one at a time, into the sea. That was another +of her odd little whimsies.</p> + +<p>“Good-by, sad dream—good-by, glad dream,” she said. “You will never +go ashore. You will always stay out here in the sea where I drop +you—unless I decide to dream you over again some day. If I do, +good-by till then.” For Judith never dreamed her day-dreams on land. +They were a part of the sea and the sea-sky and the old black dory.</p> + +<p>She must make her trip to the Hotel with her poor little haul of +lobsters, for she had promised all she got to Mrs. Ben. But for a +wonder Judith’s pride deserted her, and she decided to tramp away +down the beach in her fisherman-clothes. When had she done that +before! When <em>hadn’t</em> she walked the weary little distance inshore +and back, to and from her home, for the sake of going down the beach +in her own girl-things. But to-night—“Never mind, Judy—who cares!” +she said to herself, with a shrug. Let Mrs. Ben laugh—let the fine +people lounging about laugh—let everybody laugh! Who cared? To-night +Judith was tired, and the stout little heart had gone out of her.</p> + +<p>“Land!” laughed Mrs. Ben, in her kitchen door. But the sober face +under the old tarpaulin checked her. Mrs. Ben’s heart was tender.</p> + +<p>“I shouldn’t think I looked very landish,” Judith retorted. “And I +guess you won’t say ‘land!’ when you see your lobsters. That’s every +one I got to-day, Mrs. Ben!”</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Ben said “Land!” again. Then, with an unexpected whirl of +her big, comely person, she had her hands on the boy-girls’ shoulders +and was gently pushing her toward a chair by the window.</p> + +<p>“You poor dear, you! Never mind the lobsters. Just you set there in +that chair and eat some o’ my tarts! You look clean tuckered out.”</p> + +<p>“Not <em>clean</em> tuckered,” laughed Judith rather tremulously. It was +good to be pushed about like that by big, kind hands. And how good +the tarts were! She sank into the chair with a grateful sigh.</p> + +<p>“I don’t suppose you can be expected to bring lobsters when there +ain’t any in the traps! All is, the folks ’ll have to eat tarts!” +Mrs. Ben’s folks were the people who lounged about in gay summer +clothes. Judith could see them out of the window as she ate her +tarts.</p> + +<p>Some ladies were sitting on the doorsteps very near by, and their +voices drifted in to Judith with intervals of silence. She began to +notice what the voices were saying. They were talking about a little +figure in dainty white that was circling about not far away, and the +little figure in white was Judith’s acquaintance of the beach.</p> + +<p>One of the voices was a mother-voice—Judith was sure of that from the +tenderness in it. The other voice was just a plain <em>voice</em>, Judith +decided. It sounded interested and curious, and it began to ask +strange questions about the dainty little figure. Judith grew +interested, too—then, very interested indeed.</p> + +<p>Suddenly Judith caught her breath in an inarticulate little cry. For +she could hear what the mother-voice was answering.</p> + + + + +<h3><a name="jl2">Chapter II.</a></h3> + + +<p>“It seems very wonderful,” the cool, interested voice said, a +little more interested, if anything.</p> + +<p>“It seems glorious!” broke in the mother-voice; and the throb in it +beat upon Judith’s heart through the waves of air between them. +Judith’s heart was throbbing, too.</p> + +<p>“You can’t think how it ‘seems,’—you don’t know anything about it!” +the earnest, tremulous voice went on. “How can anyone know who never +had a little daughter?”</p> + +<p>“I had one once.” The other voice now was soft and earnest.</p> + +<p>“But she walked. <em>Your</em> little daughter walked. How can anyone know +whose little daughter always walk—”</p> + +<p>“She never walked.” It was very soft now, and the throb had crept +into it that was in the mother-voice and in Judith’s heart. “I only +had her a year.”</p> + +<p>They were both mother-voices! Judith could not see, but she felt sure +the two sat up a little nearer to each other and their hands touched.</p> + +<p>“Oh!—then you can know,” the first voice said, after a tiny silence. +“I will tell you all about it—there have only been a few I have +wanted to tell. It has seemed almost too precious and—and—sacred.”</p> + +<p>“I know,” the other said.</p> + +<p>“But you must begin right at the beginning, with me—at the time when +my little daughter was a year old, when the time came for her to +learn to walk. That is where my story begins.”</p> + +<p>“And mine ends. Go on.”</p> + +<p>“Well, you can see how I must have watched and waited and planned.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, yes, and planned—<em>I</em> planned.”</p> + +<p>“You poor dear!” Another tiny silence-space, while hand crept to +hand again, Judith was sure. Then the story went on.</p> + +<p>“You say I ought to have known. Everybody says I ought to have. +<em>They</em> knew, they say, and I was the baby’s mother. The baby’s mother +ought to have known. But that was just why. I was her mother—I +<em>wouldn’t</em> know. I kept putting it off. ‘Wait,’ I kept saying to +myself. ‘She isn’t old enough to walk yet; when she is old enough, +she will walk. Can’t you <em>wait?</em>’ And I waited. When they did not +any of them know, I kept trying to stand her on her poor little +legs—I wouldn’t stop trying. When she was fifteen months—sixteen +months—seventeen, eighteen—when she was two years old, I tried. +I would not let them talk to me. ‘Some children are so late in +walking,’ I said. ‘Her legs are such little ones!’ I would catch her +up from the floor and hug her fiercely. ‘They sha’n’t hurry you, my +darling. You shall take all the time you want. Then, some day, you’ll +surprise mother, won’t you? You’ll get up on your two little legs and +walk! And we’ll take hold of hands and walk out there to all those +bad people that try to say things to us. We’ll show them!’ But we +never did. When she was two and a half I began to believe it—perhaps +I had believed all along—and when she was three, I gave it up. ‘She +will never walk,’ I told them, and they let me alone. There was no +more need of talking then.”</p> + +<p>Judith was leaning forward, straining her ears to hear. She had +forgotten Mrs. Ben’s tarts—she had forgotten everything but the story +that was going on out there, out of her sight. It was so much—oh, how +much it was like Blossom’s story! When Blossom was three, Judith had +given up, too. But not till then. She had kept on and on trying to +teach the helpless little legs to walk. Father and mother and the +boys had given up, but Judith had kept on. “She <em>shall</em> walk!” she +had said.</p> + +<p>Sometimes she had taken Blossom down to the beach, tugging her all +the way in her own childish arms, and selected the hardest, smoothest +stretch of sand. “Now we’ll walk!” she had laughed, and Blossom had +laughed, too. “Stand up all nice and straight, darling, and walk all +beautiful to Judith!” But Blossom had never stood up all nice and +straight; she had never walked all beautiful to Judith. And when she +was three, Judith had given up.</p> + +<p>The story out there was going on: “After that I never tried to make +her walk again, poor little sweet! We carried her round in our arms +till we got her a little wheel-chair that she could wheel a little +herself. She liked that so much—she called it ‘walking.’ It would +have broken your heart to hear her say, ‘See me walk, mamma!’”</p> + +<p>“Oh, yes—yes, it would have,” the other voice responded gently. It +had grown a very gentle voice indeed. Judith wondered in the little +flash of thought she could spare from Blossom, if the other mother +were not thinking there might be harder things even than laying a +little daughter away in a little white casket.</p> + +<p>“But when she was five”—sudden animation, joy and a thrill of +laughter had taken possession of the voice that was telling the +story—“a little more than five—she’s just six now—when she was a +little more than five, they told us she could walk! There was a way! +It was not a very hard way, they said. A splendid doctor, with +a heart big enough to hold all the little crippled children in +the universe, would make her walk. And so—this is the end of the +story—we took her across the sea to him. Look at her now! Where +is she? Oh, there! Marie! Marie! Come here to mother!”</p> + +<p>Judith slipped away. She was never quite definite how she got there, +but she found herself presently in the old black dory that was drawn +up on the beach. It was the best place to think, and Judith wanted to +think. She wanted air enough and room enough to think in—this +Wonderful Thing took up so much room! It was so big—so wonderful!</p> + +<p>She sat a long time with her brown chin in her brown palms, her eyes +on the splendid expanse of shining, undulating sea before her. It +reached <em>’way across to him</em>—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 <em>him</em> 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—</p> + +<p>Judith sunk her brown chin deeper into the little scoop of her brown, +hard palms. Her eyes were beginning to shine. 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.</p> + +<p>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!</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“I’ll go over to-night after supper,” Judith said.</p> + +<p>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 <em>head!</em> That was Uncle Jem’s favorite +joke.</p> + +<p>“Judy! I hear ye stompin’ round out there. I’m layin’ low fur ye!” +the cheerful voice called, as Judith entered the little cabin.</p> + +<p>“Is Jem Three here?” demanded Judith.</p> + +<p>“<em>Here?</em>—Jemmy Three! I guess you’re failin’ in your mind, honey.”</p> + +<p>“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 astonishing speech. Uncle Jem turned to meet them both.</p> + +<p>“Wal, there’s the old dory—or ye mought swim,” he answered gravely. +He was used to Judy’s speeches.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>Strange Judith had not thought of the money! Money was so very hard +indeed to get, and a <em>mint</em> of it—</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“Not a <em>mint!</em>” she repeated.</p> + +<p>“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—”</p> + +<p>Judith told the thrilling little story with all the details at her +command. At its end Uncle Jem’s eyes were shining as hers had shone.</p> + +<p>“Judy!” he cried, “Judy, it’s got to be did! Ye’ve got to do it!”</p> + +<p>“Of course,” Judy answered, with rapt little brown face. “I’m <em>going</em> +to, Uncle Jem. But you must help me find a way.”</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“I suppose it’s—pretty far,” she murmured wistfully.</p> + +<p>“Oh, consid’able—consid’able,” the old man agreed vaguely. “But ye +won’t mind that. It won’t be fur <em>comin’ home!</em>”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“Hullo, Jude!”</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>“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?</p> + +<p>“Hullo, I <em>said</em>,” he repeated. “If you’ve left your manners to +home—”</p> + +<p>“Oh!—oh, hello, Jem! I guess I was busy thinking.”</p> + +<p>“Looked like it. Bad habit to get into. Better look out! I never +indulge, myself. Well, how’s luck?”</p> + +<p>“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?”</p> + +<p>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 shifted his bare toes +about in the sand. And when he spoke, his voice had certainly sounded +muttery.</p> + +<p>“Guess somethin’ ails your traps,” he had said. “Warn’t nothin’ the +matter with mine.”</p> + +<p>“Did you get more than three?”</p> + +<p>“Got a-plenty.”</p> + +<p>“Jemmy Three, how many’s a-plenty?”</p> + +<p>“’Bout twenty-four.”</p> + +<p>Jemmy Three had got twenty-four! Judith turned away in bitterness and +envy, and afterwards suspicion.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, he did,” groaned Judith.</p> + +<p>“Well, isn’t helping himself to your lobsters paying you back?”</p> + +<p>“Yes—oh, yes, if he <em>did</em>. But Jemmy Three never—”</p> + +<p>“How do you know he never? Is twenty-four to three a fair average? Is +it? Is it?”</p> + +<p>“No, oh, no! But I don’t believe—”</p> + +<p>“Oh, you needn’t believe! <em>Don’t</em> believe. Go right on finding your +traps empty and believing Jemmy Three’d never! I thought you were +going to save your lobster-money for Blossom.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I was—I am going to! I’m going to save it to take her across the +ocean to that doctor. It was going to be a little wheel-chair, but +now it’s going to be <em>legs</em>.”</p> + +<p>“But supposing there isn’t any lobster-money? You can’t do much with +three lobsters a day. If somebody helps himself—”</p> + +<p>“Stop!” cried Judith angrily, and the evil thought slunk away. But it +came again—it kept coming. One by one, little trivial circumstances +built themselves into suspicions, until the little brown freckles on +Jemmy Three’s face came to spell “Dishonesty” to Judith Lynn. If it +had not been for the terrible need of lobster-money—Judith would have +fought harder against the evil thing if it had not been for that.</p> + +<p>“I’ve got to have it! There’s got to be lobsters in the traps!” she +cried to herself. “The doctor over there might die! If he died before +I could carry Blossom to him, do you think I’d ever forgive Jemmy +Three?”—which showed that the Evil Thing had done its work. It might +slink away now and stay.</p> + +<p>It was a hard night for Judith. Joyful thoughts and evil ones +conflicted with each other, and among them all she could not sleep. +It was nearly morning before she snuggled up against Blossom’s little +warm body and shut her eyes. Her plans were made, as far as she could +make them. To-morrow she would go down and question the hotel mother, +as Uncle Jem said. To-morrow—she must not wait. And after that—after +that, heaven and earth and the waters of the sea must help her. There +must be no faithlessness or turning back.</p> + +<p>“You shall walk, little Blossom,” Judith whispered softly.</p> + +<p>How could she know how soon the sea would help?</p> + + + + +<h3><a name="jl3">Chapter III.</a></h3> + + +<p>“I want to go, Judy—please, please!”</p> + +<p>Blossom was up on her elbow, pleading earnestly. Judith was dressing.</p> + +<p>“It’s a Blossom day—you know it’s a Blossom day! And Jemmy Three’ll +carry me down. <em>I</em> know Jemmy Three will! I haven’t been out +a-dorying for such a long time; Judy—please!”</p> + +<p>It was always hard work for Judith to refuse Blossom anything. +Besides—Judith went to the window and lifted the scant little +curtain—yes, it certainly was a “Blossom day.” The sky was +Blossom-blue, the sea spread away out of sight, Blossom-smooth and +shining. And the little pleader there in the bed looked so eager and +longing—so Blossom-sweet! She should go “a-dorying,” decided Judith, +but it would not be Jemmy Three that carried her down to the sea.</p> + +<p>“You little tease, come on, then!” laughed Judith. “I’ll dress you in +double-quick, for I’ve got to get out to my traps.”</p> + +<p>Judith had overslept, for a wonder. When had Judith done a thing like +that before! For two hours Blossom had been awake, lying very quietly +for fear of waking Judy; poor, tired Judy must not be disturbed. +Downstairs mother had gone away to her work at the beautiful summer +cottage down-beach, beyond the hotel. It was ironing-day at the +cottage, and all day mother would stand at the ironing-board, ironing +dainty summer skirts and gowns.</p> + +<p>“I’ll ride in front an’ be a—a what’ll I be, Judy?”</p> + +<p>“A little bother of a Blossom in a pink dress,” laughed Judith, as +she buttoned the small garments with the swift, deft fingers that had +buttoned them for six years.</p> + +<p>“No, no! a—don’t you know, the kind of a thing that brings good luck? +You read it to me your own self, Judy Lynn!”</p> + +<p>“I guess you mean a <em>mastif</em>,” Judith said slowly. “Queer it sounds +so much like a dog!—it didn’t make me think of a dog when I read it.”</p> + +<p>“M-m—yes, I’ll be a mastif”—Blossom’s voice was doubtful; it hadn’t +reminded her so much of a dog, either, at the time. “An’ so you’ll +have good luck. You’ll find your traps brim-up full, Judy! Then I +guess you’ll say, ‘Oh, how thankful I am I brought that child!’”</p> + +<p>Judith caught the little crippled figure closer in a loving hug. “I’m +thankful a’ready!” she cried.</p> + +<p>They hurried through the simple breakfast that mother had left for +them, and then Judith shouldered the joyous child and tramped away +over the half-mile that separated them from the old black dory.</p> + +<p>“Now, Judy, now le’s begin right off an’ pretend! Go ahead—you +pretending?”</p> + +<p>“I’m pretending. I’m a chariot and you’re a fine lady in pink ging—”</p> + +<p>“Ging—!” scorned Blossom. “Silk, Judy—in pink silk, a-ridin’ in the +chariot. It’s a very nice, <em>easy</em> chariot an’ doesn’t joggle her +hip—Oh, I forgot she hasn’t got any hips, of course! Well, here she +goes a-riding and a-riding along, just as comfortable, but pretty +soon she says—we’re coming to the beautiful part now, Judy!—‘I guess +I better get out an’ walk now,’ she says. Now pretend she <em>got out +and walked, Judy</em>—you pretending?”</p> + +<p>“I’m pretending,” cried Judy, her clasp on the little figure +tightening and her eyes shining mysteriously. Sometime the little +fine lady should get out and walk! She should—she should!</p> + +<p>“Now she’s walking—no, she isn’t, either, she’s riding, and it isn’t +in a chariot, it’s in her sister’s arms, an’ she’s <em>Blossom</em>. Don’t +le’s pretend any more, Judy. There’s days it’s easy to an’ there’s +days it’s hard to—it’s a hard-to day, I guess, to-day. Those days you +can’t pretend get out and walk very well.”</p> + +<p>“Pretend I’m an elephant!” laughed Judy, though the laugh trembled in +her throat. “That’s an easy-to-pretend! And you’re an—Oh, an Arab, +driving me! You must talk <em>Arabese</em>, Blossom!”</p> + +<p>Blossom was gay again when they got to the dory, and Judith dropped +her into the bow, out of her own weary arms.</p> + +<p>“Now say ‘Heave-ho!—heave-ho’!” commanded Judith, “to help me drag +her down, you know. Here we go!”</p> + +<p>“I don’t know the Arabese for ‘heave-ho,’” laughed little Blossom, +mischievously. “I could say it in American.”</p> + +<p>“Say it in ‘American,’ then, you little rogue!” panted Judith, all +her tough little muscles a-stretch for the haul.</p> + +<p>They were presently out on the water, rocking gently with the gentle +waves. And Blossom was presently shouting with delight. Her little +lean, sharp face was keen with excitement.</p> + +<p>“Now pretend—now, now, now! It’s easy to out here! The fine lady’s +going abroad, Judy—do you hear? She’s going right straight over +’cross this sea, in this han’some ship! When she gets there she’ll +<em>step out</em> on the shore an’ say what a beautiful voyage she’s had, +an’ good-by to the cap’n—you’re the cap’n, Judy. An’ you’ll say, ‘Oh, +my lady, sha’n’t I help you ashore?’ An’ she’ll laugh right out, +it’s so ridic’lous! ‘Help me, my good man!’ she’ll ’xclaim. ‘I guess +you must think I can’t walk!’”</p> + +<p>Blossom’s face was alive with the joy of the beautiful “pretend.” +But Judith’s face was sober.</p> + +<p>“Laugh, why don’t you, Judy?” cried the child.</p> + +<p>“I’m laugh—I mean I will, dear. But I’ve got to row like everything +now, so you must do the pretending for us both. We’ve got to get out +there to those traps before you can say ‘scat’!”</p> + +<p>“Scat!” shrilled Blossom.</p> + +<p>It was Blossom’s sharp eyes that discovered Jem Three “out there.” +Judith was bending to her work.</p> + +<p>“There’s Jemmy Three, Judy! True-honest, out there a-trapping! He +looks ’s if he was coming away from our place—he is, Judy! He’s got +our lobsters, to s’prise us, maybe.”</p> + +<p>“It won’t surprise me,” muttered Judy, in the clutch of the Evil +Thought again. She was watching the distant boat now keenly, her eyes +hard with suspicion. Jem Three it surely was, and he was rowing +slowly away from Judith’s lobster “grounds.” It seemed to her his +dory was deep in the water as if heavily weighted. He had been—had +been to her traps again. He was whistling—Judith could hear the +faint, sweet sound—but that didn’t hide anything. Let him whistle all +he wanted to—she knew what he had been up to!</p> + +<p>“Ship aho-oy!” came across faintly to them, but it was only Blossom +that answered.</p> + +<p>“Ahoy! Ship ahoy!” she sent back clearly. Judith bent over her +toiling oars.</p> + +<p>“He’s going away from us, we sha’n’t meet him,” Blossom said in +disappointment.</p> + +<p>“Of course he’s going away—of course he won’t meet us,” Judith +retorted between her little white teeth.</p> + +<p>“An’ I wanted to ‘speak him,’” the disappointed little voice ran on; +“I was going to call out, ‘How’s the folks abroad? We’re on our way +’cross, in the Judiana B.,’—this is the Judiana B., Judy, after both +of us. B. stands for me.”</p> + +<p>“Funny way to spell me!” laughed Judith with an effort. She must hide +away her black suspicions. Not for the world would she have Blossom +know! Blossom was so fond of Jemmy Three, and she had so few folks to +be fond of.</p> + +<p>A surprise was waiting for them “out there.” The traps were pretty +well loaded! Not full, any of them, but not one of them empty. In +all, there were seventeen great, full-grown, glistening, black +fellows for Blossom to shudder over as she never failed to do—Blossom +was no part of a fisherman.</p> + +<p>“He didn’t dare to take them all,” thought Judith, refusing to let +the Evil Thought get away from her. “Probably he saw us coming. If +he’d let ’em alone there might have been a lot more—perhaps there +were fifty!”</p> + +<p>“One, two, three,”—counted Blossom slowly. “Why, Judy, there’s +seventeen. You didn’t s’pose there’d be as many as seventeen, did +you? Isn’t that a splendid lot?”</p> + +<p>“Not as splendid as fifty,” answered Judy, assured now that there had +been as many as that.</p> + +<p>“Seventeen from fifty is thirty—thirty-two,” whispered the Evil Thing +in her ear. Evil things cannot be expected to be good in arithmetic +or anything else. “So he helped himself to thirty-two, did he! Nice +haul! Thirty-two big fellows will bring him in—”</p> + +<p>“Don’t!” groaned Judith.</p> + +<p>“I don’t wonder you say ‘don’t!’ Thirty-two nice big fellows would +have brought <em>you</em> in a pretty little sum. You could have put it away +in a stocking in your bureau drawer, for the Blossom-fund.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I was going to! I was going to!”</p> + +<p>“Thought so—well, you’ll have to get along with seventeen. That comes +of having boys like that for friends!”</p> + +<p>“He isn’t my friend!” Judith cried sharply to the Evil Thing in her +breast. “He never will be again. If it wasn’t for Uncle Jem I’d never +look at him again as long as I live!”</p> + +<p>All this little dialogue had gone on unsuspected by the little pink +“mastif” in the bow of the little dory. Blossom had been busy edging +out of the reach of the ugly things in the bottom of the boat. If +Judith had only edged away from her Ugly Thing!</p> + +<p>Another surprise was even now on the way—a surprise so stupendous and +unexpected that, beside it, the lobster-surprise would dwindle away +into insignificance and be quite forgotten for the rest of the day. +And oddly enough, it was to be Blossom who should be discoverer +again.</p> + +<p>“I’m going a little farther out and fish awhile,” Judith announced +over her last trap. “I’ve got all my tackle aboard and maybe I can +find something Mrs. Ben will want. You sit still as a mouse, Blossom, +for I cant’t be watching you and fishing, too.”</p> + +<p>“I’ll sit still as <em>two</em> mice. Needn’t think o’ me!” answered the +little one proudly. Did Judy think she was little like that? Just +because she hadn’t legs that would go! They didn’t need to go, did +they, out here in the middle of the sea!</p> + +<p>“What makes it look so ripply an’ bubbly out there?” she questioned +with grown-up dignity. Judy should see she could sit still and talk +like anybody.</p> + +<p>“Where?” asked Judith absently. She did not take the trouble to +follow the little pointing finger with her eyes.</p> + +<p>“<em>There</em>—why don’t you look? It’s all pretty an’ ripply an’ kind of +queer. Doesn’t look like plain water ’xactly. Look, Judy—why don’t +you?”</p> + +<p>“I am looking now—Oh, Oh, wait! It looks like—Blossom, I believe it’s +a school! That’s the way the water always loo—Blossom, Blossom, do +you hear me, it’s a school! A school of mackerel—a <em>school</em>, I tell +you!”</p> + +<p>“Well, you needn’t keep on a-telling me.” Blossom, anyway, was calm. +“I’m not deaf o’ hearing, am I? If it’s a school, le’s us go right +straight out there an’ fish it up, Judy.”</p> + +<p>Judy was going right straight out there with all the strength of her +powerful young arms. She was not calm; her face was quivering with +excitement and joy. A school! A school! Oh, but that meant so much +for the Blossom-fund, to put away in the stocking in the bureau +drawer! If it should prove a big school—but she and Blossom could not +manage a big one, never in the world. If Jemmy Thr—no, no, not Jemmy +Three! This was not Jemmy Three’s school—what had he to do with it?</p> + +<p>In all the stress and excitement of sending the old dory out there +where the water was rippling its news to her, Judy had time to think +of several things. She had time to remember how she and Jem Three had +used, from the time they were little brown things in pinafores, to +plan about their first school o’ mackerel—what they would do with all +the wealth it should bring them, how they would share it together, +how they would pull in the silvery, glistening fellows, side by side. +What plans—what plans they had made! They had practiced a shrill, +piercing call that was to summon the one of them who should happen to +be absent when the “school” was descried out there in the bay. Even +lately, big and old as they had grown, they had laughingly reviewed +that call. Now—this minute—if Judith were to utter it, piercing and +far-carrying and jubilant, perhaps Jemmy Three might hear and come +plowing through the waves to get his share—had he any share? Because +when they were little brown things they had made vows, did that give +him any rights now?</p> + +<p>Of course, if—if things had been different—lobster-things—Judith +might have pursed her lips into that triumphant summons. But—</p> + +<p>“Sit still! I’m going to swing her round!” called Judith sharply. +“I’ve got to go ashore for father’s old net. It’s in the boat-house.”</p> + +<p>“You won’t leave me, Judy—promise you’ll take me out with you!” +pleaded Blossom, eagerly.</p> + +<p>“I’ll have to,” Judith responded briefly. “There isn’t time to carry +you home—I don’t dare <em>take</em> time.”</p> + +<p>She made her plans as she went in, and put out again with the clumsy +heap of netting towering at her feet. The thing she meant to do was +stupendous for a girl to attempt alone, but she was going to attempt +it. The shabby old net had lain in its corner, useless, for two +years. Now it should be used—she, Judith Lynn would use it! She was +glad as she pulled seaward again that she had thrown in two +scoops—perhaps when the time came Blossom could make out to use one a +little.</p> + +<p>The net was like a long—a very long—fence, with its lower edge +weighted heavily and its upper edge provided with wooden floats, to +insure its standing erect under water. When in position properly it +surrounded the school of fish, completely fencing in the darting, +glimmering, silver fellows. Then the circle could be gradually +narrowed and the fish brought together in a mass, when scoops could +be used to dip them up into the boat.</p> + +<p>The school once located, Judith began to circle slowly round it, +“paying out” her fence of netting with no small difficulty, but +gradually surrounding the unsuspected fish, until at length she had +them penned.</p> + +<p>“What did I tell you! I told you I’d be the—the mastif, Judy!” +Blossom chattered. “I told you you’d say how thankful you was you +brought that child!”</p> + +<p>“How thankful I am!” chattered Judy. Then, launched into the thick of +the arduous work, they both fell into breathless silence and only +worked. It was not much Blossom could do, but she did her little +splendidly. And Judith toiled with all her strength.</p> + +<p>They stopped at last, not because there were no more of the +glistening, silver fellows about them, but because the old black dory +was weighted almost to the water’s edge. They had to stop. And then +began Judith’s terrible hour. For the heavy boat must somehow be +worked back, a weary little at a time, to the distant shore. Judith +set herself to this new task gallantly, but it was almost too much +for her. Over and over again it seemed to her she must give it up and +toss overboard part, at least, of her silver freight, to lighten her +load. But over and over again she nerved herself to another spurt of +strength.</p> + +<p>She must do it! She could not give up! She would shut her eyes, like +this, and row ten more strokes—just ten more. Then she would row ten +with her eyes open. Ten, shut—ten, open. Perhaps that would help. She +tried it. She tried other poor little devices—calling the strokes +“eenie, meenie, minie, mo,” the way she and Jemmy Three had “counted +out” for tag when they were little—brown—things. Her strength—was +surely—giving out—it shouldn’t give out!</p> + +<p>Blossom, watching silently from her weary perch, grew frightened at +Judy’s tense, set face and began to sob. And then Judy must find +breath enough to laugh reassuringly and to nod over her shoulder at +the child.</p> + +<p>They had gone out late—had been out a wearisome time—and the journey +back to land was measured off by slow, laboring oar-strokes that +scarcely seemed to move the great boat. So it was late afternoon when +at length Judith’s hard task was done. She seemed to possess but one +desire—to rest. To get Blossom over the remaining half mile between +her and home and then to tumble over on the bed and sleep—what more +could anyone wish than that?</p> + +<p>But there would be more than that to do. She must get food for tired +little Blossom, if not for herself. And before this towered +gigantically the two last feats of strength that faced her and seemed +to laugh at her with sardonic glee.</p> + +<p>“Drag me up on the beach—drag me up!” the old black dory taunted her.</p> + +<p>“Carry me home, Judy, I’m so tired!—carry me home,” Blossom pleaded, +like a little wilted blossom.</p> + +<p>She did both things, but she never quite realized just how she could +have done them. She remembered telling herself she couldn’t and then +finding them done. Of covering her load of mackerel with an old +rubber blanket she was dimly conscious. It was not until she lay +drowsing in utter exhaustion on her own bed that she thought of all +of the rest that must be done to that boat-load of precious freight. +Then she tried to sit up, with a cry of distress.</p> + +<p>“I must go! I cant’t stay here! Or I shall lose—Oh, what shall I +lose?” she groaned in her drowsiness and dread. Something would +happen if she did not get up at once—she would lose something that +she <em>mustn’t</em> lose. She must get up now, at once.</p> + +<p>“I shall lose Blossom—no, I mean Blossom will lose—oh, yes, Blossom +will lose her legs, if I don’t get up,” she drowsed, and fell +asleep.</p> + + + + +<h3><a name="jl4">Chapter IV.</a></h3> + + +<p>Judith awoke with a bewildering sensation of guilt and need of +action. What had happened? What had she done that she ought not to +have done?—or was it something that she ought to? Memory struggled +back to her dimly, then flashed upon her in sudden clearness.</p> + +<p>She had taken a school of mackerel—that was what she had done that +was praiseworthy. She had left them down there in the old black dory, +undressed and unpacked—that was the thing she ought not to have done. +That was the awful thing! For if they were not dressed and packed at +once—</p> + +<p>“Oh, I shall lose them! I shall lose them!” moaned poor Judith, +sitting up in bed and wringing her hands in the keenness of her +distress. “How could I have <em>let</em> myself fall asleep! How could I +have slept all this time like a log!”</p> + +<p>It was very dark, so it must be midnight or later. There was no light +anywhere, on land or sea, or in Judith’s troubled soul. To her +remorseful mind all her terrible labor and strain of body had been in +vain; she had gone to sleep and spoiled everything, everything!</p> + +<p>Judith had never been so utterly tired out as when she went to sleep; +she had never been so tired as she was now. She felt lame in every +joint and muscle of her body. But her conscience stood up before her +in the dark and arraigned her with pitiless, scathing scorn.</p> + +<p>“Well, aren’t you ashamed of yourself? See what you’ve done! All +those beautiful fish lost, when you might have saved them—just by +staying awake and attending to them. A little thing like that! And +you worked so hard to get them—I was proud of you for that. Ah-h, but +I’m ashamed of you now!”</p> + +<p>“Don’t! don’t—you hurt!” sighed Judith, “I’ll get up now, this +minute, and go down there. Don’t you see me getting up? I’ve got one +shoe on now.”</p> + +<p>Judith was not experienced in the dressing of many fish at a time and +the packing of them in barrels for market. At sixteen, how can one +be—and one a girl? But she knew in a rather indefinite way the +importance of having it done promptly. She remembered father’s and +the boys’ last school of fish—how she had hurried down to the shore +and watched the dory come creeping heavily in, how the boys had +cheered, as they came, how father had let her help at the dressing, +and mother had brought down hot coffee for them all and then “fallen +to,” herself and worked like a man. How they all had worked to get +the barrels packed full of the shining layers in time for the steamer +next morning!</p> + +<p>All this Judith remembered as she crept silently away through the +darkness and turned toward the salty spray that the wind tossed +in her face. That had been a phenomenally large school of +mackerel—eighteen barrels for market in the distant city. Judith was +not quite sure, but she thought the check that came back to father +had been for a hundred and fifty dollars. Mackerel had been in great +demand then. A hundred and fifty dollars! Judith stopped short and +caught her breath.</p> + +<p>“But my school was just a little one,” she thought, “and maybe people +aren’t very mackerel hungry now.” Still, a hundred dollars—or even +fifty—fifty dollars would go so far toward that doctor across the +sea! Supposing she had lost fifty dollars! She hurried on through the +black night, not knowing what she should do when she got to her +destination, but eager to do something. The lantern she carried cast +a small glimmer into the great dark.</p> + +<p>Judith was not afraid—how long had it been since she was afraid of +the dark? But a distant thrill shot through her when she saw another +faint glimmer ahead of her. Then it seemed to divide into two +glimmers—they blinked at her like evil eyes. They were straight +ahead; she was going toward them! She must go toward them if she went +to the old dory drawn up on the beach.</p> + +<p>“And I’m goin!” Judy said defiantly. “Blink away, you old bad-y +two-eyes! Wait till I get there and fix you!” It helped to laugh a +little and nod defiance at the blinking eyes.</p> + +<p>The salty spray increased to a gentle rain, buffeting her cheeks. The +steady boom of the breakers was in her ears like the familiar voice +of a friend. Judith tramped on resolutely.</p> + +<p>The lights were two lanterns, sheltered from the wind, beside the old +black dory. Judith came upon them and cried out in astonishment. For +she had come upon something else—a boy, dressing fish as if his life +depended on it!</p> + +<p>“Jemmy Three!” she ejaculated shrilly.</p> + +<p>The boy neither turned about nor stopped.</p> + +<p>“Hullo! That you, Jude? Got a lantern? Take that knife there an’ go +to work like chain lightnin’. I’ve filled two barrels—there isn’t any +time to lose, now, I tell you! Steamer’s due at seven.”</p> + +<p>“But—but—I don’t understand—” faltered Judith.</p> + +<p>“Well, you needn’t, till you get plenty o’ time. Understandin’ don’t +dress no fish.” Jemmy Three, like Jem One, had missed his rightful +share of schooling. “What we got to do now is dress fish.”</p> + +<p>Judith went to work obediently, but the wonder went on in her mind. +What did it all mean? How had Jemmy Three found out about the +mackerel? Why was he down here in the dead of night dressing and +packing them?</p> + +<p>By and by the boy saw fit to explain in little jerks over his +shoulder. Judith pieced them together into a strange, beautiful story +that made her throat throb.</p> + +<p>“Saw you had a load here—saw ’twas mackerel—knew they’d got to be +’tended to—’tended to ’em,” Jemmy Three slung over his shoulder, as +he worked.</p> + +<p>“Suspicioned you’d struck a school, and gone home clean tuckered. Oh, +but you’re a smart one, Jude! Couldn’t no other girl ’a’ done it, +sir, this side o’ the Atlantic!”</p> + +<p>He caught up the dressed fish and bent over a fresh barrel; his voice +sounded muffled and hollow to Judith.</p> + +<p>“Knew there weren’t no time to spare—nobody hereabouts to help +out—went at it myself all flyin’,—been down here since seven +o’clock.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, Jemmy!” Judith trembled. The throb in her throat hurt her. “What +time is it now?” she asked.</p> + +<p>A grunt issued from the barrel depths. “Time! Ain’t any time now! I +told you we’d got to fly!”</p> + +<p>It was almost twelve. They worked on, for the most part silently, +until daylight began to redden the east. One barrel after another was +headed up by Jemmy Three’s tireless hands. Judith counted barrels +mechanically as she toiled.</p> + +<p>“Four!” she cried. Then, “Five!” “Six!”</p> + +<p>“There’ll be a good eight—you see,” Jem Three said, rolling a new one +into position. “You’ll get a good fifty dollars, Jude; see if you +don’t! How’s that for one haul? Ain’t any other girl could ’a’ done +it!”</p> + +<p>“Oh, don’t!” sobbed Judith suddenly. She let a little silver fellow +slip to the ground, half-dressed, and went over to Jemmy Three.</p> + +<p>“Don’t say another word—don’t dress another fish—don’t move till I +tell you!” she cried. “I cant’t stand it another minute! I—I thought +you helped yourself to my lobsters—I <em>thought</em> I thought it. And +you’ve been here all night working for me—”</p> + +<p>“Oh!” cried Jemmy Three softly. But he did not stop working.</p> + +<p>“I thought that was why there were only three yesterday—I thought +there’d have been fifty to-day,” ran on Judith. The new daylight +lighted her ashamed face redly, like a blush.</p> + +<p>“There wouldn’t ’a’ been but five—” said Jemmy Three, then caught +himself up in confusion. The blush was on his face now.</p> + +<p>Judith’s cry rang out above the sea-talk. “Then you <em>put some in!</em>” +she cried, “instead of helping yourself. You put some in my traps, +Jemmy Three—that’s what you did! You put in <em>twelve!</em>”</p> + +<p>“Guess there’s somethin’ the matter with your traps, Jude,” muttered +the boy. “Guess they better be overhauled—guess a fellow’s gotter +right to go shares, ain’t he?”</p> + +<p>“Jemmy Three, I’m going to hug you!”</p> + +<p>“Oh, oh—say, look out; I’m all scales!”</p> + +<p>“I had scales on my eyes, but they’ve fallen off now,” laughed the +girl tremulously. “It’s worse to have scales on your eyes than all +over the rest o’ you. I can see things as plain as day now, +and—and—you look perfectly beautiful!”</p> + +<p>“Hold on—I’m dressin’ fish! The steamer’s due at seven—”</p> + +<p>“I don’t care if she’s due this minute, I’ve got to talk! If she was +in plain sight—if I could see her smokestack—I should have to talk. I +tell you I can <em>see</em> now, and you look splendid—splendid, and I look +like a little black—blot. To think of my being up home asleep, and +you working down here, dressing <em>my</em> fish—and me thinking those mean +thoughts of you! It makes me so ashamed I cant’t hold my kn-knife.”</p> + +<p>Judith was crying now in good earnest. She had sunk down on the sand, +and her crouching figure with the red glow from the east upon it +looked oddly childish and small. Jemmy Three saw it over his +shoulder.</p> + +<p>“Look a-here, Judy,” he said gently, dropping his own knife and going +over to the rocking, sobbing figure. “You look <em>a-here</em>, I tell you! +What you cryin’ for, with eight barrels o’ fish ’most packed an’ a +good fifty dollars ’most in your pocket? You better laugh! Come on, +get up, and let’s give a rouser! Three cheers for the only girl in +the land o’ the free an’ the home o’ the brave that darst tackle a +school o’ mack’rel alone! Hip, hip—”</p> + +<p>“Jemmy, Jemmy, don’t!”</p> + +<p>“<em>Hooray!</em> Now let’s dress fish. You’re all right—don’t you worry +about bein’ a blot, when I tell you you’re a reg’lar brick! I’m proud +o’ you!”</p> + +<p>It was the longest speech Jemmy Three had ever made, and the +peroration surprised himself as much as it did Judith. He put up his +hand and cleared something away from his eyes—it couldn’t have been +scales, for he left the scales there.</p> + +<p>At five mother came hurrying down to find Judith. The scale-strewn +beach and the scale-strewn children, the barrels in orderly rows +waiting to be rolled to the little landing-place of the steamer, the +heap of clumsy wet netting—all told her the whole astonishing story. +And what they did not tell, Judith supplemented eagerly.</p> + +<p>“I declare! I declare!” gasped mother in mingled pride and pity, “you +two poor things, putting in like this! You’ll be tired to +death—you’ll be sick abed!”</p> + +<p>“Guess we’ll weather it,” nodded Jemmy Three, working steadily. “But +if you think we ain’t hungry enough to eat a pine shing—”</p> + +<p>“I’ll go right home and boil some coffee and eggs and bring ’em down, +and then I’ll go to work, too,” cried mother energetically. “You poor +starved things!”</p> + +<p>After a salt toilet in the surf, they ate a hurried breakfast with +keen relish. Judith had forgotten her aching joints and lame muscles, +and Jemmy Three had forgotten his sleepless night. Victory lay just +ahead of them, and who cared for muscles or sleep!</p> + +<p>“This is the best bread ’n’ butter I ever ate,” said Judith between +bites.</p> + +<p>There proved to be the “good eight” barrels, when they were done, and +they were done by six o’clock, or a very little after. By half-past +six, the barrels had been rolled down the slope of the beach to the +little wharf not far away. Then the tired two rested, and remembered +muscles and sleep.</p> + +<p>They dropped in the soft, moist sand and rubbed their aching arms.</p> + +<p>“I’m proud o’ <em>you</em>, Jemmy!” Judith said shyly, and looked away over +the water. Her repentance had come back and lay heavily on her heart. +She longed unutterably to recall those evil thoughts—to have another +chance out there beyond to summon Jemmy Three with the little shrill +old signal. How she would send it shrilling forth now!</p> + +<p>“Jemmy,” she said slowly, as they waited, “you know our signal, don’t +you? The one we used to practice so much.”</p> + +<p>For answer Jemmy Three pursed his lips and sent out a clear +“carrying” cry.</p> + +<p>“Well, I wish—don’t you know what I wish?”</p> + +<p>“’Twas Christmas,” Jemmy said flippantly, but he knew. He dug his +bare toes in the sand—a sign of embarrassment.</p> + +<p>“I wish I’d called you out there at the school!” lamented Judith, +“even if you couldn’t have heard. I wish—I wish—I <em>wish</em> I’d called! +If I ever strike another school—Jemmy, I’d give you half o’ this one +if I dared to. But I’m afraid to have Blossom wait—I don’t <em>dare</em> +to!”</p> + +<p>“O’ course not,” agreed Jem Three vaguely. He did not at all know +what Judith meant. Girls had queer ways of beginnin’ things in the +middle like that. No knowin’ what a girl was drivin’ at, half the +time!</p> + +<p>“Jemmy—say—”</p> + +<p>“What say? Ain’t that smoke out there?”</p> + +<p>“No, it’s a cloud. Jemmy Three, I’m going to tell you something. I +<em>want</em> to. I’m going to tell you what that money’s going to do—you’re +listening, aren’t you?”</p> + +<p>“With both ears—go ahead.”</p> + +<p>“Well—oh, it’s going to be something so <em>beautiful</em>, Jemmy! I never +knew till day before yesterday that you <em>could</em> do anything so +beautiful—I mean that anybody could. I never dreamed it! But you +can—somebody can! There’s a man can, Jemmy! All you need is money to +take you across to him and—there’s the money!” waving her hand toward +the rows of barrels. Her eyes were shining like twin stars. She had +forgotten aches and lameness again.</p> + +<p>“I told Uncle Jem,” she went on rapidly, while Jem Three gazed at her +in puzzled wonder and thought more things about girls. “He told me to +go down to the hotel and ask that other little girl’s mother, and I +meant to go last night! But I went to sleep last night! So I’m going +to-day—I’m going to ask her to tell me just exactly how to do it.”</p> + +<p>“Do what?” inquired Jem Three quietly. That was the only way to do +with girls—pull ’em up smart, like that!</p> + +<p>“Mercy! Haven’t I told you?” cried Judith. “Well, then—Jemmy, if you +were a little mite of a thing—a Blossom, say—and a fairy came to you +and said, ‘Wish a wish, my dear; what would you rather have in all +the world?’ what would you answer, Jemmy? Remember, if you were a +little mite of a Blossom with a—with a—little broken stem.” Judith’s +voice sank to a tender softness. She didn’t know she was “making +poetry.”</p> + +<p>The boy with his toes deep in the sand was visibly embarrassed. +Whatever poetry lay soul-deep within him, there was none he could +call to his lips.</p> + +<p>“Wouldn’t you answer her, ‘Legs to walk with’?” went on the girl +beside him softly. “You know you would, Jemmy! <em>I</em> would—everybody +would. You’d say, ‘The beautifulest thing in the world would be to +<em>walk</em>—dear fairy, I want to walk so much!’ And then supposing—are +you supposing?—the fairy waved her wand over you and you—<em>walked!</em> +Do you know what you’d say then? <em>I</em> know—you’d say, ‘See me! Judy, +see me! Jemmy, everybody, see me!’”</p> + +<p>Judith laughed to herself under her breath. The twin stars in her +eyes shone even a little brighter.</p> + +<p>“The fairy’s a great doctor—he’s across there, ’way, ’way out of +sight. He’s going to wave his wand over Blossom. He waved it over +another little broken girl, <em>and she walked</em>. I saw her. <em>She</em> said, +‘See me!’—I heard her. That’s what the money is going to do, Jemmy.”</p> + +<p>“Gee!” breathed Jemmy softly. It was his way of making poetry.</p> + +<p>“And you see, I don’t dare to wait—I’m afraid something might happen +to that doctor.”</p> + +<p>“O’ course!—you go down there all flyin’ an’ see that woman, Jude.”</p> + +<p>And that afternoon Judith went. It was to Mrs. Ben she went first; +she felt acquainted with Mrs. Ben.</p> + +<p>“Can I see—I’d like to see that mother whose little girl can walk,” +Judith said eagerly.</p> + +<p>“Land!” ejaculated Mrs. Ben.</p> + +<p>“I mean,” explained Judith, smiling, “whose little girl was lame and +a doctor made her walk by waving his wa—I mean by—by curing her. I +heard her telling another mother. I’d like to see—do you suppose I +could see that lady?”</p> + +<p>“I guess I know who you mean—there ain’t been but one little girl +here lately,” Mrs. Ben said. “But there ain’t any now. They’ve gone +away.”</p> + + + + +<h3><a name="jl5">Chapter V.</a></h3> + + +<p>Judith went straight to Uncle Jem, sobbing all the way +unconsciously; she was not conscious of anything but what Mrs. Ben +had said.</p> + +<p>“They’ve gone away!—they’ve gone away!—they’ve gone away!” It +reiterated itself to her in dull monotony, keeping slow time with the +throbbing pain of her disappointment.</p> + +<p>Uncle Jem heard her coming—in some surprise, she came so fast. What +was the child hurrying like that for? What had happened?</p> + +<p>“I hear ye, child!” he called cheerily. The time-worn little +pleasantry did him service as usual. “I’m layin’ low for ye!”</p> + +<p>She crossed the outer threshold and the little box of a kitchen +without slackening her excited pace, and appeared in the old man’s +doorway, breathless and flushed.</p> + +<p>“It’s too late!” she gasped, briefly. Then, because she needed +comforting and Uncle Jem was her comforter of old, her head went down +on the patchwork quilt that covered his twisted old frame, and she +cried like a grief-struck little child.</p> + +<p>“There, there, deary!” he crooned, his twisted fingers traveling +across her hair, “jest you lay there an’ cry it all out—don’t ye +hurry any. When ye get all done an’ good an’ ready, tell Uncle Jem +what it’s all about. But take your time, little un—take your time.”</p> + +<p>The child was worn out in every thread of the over-strained young +body. The excitement and nervous rack of the last twenty-four hours +was having sway now, and would not be put aside. And the keen +disappointment that Mrs. Ben’s words had brought, added to all the +rest, had proved too much even for Judith Lynn. She cried on, taking +her time.</p> + +<p>“There now! that’s right, storm’s clearin’!” said Uncle Jem, as at +length the brown head lifted slowly. “Now we’ll pull out o’ harbor +and get to work.” Which meant that now explanations were in order. +Judith understood.</p> + +<p>“They’ve gone away!” she said thickly. It takes time for throbbing +throats to come back to their own. “It’s too late to find out. If I’d +gone yesterday—” She stopped hastily, on the verge of fresh tears.</p> + +<p>“Go ahead, little un; weather’s a little too thick yet to see clear. +Who’s gone away? What’s it too late for?” But even as he said it, +Uncle Jem, too, understood. He went on without waiting, to give +Judith more time.</p> + +<p>“Hold on!—I can pull out o’ the fog myself. That mother o’ that +little cured un—she’s the one that’s gone away, eh? You was too late +to see her an’ ask your questions. I see. Well, now, I call that too +bad. But ’tain’t worth another cry, deary.”</p> + +<p>“Well, I won’t cry another one, so there!” cried Judith. “Only—only—”</p> + +<p>“I know—I know! We’ve got to slew off on another tack. You give Uncle +Jem time to think, Judy. There’s a powerful lot o’ thinkin’-time +handy when you lay here on your back for a livin’. Jest you run home +an’ let your ma put you to bed. I’ve heard all about your goin’s-on, +an’ I guess bed’s the best place for you! I’ll think it out while +you’re restin’ up.”</p> + +<p>But to unlettered people who rarely get in touch with what is going +on in the thick of things, “thinking it out” is no easy matter. Their +one frail little hold on the miracle that could make Blossom whole +had snapped when the hotel mother and child went away. Where to turn +next for information—what to do next—was a puzzle that would not +unravel for any of them. In vain Uncle Jem wrestled with it, as he +lay through long, patient hours. And Judith wrestled untiringly.</p> + +<p>The mackerel-money came in due time, but the wondrous little blue +check that came out of the official-looking envelope and lay +outspread on Judith’s hard, brown palm had lost its power to give +legs to little Blossom, and Judith gazed at it resentfully. What was +the use of it now? A small part of it would get the little +wheel-chair, but it was not a wheel-chair Judith longed for now. She +put away the blue check safely, and took up the wrestling again. She +would find the clue to the puzzle—she refused to give it up.</p> + +<p>Then quite privately and uninvited, Jemmy Three began to think. No +one had thought of asking his advice; thinking had never been Jemmy +Three’s stronghold.</p> + +<p>He went into his grandfather’s room one early morning arrayed in his +best clothes. Not much in the way of a “best,” but Jemmy had “pieced +out” as well as possible with scraps of his dead father’s best that +had been packed away. He looked unduly big and plain and awkward in +the unaccustomed finery, but the freckles across the deep brown +background of his face spelled d-e-t-e-r-m-i-n-a-t-i-o-n. Uncle Jem +spelled it out slowly. His astonished gaze wandered downward, then, +from “best” to “best.”</p> + +<p>“Well?” he interrogated, and waited.</p> + +<p>“I’m goin’ to the city, gran’father,” the boy said. “I’ve gotter, on +a—a—errand. I thought I’d tell you.”</p> + +<p>“Good idea!” nodded the old head on the pillows. The old eyes +twinkled kindly. “I suppose ye want me to go out to your traps, don’t +ye? An’ do a little trawlin’ while I’m out? Jest speak the word!”</p> + +<p>Uncle Jemmy said nothing about getting his own dinner, but the boy +had thought of that.</p> + +<p>“Judy’s comin’ in at noon,” he explained. “I’ve got everythin’ cooked +up. An’ she’s goin’ to look at my traps when she goes out to hers. +I’ll be back in the night, sometime; don’t you lay awake for me, now, +gran’father!”</p> + +<p>He went out, but presently appeared again, fumbling his best cap in +palpable embarrassment.</p> + +<p>“I wish—I don’t suppose—you wouldn’t mind wishin’ me good luck, +gran’father, would you?” he stammered. “I’d kind of like to be wished +good luck.”</p> + +<p>“Come here where I can reach ye,” the old man said cheerily, putting +out his hand. “Wish ye luck? I guess I will! Ye’re a good boy, Jemmy. +I don’t know what your arrant is, an’ I don’t need to know, but +here’s good luck on it!”</p> + +<p>“I tell you what it is, if—if it succeeds,” Jem Three said, gripping +the twisted old fingers warmly. “I kind of thought I’d rather not +tell first off. But I can, of course.”</p> + +<p>“Off with ye, boy! Ye distract me when I’m doin’ a bit of thinkin’ +for a lady! When ye get good an’ ready, then will be time enough to +do your tellin’. Queer if I couldn’t trust a Jem!”</p> + +<p>The city was twenty miles inland from the little flag-station, and +the flag-station was ten miles away from Jemmy Three. He trudged away +with his precious boots over his shoulder, to be put on at the little +station.</p> + +<p>Once in the city, he went directly about his “arrant.” He chose a +street set thick with dwelling-houses as like one another as peas in +a pod are like. He tramped down one side of the street, up the other, +till at last he came upon what he sought. A smart sign hung on that +particular house, and Jem Three mounted the high steps and rang the +door-bell.</p> + +<p>“Is this a doctor’s house? There’s a sign that says—”</p> + +<p>“The doctor isn’t at home,” the smart maid said smartly. “Will you +leave your address on the slate, or will you call again at office +hours—two till six.”</p> + +<p>“I’ll call somewheres else,” Jem Three said briefly.</p> + +<p>He called at many doors in many rows of pea—of houses. It was +sometime before he succeeded in his quest. When at length he found a +doctor at home, he was closeted with him for a brief space and then +drove away with him in a trim little gig to a great, many-windowed +house where pale people were sunning themselves in wheel-chairs about +the doors. Jem Three made a call at the many-windowed house.</p> + +<hr> + +<p>It was with considerable curiosity that two people down by the sea +awaited the boy’s return from his trip, but oddly enough it was +neither Uncle Jem nor Judith that he sought out at first. It was +Judith’s mother, at her work down-beach at the summer cottage. Jemmy +Three went straight to her. He had got home earlier than he expected +and mother had worked later, so they walked back together in the +cool, clear evening, talking all the way.</p> + +<p>“Don’t tell Judy,” the boy said the last thing, as they parted. “I +mean, not <em>it</em>. It’ll be splendid to surprise her, Mis’ Lynn!”</p> + +<p>“If we can, Jemmy,” the mother answered gently. “If it succeeds. The +more I think of it the more it makes me tremble, Jemmy; but we’ll do +our best and leave the part we cant’t do with the One who can do it.” + The gentle voice trembled into silence. Mother could “make poetry,” +too. Jemmy caught off his hat suddenly, and the very act was a little +prayer.</p> + +<hr> + +<p>“Judy, are you awake?”</p> + +<p>Mother stood over the bed in her scant white nightgown. When Judith +answered, she sat down beside her and felt for one of her calloused, +oar-toughened little hands.</p> + +<p>“Judy, would it be—be all right to use some of the mackerel-money? +Mother’s got to go away for a little while—just a little while, Judy. +Jemmy says he talked with a man in the city who would give me some +work to do in his kitchen for a little while. But—why, I thought I’d +take Blossom, Judy, and of course that would mean spending some +money—”</p> + +<p>“Blossom!”</p> + +<p>Judith sat straight up in bed, her eyes like glints of light in the +darkness.</p> + +<p>“Why, yes, dear; she’s never been away from the sea in her little +life. You think of that, Judy! You’ve been away twice. Blossom never +saw a steam-car nor a city, nor—nor heard a hand-organ! Jemmy says he +heard three to-day. You think how pleased Blossom would be to hear a +hand-organ!”</p> + +<p>“Sh!” cautioned Judith, “don’t wake her, mother. If—she’s going, she +mustn’t know beforehand.”</p> + +<p>Blossom going away! Not <em>Blossom!</em> Not put one hand out, so, in the +dark and feel her there beside you—little warm Blossom! Not dress her +in the morning and carry her downstairs—you the chariot and she the +fine lady! Not hurry home to her from the traps! Judith lay and +thought about all that, after mother went away. She put out her hand +on the empty side of the bed, where no Blossom was, and tried to get +used to the emptiness. She said stern things to herself.</p> + +<p>“You, Judy, are you selfish as <em>that?</em>” she said. “To go and begrudge +your little Blossom a chance to go away and see things and <em>hear</em> +things! Don’t you want her to hear a hand-organ? And perhaps see a +<em>monkey?</em> When she’s never been anywhere, nor heard anything, nor +seen anything! When mother’s going, anyway, and can take her as well +as not—you Judy, you Judy, you Judy! Oh, I cant’t sleep with you, I’m +so ashamed of you!”</p> + +<hr> + +<p>They went at once, and Judith settled down to her loneliness as +best she could, and bore it as bravely. They were to be gone a +month—perhaps two—perhaps three. A month—two, maybe—three, +maybe—without Blossom!</p> + +<p>Uncle Jem and Jemmy Three helped out—how much they did help out! Then +there were the rare, precious letters. Judith had never had letters +from mother before in all her sixteen years. She was rather +disappointed that there were no bits of ragged, printed ones from +Blossom, but mother’s letters had Blossom-bulletins. Blossom sent her +love, Blossom had heard two hand-organs—three hand-organs; Blossom +said tell Judy she loved her, oh, my! Blossom was very patient and +sweet.</p> + +<p>“She’s always patient and sweet,” wondered Judy. Queer mother put +that in!</p> + +<p>“You little sweet, patient Blossom!” Judith’s heart cried tenderly, +“when I get you in my arms again—”</p> + +<p>Would the time ever come? Why were days made so long? Twenty-four +hours were too many—why weren’t they made with only twenty?</p> + +<p>“Uncle Jem, why don’t you tell <em>me</em> how to be sweet and patient?” +Judith said, folding up the Blossom-bulletin she had been reading to +him. “Tell me a good receipt.”</p> + +<p>“Well, deary—well, give me time,” laughed the cheery old voice. “I +guess we can fix up somethin’ that will meet your case.”</p> + +<p>A very few weeks later Judith went wearily homeward to her lonely +home. She had been out to her traps and down to the hotel with the +lobsters for Mrs. Ben. Her body was weary, but her heart was wearier +still. It did seem, she was telling herself as she plodded through +the sand, as if she could not wait any longer for mother and Blossom +to come home.</p> + +<p>Suddenly a clear little trill of laughter crept into her ears and +set her pulses throbbing. Then another trill—then Blossom’s voice, +calling something that thrilled her to her soul.</p> + +<p>“See me!” called the little triumphant voice of Blossom. And Judy, +lifting frightened eyes and holding her breath as she looked, <em>saw</em>. +A small, swaying figure was coming toward her very slowly, over the +hard sand. Blossom—it was Blossom! She was swaying unsteadily a step +or two, but—<em>she was walking!</em></p> + +<p>“See me! See me!” cried Blossom. “I’m walkin’, Judy, don’t you see? I +came a-walkin’ down to meet you! It’s a s’prise!”</p> + +<p>Someone caught up the little figure and came leaping down to Judith +with great strides of triumph.</p> + +<p>“That’s enough to s’prise her—mustn’t do much of it at a time yet,” +Jemmy Three said gayly. “You’ve got to begin easy. Yes!” in answer to +Judy’s speechless pleading, “yes, sir, she’s goin’ to be a reg’lar +walker, now, ain’t you, Blossom? Yes, sir; no more bein’ toted—she’s +<em>folks!</em>”</p> + +<p>“Yes, yes, yes!” trilled Blossom exultantly. “They pulled my legs out +an’ put ’em in over, where they b’long. Only I’ve got to go easy till +I’m uncasted.”</p> + +<p>“Till you’re—what? But never mind what! You’re my Blossom, and you’re +home again, and you’re <em>walking!</em>” Judith cried in her exceeding +great joy. But by and by Jemmy Three explained.</p> + +<p>“They put her legs in kind o’ casts, you know, that she cant’t have +taken off yet awhile, but when they do take ’em off—”</p> + +<p>“Then I’ll run!” Blossom interrupted, radiantly.</p> + +<p>“Oh, oh—and to think we were going to surprise mother, and you +surprised me!” breathed Judy. “But I thought—<em>we</em> were going across +the ocean—”</p> + +<p>“You needn’t have,” Jemmy said. “That great doctor’s over there, but +there’s plenty o’ second-great ones over here that make children walk +his way. That’s what I went to find out. I thought maybe—”</p> + +<p>“You went to find out—<em>you</em> thought—oh, Jemmy, what a boy you are!”</p> + +<p>“See here—hold on—wait! Let Blossom do it!” warded off Jemmy Three, +backing away precipitately.</p> + +<p>The beautiful secret was out. Judith had been “s’prised.” There were +still months of uncertainty, but Judith was not uncertain. She went +about in a cloud of rapture. At night she lay awake beside Blossom, +and dreamed her rosy, happy dreams. And, in truth, if she could have +looked ahead into the certain months, and beyond, she would have seen +Blossom walking steadily through all the years.</p> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Judith Lynn, by Annie Hamilton Donnell + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JUDITH LYNN *** + +***** This file should be named 27986-h.htm or 27986-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/7/9/8/27986/ + +Produced by Jeff Kaylin + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Judith Lynn + A Story of the Sea + +Author: Annie Hamilton Donnell + +Release Date: February 4, 2009 [EBook #27986] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JUDITH LYNN *** + + + + +Produced by Jeff Kaylin + + + + + + +Judith Lynn + +A Story of the Sea + +By Annie Hamilton Donnell + + Copyright, 1906, + By David C. Cook Publishing Co., + Elgin, Illinois. + + + + +Chapter I. + + +In Tarpaulin and oilskins she did not look like a Judith. Easily +she might have been a Joseph or a James. So it was not really to be +wondered at that the little girl in the dainty clothes--the little +girl from The Hotel--should say, "Why!" + +"What is your name?" the Dainty One had asked. + +"Judith Lynn," had answered the boy-one in oilskins. + +"Why!" Then, as if catching herself up at the impoliteness of such a +little word in such a surprised tone--"I mean, please excuse me for +thinking you were a boy," the little Dainty One had added, in +considerable embarrassment. And Judith had laughed--Judith's laughs +were rare, but the crisp, salty brightness of the sea was always in +them. The sea was in everything about Judith. + +"I don't wonder!" laughed Judith. "Me, with these togs on! But I +guess _you'd_ be a boy when you went out to your traps--you can't +'tend traps in skirts. Blossom calls me Judas with these on!" + +It was strange how suddenly the rather big voice--a voice has to be +big to compete with the voice of the sea--grew soft and tender at the +name of Blossom. + +In Judith Lynn's rough, hard, salt-savored life Blossom was the one +thing sweet and beautiful. Blossom was the little frail wisp of a +child that Judith loved. This other child, here on the sand, watching +her with friendly wonder, reminded her a little of Blossom. Anyway, +they were both sweet and beautiful. + +"Traps?" queried this other child. "I didn't know there were mice in +the ocean!--you were going out on the ocean, weren't you?" + +Again Judith's rare, bright laugh. Children were such funny +things!--Blossom was, too. + +"Lobster-traps," she explained, when the laugh had laughed itself +out. "I'm going out to mine to get the lobsters. Out there where +those little specks of white are bobbing 'round on the water--don't +you see?" + +"I see some little specks--yes, they're a-bobbing! Are those _traps?_" + +"Mercy, no! The traps are sunk 'way down to the bottom o' the sea! +Those are nothing but the little wooden floats that tell me where the +traps are. I couldn't go hunting all over the bay, you know." + +"No--oh, no, you couldn't go hunting all over the bay," repeated the +small, puzzled voice. The Dainty One was distinctly interested. "I +s'pose, prob'ly, every one of those little white specks has got a +fish line to it. I hope they've all got _bites_. Oh, my suz! Here +comes Elise. Elise is always a-coming!" with a long sigh. + +Elise was slender and tall, in cap and apron. She walked with the +stride of authority. A frown of displeasure was getting visibler and +visibler on her face, the child noticed with another sigh. Elise was +'most always a-frowning. + +"Good-by. I--I guess I'd better go and meet her," the Dainty One said +hurriedly. "She isn't quite as cross when you go and meet her. It +helps." + +But the child came back again to Judith Lynn. She held out one little +sun-browned, sea-browned hand. + +"I'm happy to have seen you," she said, with soft graciousness, as if +Judith were a duchess in laces instead of a boy-girl in fisherman's +togs. "I'd be pleased to see you some more. I like you." + +"Oh!" stammered the boy-girl in fisherman's togs, a flush of pleasure +reddening her brown face. No one had even said "I'd be pleased to see +you," to her before, though Blossom, of course, _was_ always pleased. +No one but Blossom had ever said, "I like you," and Blossom's way +was, "I love you." + +"I must go--she's 'most here," went on the child, rather anxiously. +"But first I wish you'd tell me who Blossom is. You spoke about +Blossom, didn't you?" + +"Yes. She's my little sister. Her regular name is Janet. It's only me +calls her Blossom." + +"Oh, but that's lots the prettiest name! _I'm_ going to call her +that, too. I'd be pleased to see Blossom. Is she about my tallness?" + +Judith's face had undergone one of its swift changes. It had grown +defensive and a little fierce. She should not see Blossom!--this other +child who could walk away over the sand to meet Elises, whoever +Elises were. She should not see Blossom! Blossom should not see her! + +"But, maybe--prob'ly she's a baby--" + +"No, she's six. She'd be about as tall as you are, if she was +straightened--I mean if she could stand up beside o' you. I guess +you better go to that woman in the cap or she'll scold, won't she?" + +"Goodness, yes! Elise always scolds. But I'd rather be scolded than +not hear about that little Blossom girl--" + +"Mademoiselle!" called the woman in the cap sharply. She came up +puffing with her hurry. "Mademoiselle has escape again--Mademoiselle +is ba-ad!" she scolded. + +"I didn't ex-scape, either--I only walked. You don't walk when you +ex-scape. You sat and sat and sat, and I wanted to walk." + +The child's voice was full of grievance. Sometimes she dreaded +Elise--when she saw her coming down the beach--but she was never +afraid of her "near to." + +"But it is not for Mademoiselle to walk so far--what is it the doctor +say? Mademoiselle is ba-ad when she walk so far!" + +With a sudden gesture of defiance the Dainty One sprang away across +the sand, looking over her shoulder willfully. "But it's so good to +walk!" she cried. "You'd walk if you was me, Elise--you'd walk and +walk and walk! Like this--see me! See me run--like this!" + +The eyes of the woman in the white nurse's cap met for an instant the +eyes of the boy-girl in the oilskins, and Judith smiled. But Elise +was gravely tender--Elise's face could undergo swift changes, too. + +"Yes, certainment I would," muttered Elise, looking away to the +naughty little figure. It was running back now. + +"And then you'd be goody again--see me!" chanted the child. "And +you'd go right straight back to Elise--that would be _me_, if you +were I--and you'd put your arms round her, so, and say, ''Scuse +me,'--hear me!" + +Judith Lynn got into the old brown dory and rowed away to her +lobster-traps. There was no laughter any more in her eyes; they were +fierce with longing and envy. Not for herself--Judith was sixteen, +but she had never been fierce or envious for herself. It had always +been--it would always be--for Blossom, the frail little wisp of a +girl she loved. + +She was thinking intensely, What if that were Blossom, running down +the beach? They were about of a "tallness"--why shouldn't it be +Blossom? Why shouldn't Blossom run down the beach like that and call +"See me!" + +She would walk and walk and walk--it would feel so good to walk! +Once she had said to Judith--the great oars stopped as Judith +remembered--once Blossom had said, "Oh, Judy, if I ever walk, I +shall walk right across the sea. You couldn't stop me!" + +But Blossom would never walk. Judith bent to the great oars again and +toiled out into the bay. Her lips were set in the old familiar lines +of pain. In the distance was just visible a fleck of white and a +fleck of blue--Elise and the Dainty One on the sands. + +"I never want to set eyes on them again--not on her, anyway!" thought +Judith as she toiled. "What did she want to speak to me for, in her +nice little mincing voice! She belongs to hotels and I belong to +the--sea. Blossom and I--what has she got to do with Blossom!" + +But the little mincing voice had said, "I'd be pleased to see you--I +like you." It had said, "I'd be pleased to see Blossom." + +"She sha'n't! I won't have her! I won't have Blossom see her!" Judith +stormed in her pain. + +The picture of the little frail wisp of a child who would never walk +was so distinct to her--and this other picture of the Dainty One who +walked and laughed, "See me!" The two little pictures, side by side, +were more than Judith could bear. + +The traps were nearly empty. It was going to be a poor lobster +season. To hotels like that one down the beach that would be a +disappointment. To Judith, who stood for fisher-folk, it would mean +serious loss. When the lobster season was a good one, more than one +little comfort and luxury found its way into more than one humble +fisher-home. And Blossom--Blossom would suffer if the lobster-traps +were empty. For Judith and her mother had agreed to set apart enough +of the lobster-money to get Blossom a wheel-chair. Judith had seen +one once on a trip to the nearest town, and ever since she had +dreamed about a little wheel-chair with Blossom in it. To wheel up +and down the smooth, hard sand, with Blossom laughing and crying, +"See me!" + +"There's got to be lobsters!" Judith stormed, jerking up her traps +one after the other. "There _shall_ be lobsters!" + +But she rowed back with the old brown dory almost as empty as when +she had rowed it toilsomely out to her traps. + +There were but three Lynns in the small home upshore. Two years ago +there had been six, but father and the boys, one day, had gone out of +sight beyond the bay and had never come into sight again. It is the +sad way with those "who go down to the sea in ships." + +Judith was the only man left to 'tend the traps and fish in the safer +waters of the bay. At fourteen one is young to begin toil like that. +Even at sixteen one is not old. But Judith's heart was as strong as +her pair of brown, boy-muscled arms. She and the old dory were well +acquainted with each other. + +To-day Judith did not hurry homeward across the stretch of bright +water. She let the old dory lag along almost at its own sweet will. +For Judith dreaded to go home with her news of the poor little "haul" +of lobsters. She knew so well how mother would sigh and how little +Blossom would try to smile. Blossom always tried to smile when the +news was bad. That was the _Blossomness_ of her, Judith said fondly. + +"That's Lynn luck," mother would sigh. Poor mother, who was too worn +and sad to try to smile! + +"Never mind, Judy," Blossom's little, brave smile would say. "Never +mind--who cares!" But Judy knew who cared. + +Strange fancies came sometimes to the fisherman-girl in the great +dory, out there on the bay. Alone, with the sky above and the sea +beneath, the girl let her thoughts have loose rein and built her +frail castles in the salt, sweet air. Out there, she had been a +beautiful princess in a fairy craft, going across seas to her +kingdom; she had been a great explorer, traveling to unknown worlds; +she had been a pirate--a millionaire in his yacht--a sailor in a +man-of-war. She had always had a dream-Blossom with her, on her +wonder-trips, and sometimes they were altogether Blossom-dreams. Like +to-day--to-day it was a Blossom-dream, a wistful little one with not +much heart in it. They seemed to be drifting home, away from +something beautiful behind them that they had wanted very much. They +had been sailing after it--in the dream--with their hands stretched out +to reach it. And it had beckoned them on--and further on--with its +golden fingers, till at last it had vanished into the sunset, down +behind the sea, and left them empty-handed after all. They had had to +turn back without it. And Blossom--the little dream-Blossom in the +dream--had tried to smile. + +"Never mind, Judy," she had said. "Never mind--who cares!" But they +had both cared so much! + +Then quite suddenly Judith's fancy had changed the dream from a sad +one to a glad one. She had rested lazily on her great black oars and +painted another picture on her canvas of sea and sky--this time of +Blossom riding way over a beautiful glimmery sea-road in a little +wheel-chair, soft-cushioned and beautiful. She, Judith, followed in +the old dory, and Blossom laughed with delight and called back over +her shoulder, "See me! See me!" + +A whiff of night-breeze warned Judith that it was growing late and +the dream-fancies must stop. She leaned over the side of the dory and +pretended to drop them, one at a time, into the sea. That was another +of her odd little whimsies. + +"Good-by, sad dream--good-by, glad dream," she said. "You will never +go ashore. You will always stay out here in the sea where I drop +you--unless I decide to dream you over again some day. If I do, +good-by till then." For Judith never dreamed her day-dreams on land. +They were a part of the sea and the sea-sky and the old black dory. + +She must make her trip to the Hotel with her poor little haul of +lobsters, for she had promised all she got to Mrs. Ben. But for a +wonder Judith's pride deserted her, and she decided to tramp away +down the beach in her fisherman-clothes. When had she done that +before! When _hadn't_ she walked the weary little distance inshore +and back, to and from her home, for the sake of going down the beach +in her own girl-things. But to-night--"Never mind, Judy--who cares!" +she said to herself, with a shrug. Let Mrs. Ben laugh--let the fine +people lounging about laugh--let everybody laugh! Who cared? To-night +Judith was tired, and the stout little heart had gone out of her. + +"Land!" laughed Mrs. Ben, in her kitchen door. But the sober face +under the old tarpaulin checked her. Mrs. Ben's heart was tender. + +"I shouldn't think I looked very landish," Judith retorted. "And I +guess you won't say 'land!' when you see your lobsters. That's every +one I got to-day, Mrs. Ben!" + +But Mrs. Ben said "Land!" again. Then, with an unexpected whirl of +her big, comely person, she had her hands on the boy-girls' shoulders +and was gently pushing her toward a chair by the window. + +"You poor dear, you! Never mind the lobsters. Just you set there in +that chair and eat some o' my tarts! You look clean tuckered out." + +"Not _clean_ tuckered," laughed Judith rather tremulously. It was +good to be pushed about like that by big, kind hands. And how good +the tarts were! She sank into the chair with a grateful sigh. + +"I don't suppose you can be expected to bring lobsters when there +ain't any in the traps! All is, the folks 'll have to eat tarts!" +Mrs. Ben's folks were the people who lounged about in gay summer +clothes. Judith could see them out of the window as she ate her +tarts. + +Some ladies were sitting on the doorsteps very near by, and their +voices drifted in to Judith with intervals of silence. She began to +notice what the voices were saying. They were talking about a little +figure in dainty white that was circling about not far away, and the +little figure in white was Judith's acquaintance of the beach. + +One of the voices was a mother-voice--Judith was sure of that from the +tenderness in it. The other voice was just a plain _voice_, Judith +decided. It sounded interested and curious, and it began to ask +strange questions about the dainty little figure. Judith grew +interested, too--then, very interested indeed. + +Suddenly Judith caught her breath in an inarticulate little cry. For +she could hear what the mother-voice was answering. + + + + +Chapter II. + + +"It seems very wonderful," the cool, interested voice said, a +little more interested, if anything. + +"It seems glorious!" broke in the mother-voice; and the throb in it +beat upon Judith's heart through the waves of air between them. +Judith's heart was throbbing, too. + +"You can't think how it 'seems,'--you don't know anything about it!" +the earnest, tremulous voice went on. "How can anyone know who never +had a little daughter?" + +"I had one once." The other voice now was soft and earnest. + +"But she walked. _Your_ little daughter walked. How can anyone know +whose little daughter always walk--" + +"She never walked." It was very soft now, and the throb had crept +into it that was in the mother-voice and in Judith's heart. "I only +had her a year." + +They were both mother-voices! Judith could not see, but she felt sure +the two sat up a little nearer to each other and their hands touched. + +"Oh!--then you can know," the first voice said, after a tiny silence. +"I will tell you all about it--there have only been a few I have +wanted to tell. It has seemed almost too precious and--and--sacred." + +"I know," the other said. + +"But you must begin right at the beginning, with me--at the time when +my little daughter was a year old, when the time came for her to +learn to walk. That is where my story begins." + +"And mine ends. Go on." + +"Well, you can see how I must have watched and waited and planned." + +"Oh, yes, and planned--_I_ planned." + +"You poor dear!" Another tiny silence-space, while hand crept to +hand again, Judith was sure. Then the story went on. + +"You say I ought to have known. Everybody says I ought to have. +_They_ knew, they say, and I was the baby's mother. The baby's mother +ought to have known. But that was just why. I was her mother--I +_wouldn't_ know. I kept putting it off. 'Wait,' I kept saying to +myself. 'She isn't old enough to walk yet; when she is old enough, +she will walk. Can't you _wait?_' And I waited. When they did not +any of them know, I kept trying to stand her on her poor little +legs--I wouldn't stop trying. When she was fifteen months--sixteen +months--seventeen, eighteen--when she was two years old, I tried. +I would not let them talk to me. 'Some children are so late in +walking,' I said. 'Her legs are such little ones!' I would catch her +up from the floor and hug her fiercely. 'They sha'n't hurry you, my +darling. You shall take all the time you want. Then, some day, you'll +surprise mother, won't you? You'll get up on your two little legs and +walk! And we'll take hold of hands and walk out there to all those +bad people that try to say things to us. We'll show them!' But we +never did. When she was two and a half I began to believe it--perhaps +I had believed all along--and when she was three, I gave it up. 'She +will never walk,' I told them, and they let me alone. There was no +more need of talking then." + +Judith was leaning forward, straining her ears to hear. She had +forgotten Mrs. Ben's tarts--she had forgotten everything but the story +that was going on out there, out of her sight. It was so much--oh, how +much it was like Blossom's story! When Blossom was three, Judith had +given up, too. But not till then. She had kept on and on trying to +teach the helpless little legs to walk. Father and mother and the +boys had given up, but Judith had kept on. "She _shall_ walk!" she +had said. + +Sometimes she had taken Blossom down to the beach, tugging her all +the way in her own childish arms, and selected the hardest, smoothest +stretch of sand. "Now we'll walk!" she had laughed, and Blossom had +laughed, too. "Stand up all nice and straight, darling, and walk all +beautiful to Judith!" But Blossom had never stood up all nice and +straight; she had never walked all beautiful to Judith. And when she +was three, Judith had given up. + +The story out there was going on: "After that I never tried to make +her walk again, poor little sweet! We carried her round in our arms +till we got her a little wheel-chair that she could wheel a little +herself. She liked that so much--she called it 'walking.' It would +have broken your heart to hear her say, 'See me walk, mamma!'" + +"Oh, yes--yes, it would have," the other voice responded gently. It +had grown a very gentle voice indeed. Judith wondered in the little +flash of thought she could spare from Blossom, if the other mother +were not thinking there might be harder things even than laying a +little daughter away in a little white casket. + +"But when she was five"--sudden animation, joy and a thrill of +laughter had taken possession of the voice that was telling the +story--"a little more than five--she's just six now--when she was a +little more than five, they told us she could walk! There was a way! +It was not a very hard way, they said. A splendid doctor, with +a heart big enough to hold all the little crippled children in +the universe, would make her walk. And so--this is the end of the +story--we took her across the sea to him. Look at her now! Where +is she? Oh, there! Marie! Marie! Come here to mother!" + +Judith slipped away. She was never quite definite how she got there, +but she found herself presently in the old black dory that was drawn +up on the beach. It was the best place to think, and Judith wanted to +think. She wanted air enough and room enough to think in--this +Wonderful Thing took up so much room! It was so big--so wonderful! + +She sat a long time with her brown chin in her brown palms, her eyes +on the splendid expanse of shining, 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 shine. 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 astonishing 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 shining 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, hello, 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 shifted 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--" + +"How do you know he never? Is twenty-four to three a fair average? Is +it? Is it?" + +"No, oh, no! But I don't believe--" + +"Oh, you needn't believe! _Don't_ believe. Go right on finding your +traps empty and believing Jemmy Three'd never! I thought you were +going to save your lobster-money for Blossom." + +"Oh, I was--I am going to! I'm going to save it to take her across the +ocean to that doctor. It was going to be a little wheel-chair, but +now it's going to be _legs_." + +"But supposing there isn't any lobster-money? You can't do much with +three lobsters a day. If somebody helps himself--" + +"Stop!" cried Judith angrily, and the evil thought slunk away. But it +came again--it kept coming. One by one, little trivial circumstances +built themselves into suspicions, until the little brown freckles on +Jemmy Three's face came to spell "Dishonesty" to Judith Lynn. If it +had not been for the terrible need of lobster-money--Judith would have +fought harder against the evil thing if it had not been for that. + +"I've got to have it! There's got to be lobsters in the traps!" she +cried to herself. "The doctor over there might die! If he died before +I could carry Blossom to him, do you think I'd ever forgive Jemmy +Three?"--which showed that the Evil Thing had done its work. It might +slink away now and stay. + +It was a hard night for Judith. Joyful thoughts and evil ones +conflicted with each other, and among them all she could not sleep. +It was nearly morning before she snuggled up against Blossom's little +warm body and shut her eyes. Her plans were made, as far as she could +make them. To-morrow she would go down and question the hotel mother, +as Uncle Jem said. To-morrow--she must not wait. And after that--after +that, heaven and earth and the waters of the sea must help her. There +must be no faithlessness or turning back. + +"You shall walk, little Blossom," Judith whispered softly. + +How could she know how soon the sea would help? + + + + +Chapter III. + + +"I want to go, Judy--please, please!" + +Blossom was up on her elbow, pleading earnestly. Judith was dressing. + +"It's a Blossom day--you know it's a Blossom day! And Jemmy Three'll +carry me down. _I_ know Jemmy Three will! I haven't been out +a-dorying for such a long time; Judy--please!" + +It was always hard work for Judith to refuse Blossom anything. +Besides--Judith went to the window and lifted the scant little +curtain--yes, it certainly was a "Blossom day." The sky was +Blossom-blue, the sea spread away out of sight, Blossom-smooth and +shining. And the little pleader there in the bed looked so eager and +longing--so Blossom-sweet! She should go "a-dorying," decided Judith, +but it would not be Jemmy Three that carried her down to the sea. + +"You little tease, come on, then!" laughed Judith. "I'll dress you in +double-quick, for I've got to get out to my traps." + +Judith had overslept, for a wonder. When had Judith done a thing like +that before! For two hours Blossom had been awake, lying very quietly +for fear of waking Judy; poor, tired Judy must not be disturbed. +Downstairs mother had gone away to her work at the beautiful summer +cottage down-beach, beyond the hotel. It was ironing-day at the +cottage, and all day mother would stand at the ironing-board, ironing +dainty summer skirts and gowns. + +"I'll ride in front an' be a--a what'll I be, Judy?" + +"A little bother of a Blossom in a pink dress," laughed Judith, as +she buttoned the small garments with the swift, deft fingers that had +buttoned them for six years. + +"No, no! a--don't you know, the kind of a thing that brings good luck? +You read it to me your own self, Judy Lynn!" + +"I guess you mean a _mastif_," Judith said slowly. "Queer it sounds +so much like a dog!--it didn't make me think of a dog when I read it." + +"M-m--yes, I'll be a mastif"--Blossom's voice was doubtful; it hadn't +reminded her so much of a dog, either, at the time. "An' so you'll +have good luck. You'll find your traps brim-up full, Judy! Then I +guess you'll say, 'Oh, how thankful I am I brought that child!'" + +Judith caught the little crippled figure closer in a loving hug. "I'm +thankful a'ready!" she cried. + +They hurried through the simple breakfast that mother had left for +them, and then Judith shouldered the joyous child and tramped away +over the half-mile that separated them from the old black dory. + +"Now, Judy, now le's begin right off an' pretend! Go ahead--you +pretending?" + +"I'm pretending. I'm a chariot and you're a fine lady in pink ging--" + +"Ging--!" scorned Blossom. "Silk, Judy--in pink silk, a-ridin' in the +chariot. It's a very nice, _easy_ chariot an' doesn't joggle her +hip--Oh, I forgot she hasn't got any hips, of course! Well, here she +goes a-riding and a-riding along, just as comfortable, but pretty +soon she says--we're coming to the beautiful part now, Judy!--'I guess +I better get out an' walk now,' she says. Now pretend she _got out +and walked, Judy_--you pretending?" + +"I'm pretending," cried Judy, her clasp on the little figure +tightening and her eyes shining mysteriously. Sometime the little +fine lady should get out and walk! She should--she should! + +"Now she's walking--no, she isn't, either, she's riding, and it isn't +in a chariot, it's in her sister's arms, an' she's _Blossom_. Don't +le's pretend any more, Judy. There's days it's easy to an' there's +days it's hard to--it's a hard-to day, I guess, to-day. Those days you +can't pretend get out and walk very well." + +"Pretend I'm an elephant!" laughed Judy, though the laugh trembled in +her throat. "That's an easy-to-pretend! And you're an--Oh, an Arab, +driving me! You must talk _Arabese_, Blossom!" + +Blossom was gay again when they got to the dory, and Judith dropped +her into the bow, out of her own weary arms. + +"Now say 'Heave-ho!--heave-ho'!" commanded Judith, "to help me drag +her down, you know. Here we go!" + +"I don't know the Arabese for 'heave-ho,'" laughed little Blossom, +mischievously. "I could say it in American." + +"Say it in 'American,' then, you little rogue!" panted Judith, all +her tough little muscles a-stretch for the haul. + +They were presently out on the water, rocking gently with the gentle +waves. And Blossom was presently shouting with delight. Her little +lean, sharp face was keen with excitement. + +"Now pretend--now, now, now! It's easy to out here! The fine lady's +going abroad, Judy--do you hear? She's going right straight over +'cross this sea, in this han'some ship! When she gets there she'll +_step out_ on the shore an' say what a beautiful voyage she's had, +an' good-by to the cap'n--you're the cap'n, Judy. An' you'll say, 'Oh, +my lady, sha'n't I help you ashore?' An' she'll laugh right out, +it's so ridic'lous! 'Help me, my good man!' she'll 'xclaim. 'I guess +you must think I can't walk!'" + +Blossom's face was alive with the joy of the beautiful "pretend." +But Judith's face was sober. + +"Laugh, why don't you, Judy?" cried the child. + +"I'm laugh--I mean I will, dear. But I've got to row like everything +now, so you must do the pretending for us both. We've got to get out +there to those traps before you can say 'scat'!" + +"Scat!" shrilled Blossom. + +It was Blossom's sharp eyes that discovered Jem Three "out there." +Judith was bending to her work. + +"There's Jemmy Three, Judy! True-honest, out there a-trapping! He +looks 's if he was coming away from our place--he is, Judy! He's got +our lobsters, to s'prise us, maybe." + +"It won't surprise me," muttered Judy, in the clutch of the Evil +Thought again. She was watching the distant boat now keenly, her eyes +hard with suspicion. Jem Three it surely was, and he was rowing +slowly away from Judith's lobster "grounds." It seemed to her his +dory was deep in the water as if heavily weighted. He had been--had +been to her traps again. He was whistling--Judith could hear the +faint, sweet sound--but that didn't hide anything. Let him whistle all +he wanted to--she knew what he had been up to! + +"Ship aho-oy!" came across faintly to them, but it was only Blossom +that answered. + +"Ahoy! Ship ahoy!" she sent back clearly. Judith bent over her +toiling oars. + +"He's going away from us, we sha'n't meet him," Blossom said in +disappointment. + +"Of course he's going away--of course he won't meet us," Judith +retorted between her little white teeth. + +"An' I wanted to 'speak him,'" the disappointed little voice ran on; +"I was going to call out, 'How's the folks abroad? We're on our way +'cross, in the Judiana B.,'--this is the Judiana B., Judy, after both +of us. B. stands for me." + +"Funny way to spell me!" laughed Judith with an effort. She must hide +away her black suspicions. Not for the world would she have Blossom +know! Blossom was so fond of Jemmy Three, and she had so few folks to +be fond of. + +A surprise was waiting for them "out there." The traps were pretty +well loaded! Not full, any of them, but not one of them empty. In +all, there were seventeen great, full-grown, glistening, black +fellows for Blossom to shudder over as she never failed to do--Blossom +was no part of a fisherman. + +"He didn't dare to take them all," thought Judith, refusing to let +the Evil Thought get away from her. "Probably he saw us coming. If +he'd let 'em alone there might have been a lot more--perhaps there +were fifty!" + +"One, two, three,"--counted Blossom slowly. "Why, Judy, there's +seventeen. You didn't s'pose there'd be as many as seventeen, did +you? Isn't that a splendid lot?" + +"Not as splendid as fifty," answered Judy, assured now that there had +been as many as that. + +"Seventeen from fifty is thirty--thirty-two," whispered the Evil Thing +in her ear. Evil things cannot be expected to be good in arithmetic +or anything else. "So he helped himself to thirty-two, did he! Nice +haul! Thirty-two big fellows will bring him in--" + +"Don't!" groaned Judith. + +"I don't wonder you say 'don't!' Thirty-two nice big fellows would +have brought _you_ in a pretty little sum. You could have put it away +in a stocking in your bureau drawer, for the Blossom-fund." + +"Oh, I was going to! I was going to!" + +"Thought so--well, you'll have to get along with seventeen. That comes +of having boys like that for friends!" + +"He isn't my friend!" Judith cried sharply to the Evil Thing in her +breast. "He never will be again. If it wasn't for Uncle Jem I'd never +look at him again as long as I live!" + +All this little dialogue had gone on unsuspected by the little pink +"mastif" in the bow of the little dory. Blossom had been busy edging +out of the reach of the ugly things in the bottom of the boat. If +Judith had only edged away from her Ugly Thing! + +Another surprise was even now on the way--a surprise so stupendous and +unexpected that, beside it, the lobster-surprise would dwindle away +into insignificance and be quite forgotten for the rest of the day. +And oddly enough, it was to be Blossom who should be discoverer +again. + +"I'm going a little farther out and fish awhile," Judith announced +over her last trap. "I've got all my tackle aboard and maybe I can +find something Mrs. Ben will want. You sit still as a mouse, Blossom, +for I cant't be watching you and fishing, too." + +"I'll sit still as _two_ mice. Needn't think o' me!" answered the +little one proudly. Did Judy think she was little like that? Just +because she hadn't legs that would go! They didn't need to go, did +they, out here in the middle of the sea! + +"What makes it look so ripply an' bubbly out there?" she questioned +with grown-up dignity. Judy should see she could sit still and talk +like anybody. + +"Where?" asked Judith absently. She did not take the trouble to +follow the little pointing finger with her eyes. + +"_There_--why don't you look? It's all pretty an' ripply an' kind of +queer. Doesn't look like plain water 'xactly. Look, Judy--why don't +you?" + +"I am looking now--Oh, Oh, wait! It looks like--Blossom, I believe it's +a school! That's the way the water always loo--Blossom, Blossom, do +you hear me, it's a school! A school of mackerel--a _school_, I tell +you!" + +"Well, you needn't keep on a-telling me." Blossom, anyway, was calm. +"I'm not deaf o' hearing, am I? If it's a school, le's us go right +straight out there an' fish it up, Judy." + +Judy was going right straight out there with all the strength of her +powerful young arms. She was not calm; her face was quivering with +excitement and joy. A school! A school! Oh, but that meant so much +for the Blossom-fund, to put away in the stocking in the bureau +drawer! If it should prove a big school--but she and Blossom could not +manage a big one, never in the world. If Jemmy Thr--no, no, not Jemmy +Three! This was not Jemmy Three's school--what had he to do with it? + +In all the stress and excitement of sending the old dory out there +where the water was rippling its news to her, Judy had time to think +of several things. She had time to remember how she and Jem Three had +used, from the time they were little brown things in pinafores, to +plan about their first school o' mackerel--what they would do with all +the wealth it should bring them, how they would share it together, +how they would pull in the silvery, glistening fellows, side by side. +What plans--what plans they had made! They had practiced a shrill, +piercing call that was to summon the one of them who should happen to +be absent when the "school" was descried out there in the bay. Even +lately, big and old as they had grown, they had laughingly reviewed +that call. Now--this minute--if Judith were to utter it, piercing and +far-carrying and jubilant, perhaps Jemmy Three might hear and come +plowing through the waves to get his share--had he any share? Because +when they were little brown things they had made vows, did that give +him any rights now? + +Of course, if--if things had been different--lobster-things--Judith +might have pursed her lips into that triumphant summons. But-- + +"Sit still! I'm going to swing her round!" called Judith sharply. +"I've got to go ashore for father's old net. It's in the boat-house." + +"You won't leave me, Judy--promise you'll take me out with you!" +pleaded Blossom, eagerly. + +"I'll have to," Judith responded briefly. "There isn't time to carry +you home--I don't dare _take_ time." + +She made her plans as she went in, and put out again with the clumsy +heap of netting towering at her feet. The thing she meant to do was +stupendous for a girl to attempt alone, but she was going to attempt +it. The shabby old net had lain in its corner, useless, for two +years. Now it should be used--she, Judith Lynn would use it! She was +glad as she pulled seaward again that she had thrown in two +scoops--perhaps when the time came Blossom could make out to use one a +little. + +The net was like a long--a very long--fence, with its lower edge +weighted heavily and its upper edge provided with wooden floats, to +insure its standing erect under water. When in position properly it +surrounded the school of fish, completely fencing in the darting, +glimmering, silver fellows. Then the circle could be gradually +narrowed and the fish brought together in a mass, when scoops could +be used to dip them up into the boat. + +The school once located, Judith began to circle slowly round it, +"paying out" her fence of netting with no small difficulty, but +gradually surrounding the unsuspected fish, until at length she had +them penned. + +"What did I tell you! I told you I'd be the--the mastif, Judy!" +Blossom chattered. "I told you you'd say how thankful you was you +brought that child!" + +"How thankful I am!" chattered Judy. Then, launched into the thick of +the arduous work, they both fell into breathless silence and only +worked. It was not much Blossom could do, but she did her little +splendidly. And Judith toiled with all her strength. + +They stopped at last, not because there were no more of the +glistening, silver fellows about them, but because the old black dory +was weighted almost to the water's edge. They had to stop. And then +began Judith's terrible hour. For the heavy boat must somehow be +worked back, a weary little at a time, to the distant shore. Judith +set herself to this new task gallantly, but it was almost too much +for her. Over and over again it seemed to her she must give it up and +toss overboard part, at least, of her silver freight, to lighten her +load. But over and over again she nerved herself to another spurt of +strength. + +She must do it! She could not give up! She would shut her eyes, like +this, and row ten more strokes--just ten more. Then she would row ten +with her eyes open. Ten, shut--ten, open. Perhaps that would help. She +tried it. She tried other poor little devices--calling the strokes +"eenie, meenie, minie, mo," the way she and Jemmy Three had "counted +out" for tag when they were little--brown--things. Her strength--was +surely--giving out--it shouldn't give out! + +Blossom, watching silently from her weary perch, grew frightened at +Judy's tense, set face and began to sob. And then Judy must find +breath enough to laugh reassuringly and to nod over her shoulder at +the child. + +They had gone out late--had been out a wearisome time--and the journey +back to land was measured off by slow, laboring oar-strokes that +scarcely seemed to move the great boat. So it was late afternoon when +at length Judith's hard task was done. She seemed to possess but one +desire--to rest. To get Blossom over the remaining half mile between +her and home and then to tumble over on the bed and sleep--what more +could anyone wish than that? + +But there would be more than that to do. She must get food for tired +little Blossom, if not for herself. And before this towered +gigantically the two last feats of strength that faced her and seemed +to laugh at her with sardonic glee. + +"Drag me up on the beach--drag me up!" the old black dory taunted her. + +"Carry me home, Judy, I'm so tired!--carry me home," Blossom pleaded, +like a little wilted blossom. + +She did both things, but she never quite realized just how she could +have done them. She remembered telling herself she couldn't and then +finding them done. Of covering her load of mackerel with an old +rubber blanket she was dimly conscious. It was not until she lay +drowsing in utter exhaustion on her own bed that she thought of all +of the rest that must be done to that boat-load of precious freight. +Then she tried to sit up, with a cry of distress. + +"I must go! I cant't stay here! Or I shall lose--Oh, what shall I +lose?" she groaned in her drowsiness and dread. Something would +happen if she did not get up at once--she would lose something that +she _mustn't_ lose. She must get up now, at once. + +"I shall lose Blossom--no, I mean Blossom will lose--oh, yes, Blossom +will lose her legs, if I don't get up," she drowsed, and fell +asleep. + + + + +Chapter IV. + + +Judith awoke with a bewildering sensation of guilt and need of +action. What had happened? What had she done that she ought not to +have done?--or was it something that she ought to? Memory struggled +back to her dimly, then flashed upon her in sudden clearness. + +She had taken a school of mackerel--that was what she had done that +was praiseworthy. She had left them down there in the old black dory, +undressed and unpacked--that was the thing she ought not to have done. +That was the awful thing! For if they were not dressed and packed at +once-- + +"Oh, I shall lose them! I shall lose them!" moaned poor Judith, +sitting up in bed and wringing her hands in the keenness of her +distress. "How could I have _let_ myself fall asleep! How could I +have slept all this time like a log!" + +It was very dark, so it must be midnight or later. There was no light +anywhere, on land or sea, or in Judith's troubled soul. To her +remorseful mind all her terrible labor and strain of body had been in +vain; she had gone to sleep and spoiled everything, everything! + +Judith had never been so utterly tired out as when she went to sleep; +she had never been so tired as she was now. She felt lame in every +joint and muscle of her body. But her conscience stood up before her +in the dark and arraigned her with pitiless, scathing scorn. + +"Well, aren't you ashamed of yourself? See what you've done! All +those beautiful fish lost, when you might have saved them--just by +staying awake and attending to them. A little thing like that! And +you worked so hard to get them--I was proud of you for that. Ah-h, but +I'm ashamed of you now!" + +"Don't! don't--you hurt!" sighed Judith, "I'll get up now, this +minute, and go down there. Don't you see me getting up? I've got one +shoe on now." + +Judith was not experienced in the dressing of many fish at a time and +the packing of them in barrels for market. At sixteen, how can one +be--and one a girl? But she knew in a rather indefinite way the +importance of having it done promptly. She remembered father's and +the boys' last school of fish--how she had hurried down to the shore +and watched the dory come creeping heavily in, how the boys had +cheered, as they came, how father had let her help at the dressing, +and mother had brought down hot coffee for them all and then "fallen +to," herself and worked like a man. How they all had worked to get +the barrels packed full of the shining layers in time for the steamer +next morning! + +All this Judith remembered as she crept silently away through the +darkness and turned toward the salty spray that the wind tossed +in her face. That had been a phenomenally large school of +mackerel--eighteen barrels for market in the distant city. Judith was +not quite sure, but she thought the check that came back to father +had been for a hundred and fifty dollars. Mackerel had been in great +demand then. A hundred and fifty dollars! Judith stopped short and +caught her breath. + +"But my school was just a little one," she thought, "and maybe people +aren't very mackerel hungry now." Still, a hundred dollars--or even +fifty--fifty dollars would go so far toward that doctor across the +sea! Supposing she had lost fifty dollars! She hurried on through the +black night, not knowing what she should do when she got to her +destination, but eager to do something. The lantern she carried cast +a small glimmer into the great dark. + +Judith was not afraid--how long had it been since she was afraid of +the dark? But a distant thrill shot through her when she saw another +faint glimmer ahead of her. Then it seemed to divide into two +glimmers--they blinked at her like evil eyes. They were straight +ahead; she was going toward them! She must go toward them if she went +to the old dory drawn up on the beach. + +"And I'm goin!" Judy said defiantly. "Blink away, you old bad-y +two-eyes! Wait till I get there and fix you!" It helped to laugh a +little and nod defiance at the blinking eyes. + +The salty spray increased to a gentle rain, buffeting her cheeks. The +steady boom of the breakers was in her ears like the familiar voice +of a friend. Judith tramped on resolutely. + +The lights were two lanterns, sheltered from the wind, beside the old +black dory. Judith came upon them and cried out in astonishment. For +she had come upon something else--a boy, dressing fish as if his life +depended on it! + +"Jemmy Three!" she ejaculated shrilly. + +The boy neither turned about nor stopped. + +"Hullo! That you, Jude? Got a lantern? Take that knife there an' go +to work like chain lightnin'. I've filled two barrels--there isn't any +time to lose, now, I tell you! Steamer's due at seven." + +"But--but--I don't understand--" faltered Judith. + +"Well, you needn't, till you get plenty o' time. Understandin' don't +dress no fish." Jemmy Three, like Jem One, had missed his rightful +share of schooling. "What we got to do now is dress fish." + +Judith went to work obediently, but the wonder went on in her mind. +What did it all mean? How had Jemmy Three found out about the +mackerel? Why was he down here in the dead of night dressing and +packing them? + +By and by the boy saw fit to explain in little jerks over his +shoulder. Judith pieced them together into a strange, beautiful story +that made her throat throb. + +"Saw you had a load here--saw 'twas mackerel--knew they'd got to be +'tended to--'tended to 'em," Jemmy Three slung over his shoulder, as +he worked. + +"Suspicioned you'd struck a school, and gone home clean tuckered. Oh, +but you're a smart one, Jude! Couldn't no other girl 'a' done it, +sir, this side o' the Atlantic!" + +He caught up the dressed fish and bent over a fresh barrel; his voice +sounded muffled and hollow to Judith. + +"Knew there weren't no time to spare--nobody hereabouts to help +out--went at it myself all flyin',--been down here since seven +o'clock." + +"Oh, Jemmy!" Judith trembled. The throb in her throat hurt her. "What +time is it now?" she asked. + +A grunt issued from the barrel depths. "Time! Ain't any time now! I +told you we'd got to fly!" + +It was almost twelve. They worked on, for the most part silently, +until daylight began to redden the east. One barrel after another was +headed up by Jemmy Three's tireless hands. Judith counted barrels +mechanically as she toiled. + +"Four!" she cried. Then, "Five!" "Six!" + +"There'll be a good eight--you see," Jem Three said, rolling a new one +into position. "You'll get a good fifty dollars, Jude; see if you +don't! How's that for one haul? Ain't any other girl could 'a' done +it!" + +"Oh, don't!" sobbed Judith suddenly. She let a little silver fellow +slip to the ground, half-dressed, and went over to Jemmy Three. + +"Don't say another word--don't dress another fish--don't move till I +tell you!" she cried. "I cant't stand it another minute! I--I thought +you helped yourself to my lobsters--I _thought_ I thought it. And +you've been here all night working for me--" + +"Oh!" cried Jemmy Three softly. But he did not stop working. + +"I thought that was why there were only three yesterday--I thought +there'd have been fifty to-day," ran on Judith. The new daylight +lighted her ashamed face redly, like a blush. + +"There wouldn't 'a' been but five--" said Jemmy Three, then caught +himself up in confusion. The blush was on his face now. + +Judith's cry rang out above the sea-talk. "Then you _put some in!_" +she cried, "instead of helping yourself. You put some in my traps, +Jemmy Three--that's what you did! You put in _twelve!_" + +"Guess there's somethin' the matter with your traps, Jude," muttered +the boy. "Guess they better be overhauled--guess a fellow's gotter +right to go shares, ain't he?" + +"Jemmy Three, I'm going to hug you!" + +"Oh, oh--say, look out; I'm all scales!" + +"I had scales on my eyes, but they've fallen off now," laughed the +girl tremulously. "It's worse to have scales on your eyes than all +over the rest o' you. I can see things as plain as day now, +and--and--you look perfectly beautiful!" + +"Hold on--I'm dressin' fish! The steamer's due at seven--" + +"I don't care if she's due this minute, I've got to talk! If she was +in plain sight--if I could see her smokestack--I should have to talk. I +tell you I can _see_ now, and you look splendid--splendid, and I look +like a little black--blot. To think of my being up home asleep, and +you working down here, dressing _my_ fish--and me thinking those mean +thoughts of you! It makes me so ashamed I cant't hold my kn-knife." + +Judith was crying now in good earnest. She had sunk down on the sand, +and her crouching figure with the red glow from the east upon it +looked oddly childish and small. Jemmy Three saw it over his +shoulder. + +"Look a-here, Judy," he said gently, dropping his own knife and going +over to the rocking, sobbing figure. "You look _a-here_, I tell you! +What you cryin' for, with eight barrels o' fish 'most packed an' a +good fifty dollars 'most in your pocket? You better laugh! Come on, +get up, and let's give a rouser! Three cheers for the only girl in +the land o' the free an' the home o' the brave that darst tackle a +school o' mack'rel alone! Hip, hip--" + +"Jemmy, Jemmy, don't!" + +"_Hooray!_ Now let's dress fish. You're all right--don't you worry +about bein' a blot, when I tell you you're a reg'lar brick! I'm proud +o' you!" + +It was the longest speech Jemmy Three had ever made, and the +peroration surprised himself as much as it did Judith. He put up his +hand and cleared something away from his eyes--it couldn't have been +scales, for he left the scales there. + +At five mother came hurrying down to find Judith. The scale-strewn +beach and the scale-strewn children, the barrels in orderly rows +waiting to be rolled to the little landing-place of the steamer, the +heap of clumsy wet netting--all told her the whole astonishing story. +And what they did not tell, Judith supplemented eagerly. + +"I declare! I declare!" gasped mother in mingled pride and pity, "you +two poor things, putting in like this! You'll be tired to +death--you'll be sick abed!" + +"Guess we'll weather it," nodded Jemmy Three, working steadily. "But +if you think we ain't hungry enough to eat a pine shing--" + +"I'll go right home and boil some coffee and eggs and bring 'em down, +and then I'll go to work, too," cried mother energetically. "You poor +starved things!" + +After a salt toilet in the surf, they ate a hurried breakfast with +keen relish. Judith had forgotten her aching joints and lame muscles, +and Jemmy Three had forgotten his sleepless night. Victory lay just +ahead of them, and who cared for muscles or sleep! + +"This is the best bread 'n' butter I ever ate," said Judith between +bites. + +There proved to be the "good eight" barrels, when they were done, and +they were done by six o'clock, or a very little after. By half-past +six, the barrels had been rolled down the slope of the beach to the +little wharf not far away. Then the tired two rested, and remembered +muscles and sleep. + +They dropped in the soft, moist sand and rubbed their aching arms. + +"I'm proud o' _you_, Jemmy!" Judith said shyly, and looked away over +the water. Her repentance had come back and lay heavily on her heart. +She longed unutterably to recall those evil thoughts--to have another +chance out there beyond to summon Jemmy Three with the little shrill +old signal. How she would send it shrilling forth now! + +"Jemmy," she said slowly, as they waited, "you know our signal, don't +you? The one we used to practice so much." + +For answer Jemmy Three pursed his lips and sent out a clear +"carrying" cry. + +"Well, I wish--don't you know what I wish?" + +"'Twas Christmas," Jemmy said flippantly, but he knew. He dug his +bare toes in the sand--a sign of embarrassment. + +"I wish I'd called you out there at the school!" lamented Judith, +"even if you couldn't have heard. I wish--I wish--I _wish_ I'd called! +If I ever strike another school--Jemmy, I'd give you half o' this one +if I dared to. But I'm afraid to have Blossom wait--I don't _dare_ +to!" + +"O' course not," agreed Jem Three vaguely. He did not at all know +what Judith meant. Girls had queer ways of beginnin' things in the +middle like that. No knowin' what a girl was drivin' at, half the +time! + +"Jemmy--say--" + +"What say? Ain't that smoke out there?" + +"No, it's a cloud. Jemmy Three, I'm going to tell you something. I +_want_ to. I'm going to tell you what that money's going to do--you're +listening, aren't you?" + +"With both ears--go ahead." + +"Well--oh, it's going to be something so _beautiful_, Jemmy! I never +knew till day before yesterday that you _could_ do anything so +beautiful--I mean that anybody could. I never dreamed it! But you +can--somebody can! There's a man can, Jemmy! All you need is money to +take you across to him and--there's the money!" waving her hand toward +the rows of barrels. Her eyes were shining like twin stars. She had +forgotten aches and lameness again. + +"I told Uncle Jem," she went on rapidly, while Jem Three gazed at her +in puzzled wonder and thought more things about girls. "He told me to +go down to the hotel and ask that other little girl's mother, and I +meant to go last night! But I went to sleep last night! So I'm going +to-day--I'm going to ask her to tell me just exactly how to do it." + +"Do what?" inquired Jem Three quietly. That was the only way to do +with girls--pull 'em up smart, like that! + +"Mercy! Haven't I told you?" cried Judith. "Well, then--Jemmy, if you +were a little mite of a thing--a Blossom, say--and a fairy came to you +and said, 'Wish a wish, my dear; what would you rather have in all +the world?' what would you answer, Jemmy? Remember, if you were a +little mite of a Blossom with a--with a--little broken stem." Judith's +voice sank to a tender softness. She didn't know she was "making +poetry." + +The boy with his toes deep in the sand was visibly embarrassed. +Whatever poetry lay soul-deep within him, there was none he could +call to his lips. + +"Wouldn't you answer her, 'Legs to walk with'?" went on the girl +beside him softly. "You know you would, Jemmy! _I_ would--everybody +would. You'd say, 'The beautifulest thing in the world would be to +_walk_--dear fairy, I want to walk so much!' And then supposing--are +you supposing?--the fairy waved her wand over you and you--_walked!_ +Do you know what you'd say then? _I_ know--you'd say, 'See me! Judy, +see me! Jemmy, everybody, see me!'" + +Judith laughed to herself under her breath. The twin stars in her +eyes shone even a little brighter. + +"The fairy's a great doctor--he's across there, 'way, 'way out of +sight. He's going to wave his wand over Blossom. He waved it over +another little broken girl, _and she walked_. I saw her. _She_ said, +'See me!'--I heard her. That's what the money is going to do, Jemmy." + +"Gee!" breathed Jemmy softly. It was his way of making poetry. + +"And you see, I don't dare to wait--I'm afraid something might happen +to that doctor." + +"O' course!--you go down there all flyin' an' see that woman, Jude." + +And that afternoon Judith went. It was to Mrs. Ben she went first; +she felt acquainted with Mrs. Ben. + +"Can I see--I'd like to see that mother whose little girl can walk," +Judith said eagerly. + +"Land!" ejaculated Mrs. Ben. + +"I mean," explained Judith, smiling, "whose little girl was lame and +a doctor made her walk by waving his wa--I mean by--by curing her. I +heard her telling another mother. I'd like to see--do you suppose I +could see that lady?" + +"I guess I know who you mean--there ain't been but one little girl +here lately," Mrs. Ben said. "But there ain't any now. They've gone +away." + + + + +Chapter V. + + +Judith went straight to Uncle Jem, sobbing all the way +unconsciously; she was not conscious of anything but what Mrs. Ben +had said. + +"They've gone away!--they've gone away!--they've gone away!" It +reiterated itself to her in dull monotony, keeping slow time with the +throbbing pain of her disappointment. + +Uncle Jem heard her coming--in some surprise, she came so fast. What +was the child hurrying like that for? What had happened? + +"I hear ye, child!" he called cheerily. The time-worn little +pleasantry did him service as usual. "I'm layin' low for ye!" + +She crossed the outer threshold and the little box of a kitchen +without slackening her excited pace, and appeared in the old man's +doorway, breathless and flushed. + +"It's too late!" she gasped, briefly. Then, because she needed +comforting and Uncle Jem was her comforter of old, her head went down +on the patchwork quilt that covered his twisted old frame, and she +cried like a grief-struck little child. + +"There, there, deary!" he crooned, his twisted fingers traveling +across her hair, "jest you lay there an' cry it all out--don't ye +hurry any. When ye get all done an' good an' ready, tell Uncle Jem +what it's all about. But take your time, little un--take your time." + +The child was worn out in every thread of the over-strained young +body. The excitement and nervous rack of the last twenty-four hours +was having sway now, and would not be put aside. And the keen +disappointment that Mrs. Ben's words had brought, added to all the +rest, had proved too much even for Judith Lynn. She cried on, taking +her time. + +"There now! that's right, storm's clearin'!" said Uncle Jem, as at +length the brown head lifted slowly. "Now we'll pull out o' harbor +and get to work." Which meant that now explanations were in order. +Judith understood. + +"They've gone away!" she said thickly. It takes time for throbbing +throats to come back to their own. "It's too late to find out. If I'd +gone yesterday--" She stopped hastily, on the verge of fresh tears. + +"Go ahead, little un; weather's a little too thick yet to see clear. +Who's gone away? What's it too late for?" But even as he said it, +Uncle Jem, too, understood. He went on without waiting, to give +Judith more time. + +"Hold on!--I can pull out o' the fog myself. That mother o' that +little cured un--she's the one that's gone away, eh? You was too late +to see her an' ask your questions. I see. Well, now, I call that too +bad. But 'tain't worth another cry, deary." + +"Well, I won't cry another one, so there!" cried Judith. "Only--only--" + +"I know--I know! We've got to slew off on another tack. You give Uncle +Jem time to think, Judy. There's a powerful lot o' thinkin'-time +handy when you lay here on your back for a livin'. Jest you run home +an' let your ma put you to bed. I've heard all about your goin's-on, +an' I guess bed's the best place for you! I'll think it out while +you're restin' up." + +But to unlettered people who rarely get in touch with what is going +on in the thick of things, "thinking it out" is no easy matter. Their +one frail little hold on the miracle that could make Blossom whole +had snapped when the hotel mother and child went away. Where to turn +next for information--what to do next--was a puzzle that would not +unravel for any of them. In vain Uncle Jem wrestled with it, as he +lay through long, patient hours. And Judith wrestled untiringly. + +The mackerel-money came in due time, but the wondrous little blue +check that came out of the official-looking envelope and lay +outspread on Judith's hard, brown palm had lost its power to give +legs to little Blossom, and Judith gazed at it resentfully. What was +the use of it now? A small part of it would get the little +wheel-chair, but it was not a wheel-chair Judith longed for now. She +put away the blue check safely, and took up the wrestling again. She +would find the clue to the puzzle--she refused to give it up. + +Then quite privately and uninvited, Jemmy Three began to think. No +one had thought of asking his advice; thinking had never been Jemmy +Three's stronghold. + +He went into his grandfather's room one early morning arrayed in his +best clothes. Not much in the way of a "best," but Jemmy had "pieced +out" as well as possible with scraps of his dead father's best that +had been packed away. He looked unduly big and plain and awkward in +the unaccustomed finery, but the freckles across the deep brown +background of his face spelled d-e-t-e-r-m-i-n-a-t-i-o-n. Uncle Jem +spelled it out slowly. His astonished gaze wandered downward, then, +from "best" to "best." + +"Well?" he interrogated, and waited. + +"I'm goin' to the city, gran'father," the boy said. "I've gotter, on +a--a--errand. I thought I'd tell you." + +"Good idea!" nodded the old head on the pillows. The old eyes +twinkled kindly. "I suppose ye want me to go out to your traps, don't +ye? An' do a little trawlin' while I'm out? Jest speak the word!" + +Uncle Jemmy said nothing about getting his own dinner, but the boy +had thought of that. + +"Judy's comin' in at noon," he explained. "I've got everythin' cooked +up. An' she's goin' to look at my traps when she goes out to hers. +I'll be back in the night, sometime; don't you lay awake for me, now, +gran'father!" + +He went out, but presently appeared again, fumbling his best cap in +palpable embarrassment. + +"I wish--I don't suppose--you wouldn't mind wishin' me good luck, +gran'father, would you?" he stammered. "I'd kind of like to be wished +good luck." + +"Come here where I can reach ye," the old man said cheerily, putting +out his hand. "Wish ye luck? I guess I will! Ye're a good boy, Jemmy. +I don't know what your arrant is, an' I don't need to know, but +here's good luck on it!" + +"I tell you what it is, if--if it succeeds," Jem Three said, gripping +the twisted old fingers warmly. "I kind of thought I'd rather not +tell first off. But I can, of course." + +"Off with ye, boy! Ye distract me when I'm doin' a bit of thinkin' +for a lady! When ye get good an' ready, then will be time enough to +do your tellin'. Queer if I couldn't trust a Jem!" + +The city was twenty miles inland from the little flag-station, and +the flag-station was ten miles away from Jemmy Three. He trudged away +with his precious boots over his shoulder, to be put on at the little +station. + +Once in the city, he went directly about his "arrant." He chose a +street set thick with dwelling-houses as like one another as peas in +a pod are like. He tramped down one side of the street, up the other, +till at last he came upon what he sought. A smart sign hung on that +particular house, and Jem Three mounted the high steps and rang the +door-bell. + +"Is this a doctor's house? There's a sign that says--" + +"The doctor isn't at home," the smart maid said smartly. "Will you +leave your address on the slate, or will you call again at office +hours--two till six." + +"I'll call somewheres else," Jem Three said briefly. + +He called at many doors in many rows of pea--of houses. It was +sometime before he succeeded in his quest. When at length he found a +doctor at home, he was closeted with him for a brief space and then +drove away with him in a trim little gig to a great, many-windowed +house where pale people were sunning themselves in wheel-chairs about +the doors. Jem Three made a call at the many-windowed house. + + * * * * * + +It was with considerable curiosity that two people down by the sea +awaited the boy's return from his trip, but oddly enough it was +neither Uncle Jem nor Judith that he sought out at first. It was +Judith's mother, at her work down-beach at the summer cottage. Jemmy +Three went straight to her. He had got home earlier than he expected +and mother had worked later, so they walked back together in the +cool, clear evening, talking all the way. + +"Don't tell Judy," the boy said the last thing, as they parted. "I +mean, not _it_. It'll be splendid to surprise her, Mis' Lynn!" + +"If we can, Jemmy," the mother answered gently. "If it succeeds. The +more I think of it the more it makes me tremble, Jemmy; but we'll do +our best and leave the part we cant't do with the One who can do it." + The gentle voice trembled into silence. Mother could "make poetry," +too. Jemmy caught off his hat suddenly, and the very act was a little +prayer. + + * * * * * + +"Judy, are you awake?" + +Mother stood over the bed in her scant white nightgown. When Judith +answered, she sat down beside her and felt for one of her calloused, +oar-toughened little hands. + +"Judy, would it be--be all right to use some of the mackerel-money? +Mother's got to go away for a little while--just a little while, Judy. +Jemmy says he talked with a man in the city who would give me some +work to do in his kitchen for a little while. But--why, I thought I'd +take Blossom, Judy, and of course that would mean spending some +money--" + +"Blossom!" + +Judith sat straight up in bed, her eyes like glints of light in the +darkness. + +"Why, yes, dear; she's never been away from the sea in her little +life. You think of that, Judy! You've been away twice. Blossom never +saw a steam-car nor a city, nor--nor heard a hand-organ! Jemmy says he +heard three to-day. You think how pleased Blossom would be to hear a +hand-organ!" + +"Sh!" cautioned Judith, "don't wake her, mother. If--she's going, she +mustn't know beforehand." + +Blossom going away! Not _Blossom!_ Not put one hand out, so, in the +dark and feel her there beside you--little warm Blossom! Not dress her +in the morning and carry her downstairs--you the chariot and she the +fine lady! Not hurry home to her from the traps! Judith lay and +thought about all that, after mother went away. She put out her hand +on the empty side of the bed, where no Blossom was, and tried to get +used to the emptiness. She said stern things to herself. + +"You, Judy, are you selfish as _that?_" she said. "To go and begrudge +your little Blossom a chance to go away and see things and _hear_ +things! Don't you want her to hear a hand-organ? And perhaps see a +_monkey?_ When she's never been anywhere, nor heard anything, nor +seen anything! When mother's going, anyway, and can take her as well +as not--you Judy, you Judy, you Judy! Oh, I cant't sleep with you, I'm +so ashamed of you!" + + * * * * * + +They went at once, and Judith settled down to her loneliness as +best she could, and bore it as bravely. They were to be gone a +month--perhaps two--perhaps three. A month--two, maybe--three, +maybe--without Blossom! + +Uncle Jem and Jemmy Three helped out--how much they did help out! Then +there were the rare, precious letters. Judith had never had letters +from mother before in all her sixteen years. She was rather +disappointed that there were no bits of ragged, printed ones from +Blossom, but mother's letters had Blossom-bulletins. Blossom sent her +love, Blossom had heard two hand-organs--three hand-organs; Blossom +said tell Judy she loved her, oh, my! Blossom was very patient and +sweet. + +"She's always patient and sweet," wondered Judy. Queer mother put +that in! + +"You little sweet, patient Blossom!" Judith's heart cried tenderly, +"when I get you in my arms again--" + +Would the time ever come? Why were days made so long? Twenty-four +hours were too many--why weren't they made with only twenty? + +"Uncle Jem, why don't you tell _me_ how to be sweet and patient?" +Judith said, folding up the Blossom-bulletin she had been reading to +him. "Tell me a good receipt." + +"Well, deary--well, give me time," laughed the cheery old voice. "I +guess we can fix up somethin' that will meet your case." + +A very few weeks later Judith went wearily homeward to her lonely +home. She had been out to her traps and down to the hotel with the +lobsters for Mrs. Ben. Her body was weary, but her heart was wearier +still. It did seem, she was telling herself as she plodded through +the sand, as if she could not wait any longer for mother and Blossom +to come home. + +Suddenly a clear little trill of laughter crept into her ears and +set her pulses throbbing. Then another trill--then Blossom's voice, +calling something that thrilled her to her soul. + +"See me!" called the little triumphant voice of Blossom. And Judy, +lifting frightened eyes and holding her breath as she looked, _saw_. +A small, swaying figure was coming toward her very slowly, over the +hard sand. Blossom--it was Blossom! She was swaying unsteadily a step +or two, but--_she was walking!_ + +"See me! See me!" cried Blossom. "I'm walkin', Judy, don't you see? I +came a-walkin' down to meet you! It's a s'prise!" + +Someone caught up the little figure and came leaping down to Judith +with great strides of triumph. + +"That's enough to s'prise her--mustn't do much of it at a time yet," +Jemmy Three said gayly. "You've got to begin easy. Yes!" in answer to +Judy's speechless pleading, "yes, sir, she's goin' to be a reg'lar +walker, now, ain't you, Blossom? Yes, sir; no more bein' toted--she's +_folks!_" + +"Yes, yes, yes!" trilled Blossom exultantly. "They pulled my legs out +an' put 'em in over, where they b'long. Only I've got to go easy till +I'm uncasted." + +"Till you're--what? But never mind what! You're my Blossom, and you're +home again, and you're _walking!_" Judith cried in her exceeding +great joy. But by and by Jemmy Three explained. + +"They put her legs in kind o' casts, you know, that she cant't have +taken off yet awhile, but when they do take 'em off--" + +"Then I'll run!" Blossom interrupted, radiantly. + +"Oh, oh--and to think we were going to surprise mother, and you +surprised me!" breathed Judy. "But I thought--_we_ were going across +the ocean--" + +"You needn't have," Jemmy said. "That great doctor's over there, but +there's plenty o' second-great ones over here that make children walk +his way. That's what I went to find out. I thought maybe--" + +"You went to find out--_you_ thought--oh, Jemmy, what a boy you are!" + +"See here--hold on--wait! Let Blossom do it!" warded off Jemmy Three, +backing away precipitately. + +The beautiful secret was out. Judith had been "s'prised." There were +still months of uncertainty, but Judith was not uncertain. She went +about in a cloud of rapture. At night she lay awake beside Blossom, +and dreamed her rosy, happy dreams. And, in truth, if she could have +looked ahead into the certain months, and beyond, she would have seen +Blossom walking steadily through all the years. + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Judith Lynn, by Annie Hamilton Donnell + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JUDITH LYNN *** + +***** This file should be named 27986.txt or 27986.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/7/9/8/27986/ + +Produced by Jeff Kaylin + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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