“Green pastures are before me, Which yet I have not seen.”
“I suppose King will ask me to exchange with him Sunday,” remarked Roger, putting the reins into Judith’s ready hands, after turning out of the parsonage lane. “Which sermon shall I take?”
“The cubit one,” was her unhesitating reply; “it has been in my mind to ask you to preach that again for me.”
“Unless you take me with you,” she suggested with a merry laugh.
Roger believed that Judith Grey Mackenzie was the merriest maiden in Bensalem.
“I would if I were going to dine at the parsonage, but there’s no housekeeper there, more’s the pity, I shall take dinner and supper with one of the deacons, and drive home in the moonlight. You would like that.”
“And you wouldn’t endure the deacon for the sake of the cubit sermon.”
“Indeed, I wouldn’t. What would they think of me?”
“I’m too big a girl, that’s the worst of it.”
“I don’t know whether I’m glad of it or not,” she said, as frankly as if speaking to Marion. “The only trouble I have in the world is that I’m growing up away from being your little girl.”
[Illustration: “The only trouble I have,” said Judith, “is that I’m growing up away from being your little girl.”]
“Don’t you dare,” he said with playful threatening.
“Oh, how that brings back dear old Don. It is the last name he ever called me—outside of a letter. Don’t you believe that he’s coming home soon?”
“Oh,” drawing a long breath, “I’m too glad. But I don’t want to go to the city and keep house for him, and go to college and have every advantage, as he says I must do. I’ve _had_ every advantage; you and Marion have been my ‘liberal education.’ Nothing will ever take me away from Marion.”
“Oh, you two are one. I always mean you both.”
“But hasn’t your Cousin Don the best right to you? Isn’t he your guardian or something?”
“He is my everything—beside you and Marion and Aunt Affy.”
“Am I not to be consulted? I belong to myself first of all.”
“Then I hope I shall not have to do anything I don’t want to. I’m afraid Don will be like a stranger. I was only a little girl when he went away. I do not feel at home with _him_, only with the thought of him.”
“And my thought may be very far wrong. O, Roger, do you believe it is?” bringing her earnest face within range of his too sympathetic eyes.