Judy smiled an inscrutable smile, as she pulled her hat low over her sparkling eyes. "He's bossy," she began, slowly, "and we are sure to quarrel if we see much of each other--but he is interesting--and I think I shall like him, Anne." And then Belinda and Becky discovered them, and made for their beloved mistress, and conversation on the picnic or any other topic was at an end. CHAPTER IX A BLUE MONDAY There was a noisy scrambling in the vines outside of Anne's window early on Monday morning, and the little maid opened her eyes to see Belinda's white head peeping over the sill, and Belinda's white paws holding on like grim death to the ledge. "You darling," cried Anne, sitting up, "come here," and Belinda with a plaintive mew made one last effort, pulled herself into the room, and flew to her mistress' arms. "Where's Becky?" asked Anne, wondering why the tame crow did not follow, for in spite of their constant feuds, the two pets were inseparable. Belinda blinked sagely, while from a shadowy corner of the room came a sepulchral croak. "Are you there, Becky?" called Anne, peering into the darkness, and with a flap and a flutter, Becky swooped from the top of the bookcase, where she had been perched for a half-hour, waiting for Anne to wake. Anne's bookcase was the one thing of value in the little house. It was of rich old mahogany, with diamond-shaped panes in its leaded doors, and behind the doors were books--not many of them, but very choice ones, culled from a fine library which had been sold when ruin came to Anne's grandfather and father one disastrous year. It happened, therefore, that Anne had read much of poetry and history, and the lives of famous people, to say nothing of fairy-tales and legends, so that in the companionship of her books and pets, she had missed little in spite of her poverty and solitary life. "How good it is to be at home," she said, as the sunlight, creeping around the room, shone on the green cover of a much-thumbed book of French fairy-tales, and then slanted off to touch the edge of a blue and gold Tennyson; "how good it is to be at home." "How good it is to be at home," she said again, as followed by Belinda and Becky, she came, a half-hour later, into the sunlit kitchen, where the little grandmother, smiling and rosy, was pouring the steaming breakfast food into a blue bowl. "I was afraid you might find it dull," said the little grandmother, as she kissed her, "after the good times at the Judge's." "Oh, I did have such lovely times," sighed Anne, blissfully. She had sat up late in the moonlight the night before, telling her grandmother of them. "But they didn't make up for you and Becky and Belinda and the little gray house," and she hugged the little grandmother tightly while Belinda and Becky circled around them in great excitement, mingled with certain apprehensions for the waiting breakfast.