On fiddled the old Frenchman and on winged the young girl, both of them far too deeply absorbed in the serious business in hand to notice the onlooker, till Miss Judy came, actually running and almost out of breath. She had seen the young man's approach to the cabin, but she was too far away to reach it before him, although she had come as quickly as she possibly could. Hastening, she sharply reproached herself for having been persuaded to go so far from the cabin to look at Mrs. Beauchamp's strawberry bed. It was, of course, utterly impossible to have foreseen this young gentleman's appearance. Nevertheless, she should not have left Doris, poor child, alone for a moment--none knew that better than herself. And now to see what had come of her unpardonable thoughtlessness! What would this stranger think of Doris, or of any well brought up girl, whom he thus found neglected? At this thought Miss Judy, for all her mildness, ruffled with indignation as a hen ruffles at any rough touch upon her soft little chicks. She would try, she said to herself, to retrieve her mistake. She would do her best to show this grandson of old lady Gordon--who made fun of everybody--that her Doris was no ignorant rustic, roaming the woods all forgotten by her proper guardians. As she ran, much agitated and even alarmed, the little lady mechanically looked over her shoulder and put her little hands behind her back to make sure that the point of her neckerchief was precisely where it should be. She never felt quite equal to a difficult undertaking until she was certain of the point's exact location, and now, having learned by long practice to tell with some degree of certainty by touch,--on account of its being so hard to look in the long mirror,--she now thought that it was in its proper place, and she accordingly entered the green-shadowed end of the passage with a very high air. Her manner was indeed as high and even haughty a manner as could possibly be assumed by a very small, very gentle old lady, who was blushing, and trying to get her breath after a rush across a ploughed field. The greeting which she gave Lynn Gordon was therefore noticeably cold; also the introduction to Doris was plainly wrung from her by politeness, and given with marked reluctance. So that the young man, not understanding in the least, naturally wondered greatly at the change in the little lady, who had been so winningly gracious on the previous day.