And there--you'll hardly believe it, Miss Judy, but I give you my word as a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church--there was that old dorminica _a-standing up_!" Miss Judy had said at the time what a shame it was to waste nice eggs so, and she had spoken with sincere feeling. She had been cherishing a secret hope that she might get a few eggs from Miss Pettus to complete a setting for Speckle. Miss Judy had saved ten eggs with great care, keeping them wrapped in a flannel petticoat; but Speckle, the docile and industrious, could easily cover fifteen and was quite willing to do it. Now, Miss Judy's hope was lost through the dorminica's contrariness. She thought about this again with a pang of disappointment, as she heard the cackling and confusion going on in the Pettus poultry-yard, which told the whole neighborhood that Miss Pettus was wide awake and actively pursuing her chosen walk in life. Sidney Wendall, the widow, was another early riser, as one needs be when earning a living for a whole family by one's wits. Sidney's house, the poorest and smallest of all the village, was the last at that end of the big road, and stood higher than the others, far up on the hillside. As Miss Judy looked toward it that morning, she was not thinking of Sidney but of Doris, her daughter, whom Miss Judy loved as her own child. At the very thought of Doris a new light came into her blue eyes and a lovelier flush overspread her fair cheeks. She stood still for a moment, gazing wistfully, waiting and longing for the far-off glimpse of Doris, which nearly always sweetened the beginning of the day. On that wet March morning there was no flutter of a little white apron, no sign of a wafted kiss. Miss Judy sighed gently as her gaze came back to her own yard. There were two japonica bushes, one standing on either side of the front gate, and as Miss Judy now glanced at them she was startled to see what seemed to be a roseate mist floating among the bare, brown branches, still dripping and shining with the night's rain. III PHASES OF VILLAGE LIFE A rosy mist often floated between Miss Judy and the bare, brown things of life. She knew it, realizing fully how many mistakes she made in seldom seeing things as they actually were. She had never been able to trust her own eyes, and now they were not even as strong as they used to be, although they were as blue as ever. The japonica bushes were only a few paces distant, the front yard being but the merest strip of earth; yet the ground was very wet, and Miss Judy was wearing prunella gaiters. They were the only shoes she had; they were also the only kind she had ever known a lady to wear. Shoes made of leather, however fine, would have seemed to Miss Judy--had she known anything about them--as much too heavy, too stiff, and altogether too clumsy for the delicate, soundless step of a gentlewoman.