Still scrupulously averting her gaze, Miss Judy found what she wanted, and sidled softly from the room, thanking Miss Sophia and holding the spectacles down at her side, hidden in the folds of her skirt. Stepping out on the door-stone, she looked cautiously up and down the big road. It was still deserted, not a human being was in sight. Only a solitary cow went soberly past, with her bell clanging not unmusically on the stillness. Nevertheless, Miss Judy gave another glance of precaution, surveying the highway from end to end from the tavern on the north to Sidney Wendall's on the south. As the little lady's eyes rested for a moment upon the house on the hillside, a girl came out as though the wistful gaze had drawn her forth. Miss Judy's blue eyes could barely make out the slender young figure standing in the dazzling sunlight; but she knew that it was Doris, and she did not need the sight of her sweet old eyes to see the wafting of the kiss which the girl threw. Miss Judy's own little hands flew up to throw two kisses in return. She straightway forgot all about the spectacles. She no longer cared how large the huge frames might look on her small face, nor how old they might make her appear. It was always so. At the sight of Doris, Miss Judy always ceased to be an old maid and became a young mother. For there is a motherhood of the spirit as well as the motherhood of the flesh, and the one may be truer than the other. IV THE CHILD OF MISS JUDY'S HEART It is among the sad things of many good lives, that those who love each other most often understand each other least. No mother was ever truer than Sidney Wendall, so far as her light led. None ever tried harder to do her whole duty by her children, and none, perhaps, could have come nearer doing it by Billy and Kate, given no better opportunities than Sidney had. It was Doris, the eldest child, and the one whom she loved best and was proudest of--the darling of her heart, the very apple of her eye--that Sidney never knew what to do with. From the very cradle she had found Doris utterly unmanageable. Not that the child was unruly or self-willed; she was ever the gentlest and most obedient of the three children. It was only that the mother and the child could not understand one another. That was all; but it was enough to send Sidney, whom few difficulties daunted, to Miss Judy, almost in tears and quite in despair, while Doris was hardly beyond babyhood.