"Well--really, doctor!" she began, blushing more vividly, making her little mouth smaller than usual, "primping" it, as she would have said, and bridling with the daintiest little air of prudery, which she never would have dreamt of putting on for the doctor alone, but which seemed to her to be the proper manner before a strange young gentleman--and one from Boston too. "I have never been required to think anything of any gambling game! Such matters were left entirely to gentlemen; they were not mentioned before ladies in my day." "Bless your little heart!" exclaimed the doctor. "If I've said a word that you don't like, I'm ready to go right down on my knees in the dust--here and now--in the middle of the big road." Miss Judy smiled, shaking her little head till the thin curls behind her pretty ears were more like silver mist than ever. In gentle confusion she began dividing the bunch of blush roses into halves, giving one to the doctor and the other to Lynn. She had known his father, she said shyly to the young man, and his mother also, although not so well, since the latter had not been brought up in Oldfield as his father was. "But, Miss Judy, I want to talk to you seriously about card-playing," the doctor persisted. "You see you have got us all into the selfish habit of bringing every one of our burdens to lay them on your little shoulders. Unselfishness like yours does harm; it breeds selfishness in others." Miss Judy protested that she had not the least idea of what he was talking about; but she saw that he was in earnest, and she straightway forgot all her quaint airs, and listened with deepest interest and tenderest sympathy to his story of his perplexity over the hopeless case of Tom Watson, and over the unbending attitude of Anne. "The passion for gaming is just as strong in that poor fellow as it ever was. I had suspected it before, but I wasn't sure until to-day," the doctor went on, looking across the way at the sick man's window. "I disapprove of gambling as much as any one, but I can't for the life of me see any harm that could possibly come now to that poor unfortunate, from any sort of a game--if anybody can possibly stand it to play with him." Miss Judy looked puzzled and a little alarmed. "Were you--do you wish _me_ to play with him?" she faltered, rather shocked, yet wondering if she could learn, and quite ready to try. The doctor was too deeply absorbed--too seriously troubled--to smile as he usually did at Miss Judy's sweet absurdities, appreciating them almost as much as he valued her heart of gold. In truth he hardly heard what she said. "Maybe you can make Anne see how different things are now," he went on musingly, and somewhat hesitatingly, as though the possibility had suddenly occurred to him. "Women understand one another," he added, uttering a fallacy accepted by many a sensible man and rejected by every sensible woman.