Judith turned with a soft, nestling movement, and opened her eyes again, deep, watchful eyes that asked endless questions, and made it impossible to answer them, eyes that knew no language but their own, the secret and alien language of youth. Her mother sighed.
"You're the strangest child. Sometimes you seem a hundred years old, and sometimes--you don't feel too badly to stay alone? Mollie would have stayed in with you, or Norah."
"No. I would have gone, if I'd known you cared so much, but it won't do any good to make yourself late, Mamma. Father's calling," said Judith gravely. Still grave and unrelaxed, she returned her mother's rare good-night kiss, and watched her sweep out of the room, turning the rose-shaded night lamp low as she passed.
There was a hurry of preparation downstairs, her mother's low, fretful voice and her father's high and strained one joined in a heated argument, and they started still deep in it, for her father did not call a good-night to Judith. The street door shut, and she was alone in the house. Carriage wheels creaked out of the yard and there was no returning sound of them in search of some forgotten thing; a long enough interval passed so that it was safe to infer that there would not be, but Judith lay as her mother had left her, as still as if her headache were really authentic, her questioning eyes on the rose-shaded light.
There was much that might have increased her mother's concern for her in her face, if you could interpret it fully; sometimes the eyes suggested a fair proportion of the hundred years her mother had credited her with, sometimes there was dawning fear in them, and sometimes an inconsequent, gipsy light; sometimes her soft lips trembled pitifully, and sometimes they smiled. Always it was a lovely face, rose flushed and eager in the rosy light, and always something was evident which was enough to account for her mother's concern and for more concern than her mother was capable of feeling; Miss Judith Devereux Randall was growing up.
Whatever questions occupied her answered themselves in a satisfactory way at last, even an amusing way, for her smile had come to stay and her eyes were dancing, when she jumped up from the chaise-longue at last, turned on more lights, opened closets and bureau drawers all at once, dropped various hastily chosen and ill-assorted articles on the immaculate counterpane of her bed, and began to dress.