ith me. Come on in and see her."

"Oh, dear," said Anne, with a dismayed glance at her spattered apron,
"I look like a sight."

"Run up the back way and fix up," said Judy, "and I'll talk to her
until you come down."

Lutie Barton brought with her the gossip of the town. There had been a
dance at the big hotel the night before, a sailing party down the bay
in the afternoon had been caught in a thunder shower, and all the
girls' hats had been ruined, and there had been a burglary at one of
the cottages in an outlying district.

Anne jumped when they said that. "What did they steal?" she faltered,
with her conversation with Perkins fresh in her mind.

"_Everything_, my dear," said Lutie, who did everything by extremes,
and who wore the highest pompadour, and the highest heels, and who had
the smallest waist and the largest hat that Anne had ever seen, and who
always used the superlative when telling a tale.

"They stole _every single thing_ down to the very shoes, and the kitten
from the rug."

"Oh," said Anne, thinking of Belinda, "the dear little kitten. What
did they want with it?"

"It was a Persian, and this morning it came back, but the silver collar
was gone from its neck, and they took even a thimble from a
work-basket, and a box of candy and a cake!"

"Did they get anything valuable?" asked Anne.

"All of Mrs. Durant's diamonds and the family silver," said Lutie. "My
dear, Mrs. Durant is ill, _absolutely ill_, and the worst of it is that
she saw the burglar, and it frightened her so that she hasn't gotten
over it yet."

"How dreadful," said little Anne, thinking of the great sideboard and
all of the Jameson silver that she and Perkins had cleaned. "Oh, Judy,
suppose they should come here!"

But Judy was standing by the window, watching a figure that slipped
from the boat-house to the wharf with a bundle on his shoulder, the
figure of a small boy, with his cap pulled low.

"Such things are like lightning; they never strike twice in the same
place," she said, indifferently. "Don't go, Lutie."

"Oh, I _must_," gushed Lutie. "I was just _dying_ to see you, Anne,
for a minute, so I came with Judy. But I _must_ go. They will think I
am _dead_."

But she stopped to ask a giggling question. "Tell me about Launcelot
Bart, Anne," she begged. "Judy happened to mention him, but she
wouldn't tell me a _thing_. I think they must have an _awful_ case,
for she is too quiet about him for _anything