like to find a treasure island, Anne," he said.

CHAPTER VIII

A WHITE SUNDAY

Anne was feeling very important. She was wrapped in a pale blue kimona
of Judy's, and she had had her breakfast in bed!

Piled up ten deep at her side were books--a choice collection from the
Judge's bookcases, into which she dipped here and there with sighs of
deep content and anticipation.

At the end of the room was a mirror, and Anne could just see herself in
it. It was a distracting vision, for Judy had done Anne's hair up that
morning, and had puffed it out over her ears and had tied it with broad
black ribbon, and this effect, in combination with the sweeping blue
robe, made Anne feel as interesting as the heroine of a book--and she
had never expected that!

Judy in a rose-pink kimona lay on the couch, looking out of the window.
The peace of the Sabbath was upon the world; and the house was very
still.

Suddenly with a "click" and a "whirr-rr," the doors of the little
carved clock on the wall new open and a cuckoo came out and piped ten
warning notes.

"Goodness," cried Anne, and shut her book with a bang, "it is almost
church time, and we aren't dressed."

But Judy did not move. "We are not going to church," she said, lazily.

Not going to church! Anne faced Judy in amazement. Never since she
could remember had she stayed away from church--except when she had had
the measles and the mumps!

"I told grandfather last night that we should be too tired," explained
Judy, "and he won't expect us to go."

"Oh," said Anne, and picked up her book, luxuriating in the prospect of
a whole morning in which to read.

She wasn't quite comfortable, however. She was not a bit tired, and
she had never felt better in her life--and yet she was staying away
from church.

But the book she had opened was a volume of Dickens' Christmas stories,
and in three minutes she was carried away from the little town of
Fairfax to the heart of old London, and from the warmth of spring to
the bitterness of winter, as she listened with Toby Veck to the music
of the chimes that rang from the belfry tower.

It seemed only a part of the tale, therefore, when the bell of Fairfax
church pealed out the first warning of the Sunday service to all the
countryside.

"Ding dong, din, all come in, all come in," the bell had said to Anne
since childhood, and now it called her, until it silenced the crashing
voices of the bells of old London, and she