Every evening "Cousin Judith" came for a little visit, to give Gertrude
some friendly advice about the children, or the household economy. She
used to say that the gentle widow needed some one now and then to show
claws in her behalf, and Judith knew herself to be in full possession of
claws, and of the power to use them, an accomplishment of which she was
somewhat proud. One evening she crossed over between daylight and dark,
and entered the room where Veronica was, with her favorite plaything in
her hand, moving it back and forth as she sat in the window in the waning
light. She could read very nicely now for two years had passed since she
had lost her own mother, and had become Gertrude's child. Many a time had
she read over the motto which shone out so mysteriously from the breast of
the opened rose. To-day she was poring over it again, and her absorption
in "that same old rose," as Dieterli called it, had so annoyed the lively
lad that he left her, and had gone out into the kitchen to find his
mother. When Judith saw the girl sitting thus alone, buried in thought,
she asked her what she was thinking about in the twilight all by herself.

Dieterli, whom no sound ever escaped, had heard Cousin Judith come in, and
came running in from the kitchen to see what was going on. Veronica looked
up at the visitor and asked earnestly,

"Cousin Judith, what is fortune?"

"Ah, you are always asking some strange question that no one else ever
thought of asking;" said Cousin Judith, "where on earth did you ever hear
of fortune?"

"Here," said Veronica, holding up the rose with the golden verse in the
centre. "Shall I read it to you?"