“Come back here, Ella Lou. No use in chasing rabbits when you never
catch any of them,” came Becky’s voice from the driveway. “Anybody
home?”
Kit sprang out of the porch swing and Doris emerged from the vegetable
garden as if by magic. Billie Ellis sat beside Becky as big as life, as
she would have said, and looked amiably at the girls.
“The Judge is very sick,” Miss Craig began abruptly. “I’m going down
there with Billie, and I may have to stay overnight. He’s pretty low, I
understand, and wants me, so I suppose I’ll have to go. Goodbye. If
you’ve got any tansy in the garden, Margie, I’d like to take it down.”
Jean hurried to get a bunch of the herbs, and Mrs. Craig walked out to
the car.
“Is he very sick, really, Becky?” she asked.
“Can’t tell a thing about it till I see him, and then maybe not. A man’s
a plague at best and when he’s sick he’s worse. I suppose it’s acute
indigestion. Dick Ellis always did think he could eat anything he wanted
to and do anything he wanted to, and the Lord would grant him a special
dispensation to get away with it because he was Dick Ellis. I guess from
all accounts he hasn’t changed much. I’ll get a good hot mustard plaster
outside, and calomel and castor oil inside, and tansy tea to quiet him,
and I guess he’ll live awhile yet. Get back in the car, Ella Lou.”
“Well, of all things,” said Mrs. Craig, as the car backed out of the
drive. “And they haven’t spoken to each other in over thirty years. I
think that’s the best thing that’s happened since we came here.”
“What do you mean, Mom?” asked Jean. “I didn’t know that Rebecca knew
the Judge.”
“They were engaged years ago, dear,” Mrs. Craig explained. “They
quarreled a few days before they were to have been married, and Rebecca
broke the engagement. They never spoke to each other afterwards. She
wanted to go up to Boston on her wedding trip and on to Concord from
there, and the Judge wanted to go to New York, as he had some business
to settle there and he thought he could attend to it on the honeymoon
trip. Rebecca said if he couldn’t take time away from his business long
enough to be married, she wouldn’t bother him to marry her at all. Even
now it’s rather hard deciding which one was right. Now he thinks he is
dying and has sent for her. And I suppose, underneath all her odd ways,
that she still loves him after all.”
The girls were quite intrigued with the story of Becky’s romance and
waited eagerly for the sound of her car turning into the driveway on the
return trip. But night came on and passed, and it was well into the next
afternoon before Billie drove in alone.
“Grandfather’d like to have Mr. Craig come down and draw up his will.
Becky says he’s been a lawyer, and there isn’t another one anywhere near
here.”
“But, Billie, he isn’t strong enough,” began Mrs. Craig. She was sitting
out on the porch, a basket of mending on her lap, and in the lounge
chair beside her was Mr. Craig. “Is the Judge worse?”
“Gosh, no, he’s better. Aunt Becky fixed him right up. He’d just eaten
too much, she said.”
“I think I’d like to go, dear,” said Mr. Craig. “You or Jean could come
along, and I’d like to meet him again. I knew him when I was a boy.”
It was his first trip away from the house since they had moved there,
but now that the time had come, it seemed an easy thing to do, as if the
strength had been granted to him to meet just such a crisis. Mrs. Craig
accompanied him, and they drove over through the village and up two
miles beyond until they came to the Judge’s home, a large square
colonial house on a hill, surrounded by tall elms and rock maples. The
green blinds were all carefully closed except those in the south chamber
where Becky held supreme sway now. She sat by his bedside, spick and
span in a dress of green linen. There was a bunch of dahlias on the
table.
“Come in, come in, boy,” the Judge said in his deep voice. He stretched
out his hand to Mr. Craig and nodded his head. There was a look in his
eyes that told of an indomitable will, but they softened when they
rested on his visitor.
“Sit down, lad. No, the easy chair. Becky, give him the easy one. So.
Well, they try their best to get us, don’t they? I thought last night
would be my last.”
“Oh, nonsense,” laughed Miss Craig. “Just ate too much, and had a little
attack of indigestion, Dick. You’ll live to be eighty-nine and a half.”
The judge’s eyes twinkled as he gazed at her.
“Still contrary as can be, Becky. Won’t even let me have the
satisfaction of thinking you saved my life, will you?”
“A good dose of peppermint and soda would have done just as well,”
answered Becky serenely, turning to introduce Mrs. Craig. “He says he
wants to make his will, but I think it’s only a notion, and he wants
company. Still I guess we’ll humor him. It seems that he was going to
leave everything he had to me. And I just found him out in time. The
very idea when he’s got Billie, his own grandchild, flesh and blood, and
such a charming boy too. He can leave me Billie if he likes, but he
can’t leave me anything else. So you make it that way, Tom.”
“Leave her Billie, Tom,” sighed the Judge, “leave her Billie, and me
too, if she’ll take us both.”
“Wouldn’t have you for a gift, Dick,” she answered, cheerful and happy
as a girl as she looked down at him. “You’re a fussy, spoiled, selfish
old man, just as you always were, and I couldn’t be bothered with you.
But I’ll keep an eye on you so you don’t kill yourself before your time
with sweet corn and peach shortcake, though I suppose it’s a pleasant
sort of taking off at that. I’ll take Billie and Margie around the
garden while you and Tom fix up that will, and mind you do it right.
Billie’s going to have all that belongs to him.”
As the door closed behind her, the Judge winked solemnly at Mr. Craig.
“Finest woman in seven counties. Ought to have been the mother of heroes
and statesmen, but there she is, mothering Billie and bossing me to her
heart’s content. Do you think she’d marry me, Tom?”
“I don’t know, Judge,” Mr. Craig replied. “Becky’s odd.”
“Well, maybe so. Go ahead and make the will as she says. Everything to
Billie, and make her guardian.”
So the will was drawn up and Mrs. Gorham, the housekeeper, and Mrs.
Craig witnessed it. Billie, standing down in the garden with Miss Craig,
did not realize what was happening. He only knew that somehow the
barriers of ice were lifted between himself and his grandfather, and
that a new era had dawned for all of them.
He watched the Craigs drive away, and went back upstairs to the long
corridor. Becky heard his step and opened the door of the sickroom.
“Come in here, Billie,” she said. It was the first time that Billie had
ever been in his grandfather’s room. He stood inside the door, a sturdy
figure, barefooted and tanned, with eyes oddly like those that surveyed
him from the pillow. He hesitated a moment, but the Judge put out his
hand, a strong bony one, and Billie gripped it in his broad one.
“I’m awfully glad you’re better, Grandfather,” he said, a bit shyly.
“So am I, Billie, last night I thought my hour had come, but I guess it
was only a warning. A meeting with the Button Molder perhaps. Do you
know about him? No? You must read ‘Peer Gynt.’ A boy of your age should
be well read.”
“And when has he had any chance to get well read, I’d like to know?”
demanded Rebecca, in swift defense of her favorite. “The boy finished
the district school a year ago. Been learning everything he knows since
then from Ben, your hired help. If the Lord has spared you for any
purpose, Dick, it is to bring up Billie right and teach him all you
know.”
“Well, well, quit scolding me, Becky. Do as you like with him. I’ll
supply the money.” The Judge pressed Billie’s hand almost with
affection. “What do you want to be?”
“A lawyer or a naturalist,” was Billie’s prompt reply.
“Be both. They’re good antidotes for each other. Talk it over with him,
Becky, and do as you think best.”
He closed his eyes, and Billie took it as a signal to leave the room,
but the Judge spoke again.
“Where do you sleep, Bill?”
Billie colored at this. It was the first time anyone had ever called him
Bill and he felt two feet taller all at once. “In the little bedroom
over the east ell, sir.”
“Change your belongings to the room next to this. It faces the south and
has two bookcases filled with my books that I had at college. You will
enjoy them.”
Billie went out softly, down the circular staircase to the lower hall
and, once outdoors, on a dead run for the barn. Ben was husking corn on
the barn floor, sitting on a milking stool with the corn rising around
him in billows, whistling and singing alternately.
Billie poured out his news breathlessly, and Ben took it all calmly.
“Well, I’m glad for you. I always believed the Judge would come out of
his trance some day and do the proper thing. That Miss Becky’s a sightly
woman. Knows just how to take hold. Guess she could marry the Judge
tomorrow if she wanted to. Mrs. Craig is a fine woman too. I’ve never
seen her before.”
Somehow this didn’t seem to fit in with Billie’s mood and he left the
barn. All the world looked different to him. He was wanted, really
wanted, now. He wasn’t just somebody the Judge had taken in because they
were related and he had to out of pride. He was to have the big south
chamber right next to the Judge’s own room and study all he wanted. Best
of all, since he had grasped that bony hand in his, he knew that he
could go to him with anything and that he really was going to be a
grandfather to him.
It was nearly two miles over to Woodhow if he went cross lots, but he
started. When he arrived he found Doris stoning cherries for pies. “Hi,
Billie,” she called. “Come over here and help.”
Billie climbed the stone wall and came, flushed and triumphant. Throwing
himself down on the grass beside Doris, he told what had happened, and
she made up for all that Ben had lacked in enthusiasm and imagination.
“Isn’t that wonderful?” she cried, setting down the pan of cherries.
“Why, you can be anything at all now you want to be.”
Billie looked at her peacefully. “I knew you’d take it like that,” he
said. “I just wanted to tell somebody who would almost feel the way I
did about it. You’re a swell pal, know it?”
“Thanks, Billie, that’s a real compliment. Come on into the kitchen and
I’ll give you some gingerbread with whipped cream on it.” The two went
into the house together and while Billie ate, Doris listened while he
planned the future.
“I just know you’ll succeed, Billie,” she told him confidently, when she
said goodbye on the back steps. “Come down any time and we’ll talk about
it some more.”
Rebecca stopped by later that afternoon, chin up and smiling.
“He’s sound asleep,” she said. “Now that everything’s kind of quieted
down, I don’t mind telling you something. After Billie had gone, the
Judge and I talked things over and I don’t know but what I’ll have to
move over there and take care of the two of them. Land knows they need
it.”
“Oh, Becky, marry the Judge?” gasped Jean.
“Well, I might as well,” laughed Rebecca. “We’ve wasted thirty years
now, and he’ll fret and fuss for thirty more if I don’t marry him. I’ll
sell Maple Grove, or you Craigs can have it if you like, rent free.”