At eleven o'clock. Judge Briscoe dropped wearily from his horse at his own
gate, and said to a wan girl who came running down the walk to meet him:
"There is nothing, yet. I sent the telegram to your mother--to Mrs.
Sherwood."
Helen turned away without answering. Her face was very white and looked
pinched about the mouth. She went back to where old Fisbee sat on the
porch, his white head held between his two hands; he was rocking himself
to and fro. She touched him gently, but he did not look up. She spoke to
him.
"There isn't anything--yet. He sent the telegram to mamma. I shall stay
with you, now, no matter what you say." She sat beside him and put her
head down on his shoulder, and though for a moment he appeared not to
notice it, when Minnie came out on the porch, hearing her father at the
door, the old scholar had put his arm about the girl and was stroking her
fair hair softly.
Briscoe glanced at them, and raised a warning finger to his daughter, and
they went tiptoeing into the house, where the judge dropped heavily upon a
sofa with an asthmatic sigh; he was worn and tired. Minnie stood before
him with a look of pale inquiry, and he shook his head.
"No use to tell them; but I can't see any hope," he answered her, biting
nervously at the end of a cigar. "I expect you better bring me some coffee
in here; I couldn't take another step to save me. I'm too old to tear
around the country horseback before breakfast, like I have to-day."
"Did you send her telegram?" Minnie asked, as he drank the coffee she
brought him. She had interpreted "coffee" liberally, and, with the
assistance of Mildy Upton (whose subdued nose was frankly red and who shed
tears on the raspberries), had prepared an appetizing table at his elbow.
"Yes," responded the judge, "and I'm glad she sent it. I talked the other
way yesterday, what little I said--it isn't any of our business--but I
don't think any too much of those people, somehow. She thinks she belongs
with Fisbee, and I guess she's right. That young fellow must have got
along with her pretty well, and I'm afraid when she gives up she'll be
pretty bad over it; but I guess we all will. It's terribly sudden,
somehow, though it's only what everybody half expected would come; only we
thought it would come from over yonder." He nodded toward the west. "But
she's got to stay here with us. Boarding at Sol Tibbs's with that old man
won't do; and she's no girl to live in two rooms. You fix it up with her--
you make her stay."
"She must," answered his daughter as she knelt beside him and patted his
coat and handed him several things to eat at the same time. "Mr. Fisbee
will help me persuade her, now that she's bound to stay in spite of him
and the Sherwoods, too. I think she is perfectly grand to do it. I've
always thought she was grand--ever since she took me under her wing at
school when I was terribly 'country' and frightened; but she was so sweet
and kind she made me forget. She was the pet of the school, too, always
doing things for the other girls, for everybody; looking out for people
simply heads and heads bigger than herself, and so recklessly generous and
so funny about it; and always thoughtful and--and--pleasant----"