“Sheba, now,” he said, “Sheba may be one of the biggest heiresses in the States. Lord! what luck it was for her that fellow left her behind!”
“It was luck for me,” said Tom. And a faint, contemplative grin showed itself on his countenance. He was thinking, as he often did, of the afternoon when he returned from Blair’s Hollow and opened the door of the room behind the store to find the wooden cradle stranded like a small ark in the corner.
CHAPTER XXVI
Naturally Judge Rutherford gravitated towards the little house near Dupont Circle. The first night he mounted the stairs and found himself in the small room confronting the primitive supper he had been invited to share with big Tom and his family, his honest countenance assumed a cheerfulness long a stranger to it.
The room looked such a simple, homely place, with its Virginia made carpet, its neat, scant furnishing, and its table set with the plain little meal. The Judge’s homesick heart expanded within him.
He shook hands with Tom with fervour. Rupert he greeted with friendly affection. Sheba—on her entering the room with a plate of hot biscuits which she had been baking in Miss Burford’s stove—he almost kissed.
“Now this is something like,” he said. “I didn’t know there was anything so like Barnesville in all Washington city. And there wasn’t till you people brought it. I don’t know what it is, but, by thunder, it does a man’s heart good.”
He sat down with the unconventional air of ease he wore in Barnesville when he established himself in one of Jenny’s parlour chairs for the evening.