"I'll take you to call, Sherrod. I know she'll be glad to see you, and I'll surprise her. This is great! Let's see: I'll say you are a particular friend, but I'll not give up your name. She'd remember it. I can see her now when she first gazes upon your face. Great!"
Jud went home that night in a delightful torture of anticipation. After all these months of waiting and watching, fate—nothing less than fate—was to bring him to her side with the long unspoken words of gratitude and joy. What would she be like? How would she look? How would she be dressed? Not in that familiar gray of his memory, to be sure, but—but—and so he wondered, as he tossed in his bed that night. It would be some days before Converse could take him to the home of Miss Wood, and until then he must be content with imaginings. One thing worried him. Just before he left his friend, Douglass had asked with an unhidden concern in his voice:
"You're sure you've got a sweetheart down there?"
Jud's heart stopped beating for a second. Something within him urged him to cry out that he had no sweetheart, but a loving, loyal wife. But the old spirit of timidity conquered.
"I am sure I had one," he replied, and his heart throbbed with relief.
"And you're the kind of a fellow who'll stick to her, too. I know you well enough to say that," said the other warmly, as if some odd misgiving had passed from his mind.
"Thanks for the good opinion," said Jud, a great lump clogging his throat.
And when at last he slept, his dreams were of the old days and Justine, and how lonely he was without her—how lonely she must be down there in the cold, dark night—sick, perhaps, and longing for him. In his dream they were at Proctor's Falls, then in Chicago, then she was beside him in the bed. His arm, moved by dream love, stretched out and drew her close to his breast and there were no scores of miles between his tranquil heart and that of the girl he worshiped.