Then a loud, hearty voice called out, “Why here she is now! Katherine Adams, don’t you know me? Don’t suppose you do, with these infernal glasses on.”
I looked hard at the man in the long linen dust coat and tourist cap who sat alone in the car; then my eyes nearly popped out of my head.
“Why, Judge Dalrymple!” I exclaimed, starting forward with a cry of joy and seizing the outstretched hand. “Where did you come from? Are you touring? How did you ever happen to stop here?” I tumbled the questions out thick and fast.
“I didn’t ‘happen’ to stop here,” said the Judge in his decisive way. “I’ve been rolling over these endless roads for three days on purpose to get here. Lord, what a God-forsaken country! And now that I am here at last,” he added, “aren’t you going to ask me in? Where’s your father?”
“Excuse me,” said I, blushing furiously. “I was so taken by surprise at seeing you that I even forgot my own name, to say nothing of my manners. Come right in.”
I settled him in the best chair in the house, brought him a glass of water and left him talking to mother in his hearty way while I went out in search of father. Father was painting a shed when I found him, and he came just the way he was, with streaks of paint on his jumper and overalls. If he had had any inkling of what he was being summoned to——!
Judge Dalrymple was just as pleased to meet father in his paint-streaked jumper as if he had been a senator in a silk hat, and after the first moment of embarrassment father felt as if the Judge were an old-time friend.
Then the Judge began to explain why he had come, and the bomb dropped on the roof of the house of Adams. I couldn’t comprehend it at first any more than father could. It sounded like a page out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. But it seemed that he knew all about the company my father had lost his money in last summer, and he and some other men bought it up and set it on its feet again. War orders had suddenly boomed it and it was now solid as a rock. The original stockholders still held their shares and would draw their dividends as soon as they were declared, which Judge Dalrymple prophesied would be soon. Our days of struggling were over. We were “hard-uppers” no longer; we were “well off” at last. I left the Judge and father talking over the details of the business and wandered aimlessly around the dooryard, trying to comprehend the meaning of what had happened to us, and capering as each new thing occurred to me. My narrow horizon had suddenly rolled back and the whole world lay before me. College—travel—study—return to my beloved friends in the east—best doctors for mother—all those things kaleidoscoped before me, leaving me giddy and faint. I seized a hoe and began to demolish an ant hill for sheer exuberance of spirits.
“What’s the matter, have you had a sunstroke?” asked Justice Sherman, suddenly appearing beside me from somewhere.
“Worse than that, it’s an earthquake,” I replied. “Take a deep breath, Justice Sherman, because you’re going to need it in a minute.”