“She comin’, suh; she comin’ right now.”
“Very well, very well. You must make yourself at home here,” he said to Francis Underwood, who had followed Jesse. “I am somewhat dilapidated myself, but my daughter will entertain you. Wesley, I believe I will go to my room. Lend me your arm.”
“Allow me to assist you,” said Underwood; and so between the two the old man was carried to the room that had been his own when the house was his. It happened to be Underwood’s room, but that made no difference. It belonged once more to the Judge in his disordered fancy, and thither he went.
After a while Miss Sophie came, bringing Mildred. Just how she had explained matters to the poor girl no one ever knew, but it must have been in some specially sympathetic way, for when Francis Underwood assisted the ladies from the carriage Miss Bascom appeared to be the less agitated of the two.
“The Judge is as comfortable as possible,” Underwood said cheerily. “Jesse is with him, and I think he is asleep. His nervousness has passed away.”
“Oh, do you think he is seriously ill?” exclaimed Mildred, clasping her hands together.
“Certainly not, just now,” said Francis Underwood. “The doctor has been here, and he has gone away apparently satisfied. Sister, do you take charge of Miss Bascom, and show her how to be at home here.”
And so Judge Bascom and his beautiful daughter were installed at the old Place. Mildred, under the circumstances, would rather have been elsewhere, but she was practically under orders. It was necessary to the well-being of her father, so the doctor said, that he should remain where he was; it was necessary that he should be humored in the belief that he was the owner of the old Place. It is only fair to say that Miss Sophie Underwood and her brother were more willing and anxious to enter into this scheme than Mildred appeared to be. She failed to comprehend the situation until after she had talked with her father, and then she was in despair. Judge Bascom was the representative of everything substantial and enduring in his daughter’s experience, and when she realized that his mind had been seized by a vagary she received a tremendous shock. But the rough edges of the situation, so to speak, were smoothed and turned by Miss Sophie, who assumed motherly charge of the young girl. Miss Sophie’s methods were so sympathetic and so womanly, and she gave to the situation such a matter-of-fact interpretation, that the grief and dismay of the young girl were not as overwhelming as they otherwise would have been.