“What do you mean, Mom?” asked Jean. “I didn’t know that Rebecca knew the Judge.”
“They were engaged years ago, dear,” Mrs. Craig explained. “They quarreled a few days before they were to have been married, and Rebecca broke the engagement. They never spoke to each other afterwards. She wanted to go up to Boston on her wedding trip and on to Concord from there, and the Judge wanted to go to New York, as he had some business to settle there and he thought he could attend to it on the honeymoon trip. Rebecca said if he couldn’t take time away from his business long enough to be married, she wouldn’t bother him to marry her at all. Even now it’s rather hard deciding which one was right. Now he thinks he is dying and has sent for her. And I suppose, underneath all her odd ways, that she still loves him after all.”
The girls were quite intrigued with the story of Becky’s romance and waited eagerly for the sound of her car turning into the driveway on the return trip. But night came on and passed, and it was well into the next afternoon before Billie drove in alone.
“Grandfather’d like to have Mr. Craig come down and draw up his will. Becky says he’s been a lawyer, and there isn’t another one anywhere near here.”
“But, Billie, he isn’t strong enough,” began Mrs. Craig. She was sitting out on the porch, a basket of mending on her lap, and in the lounge chair beside her was Mr. Craig. “Is the Judge worse?”
“Gosh, no, he’s better. Aunt Becky fixed him right up. He’d just eaten too much, she said.”
“I think I’d like to go, dear,” said Mr. Craig. “You or Jean could come along, and I’d like to meet him again. I knew him when I was a boy.”
It was his first trip away from the house since they had moved there, but now that the time had come, it seemed an easy thing to do, as if the strength had been granted to him to meet just such a crisis. Mrs. Craig accompanied him, and they drove over through the village and up two miles beyond until they came to the Judge’s home, a large square colonial house on a hill, surrounded by tall elms and rock maples. The green blinds were all carefully closed except those in the south chamber where Becky held supreme sway now. She sat by his bedside, spick and span in a dress of green linen. There was a bunch of dahlias on the table.
“Come in, come in, boy,” the Judge said in his deep voice. He stretched out his hand to Mr. Craig and nodded his head. There was a look in his eyes that told of an indomitable will, but they softened when they rested on his visitor.
“Sit down, lad. No, the easy chair. Becky, give him the easy one. So. Well, they try their best to get us, don’t they? I thought last night would be my last.”