“Oh, nonsense,” laughed Miss Craig. “Just ate too much, and had a little attack of indigestion, Dick. You’ll live to be eighty-nine and a half.”
The judge’s eyes twinkled as he gazed at her.
“Still contrary as can be, Becky. Won’t even let me have the satisfaction of thinking you saved my life, will you?”
“A good dose of peppermint and soda would have done just as well,” answered Becky serenely, turning to introduce Mrs. Craig. “He says he wants to make his will, but I think it’s only a notion, and he wants company. Still I guess we’ll humor him. It seems that he was going to leave everything he had to me. And I just found him out in time. The very idea when he’s got Billie, his own grandchild, flesh and blood, and such a charming boy too. He can leave me Billie if he likes, but he can’t leave me anything else. So you make it that way, Tom.”
“Leave her Billie, Tom,” sighed the Judge, “leave her Billie, and me too, if she’ll take us both.”
“Wouldn’t have you for a gift, Dick,” she answered, cheerful and happy as a girl as she looked down at him. “You’re a fussy, spoiled, selfish old man, just as you always were, and I couldn’t be bothered with you. But I’ll keep an eye on you so you don’t kill yourself before your time with sweet corn and peach shortcake, though I suppose it’s a pleasant sort of taking off at that. I’ll take Billie and Margie around the garden while you and Tom fix up that will, and mind you do it right. Billie’s going to have all that belongs to him.”
As the door closed behind her, the Judge winked solemnly at Mr. Craig. “Finest woman in seven counties. Ought to have been the mother of heroes and statesmen, but there she is, mothering Billie and bossing me to her heart’s content. Do you think she’d marry me, Tom?”
“I don’t know, Judge,” Mr. Craig replied. “Becky’s odd.”
“Well, maybe so. Go ahead and make the will as she says. Everything to Billie, and make her guardian.”
So the will was drawn up and Mrs. Gorham, the housekeeper, and Mrs. Craig witnessed it. Billie, standing down in the garden with Miss Craig, did not realize what was happening. He only knew that somehow the barriers of ice were lifted between himself and his grandfather, and that a new era had dawned for all of them.