“D-d-don’t like her and don’t dislike her,” Titus replied. “She isn’t in my way—isn’t bad as girls go.”
The matter ended here as far as discussion went, and Bethany slipped into her place as a member of the household. She was a very good child, quiet and well behaved, and insensibly she was becoming a great comfort and a great amusement to the Judge. He loved to see her down on the hearthrug playing with the pigeon and talking to her. For it was absolutely necessary for Bethany to have a listener. She dreamed such wonderful dreams and saw such astonishing visions that it took several hours a day of some one’s time to listen to her.
Bethany felt that the pigeon was sympathetic. She always listened with her greenish-yellow eyes bent attentively on her, and at times she interposed a lively “Rookety cahoo!” So at least she was not asleep, as the Judge sometimes was, when Bethany was relating her marvels.
She had soon got the Judge to show her the pictures of Ellen and Susie, his two little girls that had died, and now nearly every night Bethany fancied that she saw them. She described them dressed in their old-fashioned little garments, their hair braided in little tails tied with ribbon, their talk quaint and demure and seasoned with Bethany’s maxims.
The Judge, touched and amused, listened to as many of her conversations as he had time or inclination for, then he went to sleep, and Bethany turned to the pigeon.
On this particular day the Judge was reading his morning’s mail.
Bethany had gone to school—the Judge had found a kindergarten round the corner on a quiet street—and Titus was taking a lesson from a gentleman who had effected a number of famous cures in cases of stuttering, and who came all the way from Boston to treat him.
So far he had done no good. Titus was a mild, persistent, and consistent stutterer. He never failed to hesitate at the beginning of a sentence unless he was deeply moved about something—he rarely stopped in the middle of one.
The Judge, fearing Higby’s bad example, had spoken of sending him away, though it was with extreme reluctance that he even spoke of discharging so faithful a servant. Titus’s teacher did not urge him to do so. He said that Higby was a stammerer, while Titus, as yet, only stuttered. The boy’s habit could be broken if he gave himself earnestly to breaking it up. “Wait a little,” he said to the Judge. “He does not take himself seriously yet. Wait till something rouses him and makes him coöperate with me.”
“I should think that his comrades making fun of him would arouse him,” said the Judge.