The Judge sat down by the bed. Bitter, rebellious thoughts, resigned thoughts, protesting thoughts, chased each other through his mind.
At last he got up and went to the back of the room. “God’s will be done,” he said, with a great sigh.
The nurse gazed surreptitiously at him. She was very young, and to her the Judge in his vigorous late middle age, and with his white head, appeared to be an old man.
“And a good one,” she said to herself. Then she listened.
The Judge was also listening. His senses were unnaturally acute. Before her he heard the soft footfalls and the whispering at the door. The hospital attendants had come to take his boy to the operating room.
“I shall wait here,” he said, and with a piteous face he watched the lifting and taking away of the quiet little body. But when the door closed he went on his knees by the bed.
“O, Lord, spare my boy—take my life if necessary, but spare his. I am getting old, but he is young. Spare him, spare him, dear Lord!”
CHAPTER II
Mrs. Blodgett’s Opinion
What was becoming of the poor princess all this time, for that station in life had been assigned her as soon as the delighted Titus noted her aristocratic manners.
She was now a lively bird of three weeks of age, and though, according to well bred pigeon ways, she had not yet left her nest she was always looking about, and quite well aware of what took place around her.