“How about Ellen and Susie; you tell me they live in the wall beside your bed.”
“They have gone to the country to see the place where they are buried,” she said, quickly.
The Judge was silent. Sometimes his studies of childhood mystified him. Just now he was afraid that Higby’s foolish story had caused this heretofore fearless child suddenly to become afraid to go upstairs to bed.
While he was thinking she silently caressed the pigeon, which had hopped up into her lap, but after a time she put up one of her tiny hands and convulsively seized his large one. “Daddy Grandpa, read some more. You have a honey voice.”
The Judge smiled broadly, then he took up a magazine from the table. What would best put a little girl to sleep? Ah! the political situation in the far East, and this time Bethany did go to sleep. Her head was against his knee so he could not move, but through the doorway he hailed Dallas, who was coming out of the sitting room opposite, where he and Titus prepared their lessons.
“Dallas, send Mrs. Blodgett here.”
“Mrs. Blodgett,” he said, when she came puffing up the stairway and stood before him, “have a bed moved in this little girl’s room and let one of the maids sleep there in future. I don’t think that it is good for her to be alone so much.”
Mrs. Blodgett nodded her head. “Just what I’ve been a-thinkin’, sir. I’m willin’, I’m sure, to take her in my own room next door.”
“No, no; you need your sleep,” said the Judge. “You are getting older, and you have brought up one family. Let one of the girls attend to this child.”
“She do talk a lot to herself in her room, sir. I hears her laughin’ and chattin’ with them two blessed little girls of yours.”