The Judge looked at Higby, who went into the hall, closing the door reluctantly behind him.
Mrs. Blodgett was struggling with a variety of emotions. At last she burst out with a remark, “I’ve seen the boy, sir!”
“Have you?” said the Judge, eagerly, and turning he put his coffee cup on the mantelpiece, as if glad of an excuse to be rid of it.
“Yes, sir, I’ve seen the boy, and he spoke to me.”
“He spoke!” exclaimed the Judge, “but, Mrs. Blodgett, what does this mean? No one was to be admitted.”
Mrs. Blodgett smiled. She knew that the Judge was too just to condemn her without a hearing.
“It was this way, sir,” she said, gently putting the pigeon’s basket down on the table, and taking a handkerchief from her pocket to mop her flushed face. “It was this way,” and as she spoke she felt herself getting calm. There was a peaceful, judicial atmosphere in the Judge’s study, and about the man himself there was something genial and soothing. “When I heard of that boy’s head run over and smashed, the heart stood still in my body. Now, if it had been you, sir, or me, or Higby—but that only bit of young life about the house—it did seem too awful. ‘I’m goin’ to see him,’ said I. ‘I’m goin’ to see him afore he dies.’ Bells were ringin’ in my ears, an’ my head was in a kind of fog like a ship at sea, but I crawled out to the street, I walked to the hospital. Many’s the hour I paced up and down waitin’ for you to come out, for I knew you’d stop me if you saw me. When you was out of sight I hurried to the door—I rung the bell.”
The Judge drew a long breath, and leaned his head slightly forward in the intensity of his interest.
“‘Could I see the bed where Master Titus lay?’ I asked,” continued Mrs. Blodgett. “No, I couldn’t. I was prepared for that. But can you stop a woman when she makes up her mind? No, sir. I sat in the waitin’ room an’ I cried for a solid hour, and then they said I might look in the room for one minute, if I’d promise not to speak above my breath.
“I promised, and I meant to keep it, but I didn’t. When I walked into that quiet room, when I looked at him lyin’ so still with them white cloths on his black head, then, may heaven forgive me, sir, I let a screech of ‘Master Titus, me darlin’!’