Everybody knew the Judge, and if a lady bowed to him Dallas, in suppressed delight, also saluted her by touching his fur cap. How he enjoyed recognition! When he was a man he would wish for no better enjoyment than this—to drive along the street and have everyone greet him with respect. But he must work hard for it at first, and he cast a side glance at the Judge’s white head. Charlie Brown had told him that the Judge as a young man had worked like a slave to master the intricacies of commercial law, bankruptcy law, international law, criminal law, and many other kinds of law that Dallas could not remember. He would work, too, and he set his young mouth firmly and looked straight ahead.
The Judge was murmuring, “God made the country and man made the town”; then he said aloud, “Just look at the sun behind that grove of spruces, Dallas.”
“Beautiful!” said the boy, and then the Judge, taking out his watch, said regretfully, “We must turn. Home, Roblee.”
They scarcely spoke until they reached Grand Avenue. When they were slipping past the fine houses that bordered it Dallas turned to the Judge. “I thank you, sir, for this drive. I have enjoyed it immensely.”
The Judge’s keen eyes sought his face. “My boy,” he said, kindly, and he stretched out one of his fur-clad hands and laid it on Dallas’s knee, “you must often accompany me and the little girl on our daily drives.”
The Judge’s benevolent face was luminous in the setting sun. He was proving himself to be a real father to the boy. Something choked in Dallas’s throat. He bent his head lower, lower, till a sudden ecstasy made him seize the Judge’s hand and press it warmly in his own.
“Just look at that new boy of the Judge’s,” exclaimed Charlie Brown’s mother as she stood at one of the upper windows of the house, staring at the Judge in adoration. “What is it about that man that makes everyone like him?”
“Good temper,” growled her rather short-tempered spouse, who was sitting near her, his head buried in a newspaper.
Dallas’s first drive with the Judge was on the first day of Bethany’s punishment; his second one was on the second day of retribution, and his third was on the day rendered ever memorable to the Judge by the fulfillment of one of his worst fears. He wished, but too late, that Bethany had had no punishment, that he had forgiven the sin of step-washing, and had taken her with himself and Dallas.