She rose as she spoke, but the Judge made a gesture to detain her. “It only remains for me to thank you most heartily for what you have done for me. We will go over the thing more in detail at some future day. I must be very largely in your debt, pecuniarily. As for the moral aspect of the case, my mind seems to falter and stagger when I think of it. There seems to be an awful cloud overshadowing me—a cloud of possibilities—of probabilities. Suppose you had not rescued Bethany, what would have been her fate?”
The Judge’s voice broke. He was overcome by emotion. “I want to see the cat man,” he said at last, weakly. “He is at the root of this deliverance.”
There was nothing amusing about his remark, but they all broke out laughing. There had been a great strain on their nerves during the past few hours.
Titus and Dallas roared until they woke up Bethany, who sleepily rubbed her eyes and looked about her. Mrs. Everest laughed so heartily that at last she began to cry.
“Come,” said her husband, inexorably, and he checked his own amusement. “Come now, old girl. You can’t be domestic, motherly, and grandmotherly to a whole city without your nerves going on strike occasionally. You come home and play with your baby and Cracker. He’s cutting up Jack.”
Berty weakly wiped her eyes. When there was work to be done she regained her self-control.
“What is he doing?” she asked.
“Teasing the life out of Daisy and the cook. They locked him in his room and telephoned to me at the iron works.”
“Good-bye, dear Judge,” said Berty, hastily. “I’ll see you soon again,” and she fairly ran from the room.
“Tom,” she said to her husband on their way home, “human nature is a queer thing, isn’t it?”