“I ain’t so sure of that,” answered the Judge, adding, as he saw her countenance fall: “What good could you do me?”
Mildred’s first thought was, “I can wash the dishes and scrub the floor;” then as she remembered that servants did these things at Beechwood, she stood a moment uncertain how to answer. At last, as a new idea crossed her mind, she said: “When you’re old and lonesome, there’ll be nobody to love you if I go away, and you’ll be sorry if you turn me off.”
Why was it the Judge started so quickly and placed his hand before his eyes, as if to assure himself that it was little Mildred standing there and not his only boy,—not Richard, who long ago had said to him:
“In the years to come, when you are old and lonesome, you’ll be sorry for what you’ve said to-night.” Those were Richard’s words, while Mildred’s were:
“You’ll be sorry if you turn me off.”
It would seem that the son, over whose fate a dark mystery hung, was there in spirit, pleading for the helpless child, while with him was another Mildred, and looking through the eyes of brown so much like her own, she said, “Take her father, you will need her some time!”
And so, not merely because Mildred Hawkins asked him to do it, but because of the unseen influence which urged him on, the Judge drew the little girl closer to his side, and parting back her rich, brown hair, said to her pleasantly, “You may stay to-night, and to-morrow night, and if I don’t find you troublesome, perhaps you may stay for good.”
Mildred had not looked for so easy a conquest, and this unexpected kindness wrung from her eyes great tears, which rolled silently down her cheeks.
“What are you crying for?” asked the Judge. “You are not obliged to stay. You can go back to Hepsy any minute,—now, if you want. Shall I call Rachel to hold the lantern?”
He made a motion toward the bell-rope, while Mildred, in an agony of terror, seized his arm, telling him “she was only crying for joy; that she’d die before she’d go back!” and adding fiercely, as she saw he had really rung the bell: “If you send me away I’ll set your house on fire!”