He did want her, oh, so much, for he knew how lonely the gable-roof would be without her, but it was far better that she should not return, and so, with a tremendous effort the unselfish boy stilled the throbbings of his heart, and whispered back: “I’d rather you’d stay here, Milly, and maybe he’ll let me come some time to see you.”
“Every day, every day,” answered the Judge, who could not help admiring the young boy for preferring Mildred’s happiness to his own. “There, I’m glad that’s over,” he said, when, as the door closed upon Hepsy and Oliver, he led Mildred back to the breakfast room, asking her if she didn’t want some more buckwheats.
But Milly’s heart was too full to eat, even had she been hungry. Turn which way she would, she saw only the form of a cripple boy moving slowly through the drifts, back to the dark old kitchen, which she knew would that dismal day be all the darker for her absence. It was all in vain that the Judge sought to amuse her by showing her all his choice treasures and telling her she was now his little girl and should call him father if she liked. The sad, despondent look did not leave her face for the entire day, and just as it was growing dark, she laid her brown head upon the Judge’s knee, as he sat in his armchair, and said mournfully, “I guess I shall go back.”
“I guess you won’t,” returned the Judge, running his fingers through her soft hair, and thinking how much it was like his own Mildred’s.
“But I ought to,” answered the child. “Oliver can’t do without me. You don’t know how much he likes me, nor how much I like him. He’s missing me so now, I know he is, and I’m afraid he’s crying, too. Mayn’t I go?”
Mildred’s voice was choked with tears, and Judge Howell felt them dropping upon his hand, as he passed it caressingly over her face. Six months before he had professed to hate the little girl sitting there at his feet, and crying to go back to Oliver, but she had grown strangely into his love within the last twenty-four hours, and to himself he said:
“I will not give her up.”
So after sitting a time in silence, he replied:
“I can do you more good than this Oliver with his crooked feet.”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted Mildred, “but it’s because his feet are crooked that I can’t leave him all alone, and then he loved me first, when you hated me and swore such awful words if I just looked at a flower.”