“It sha’n’t be said a brute is more humane than myself,” thought the Judge, and leaving the dog and the baby together, he stalked across the yard, and, pounding on Rachel’s door, bade her come to the house at once.
But a few moments elapsed ere Rachel stood in the hall, her eyes protruding like harvest apples when she saw the basket and the baby it contained. The twelve young Van Brunts sleeping in their three trundle-beds, had enlarged her motherly heart, just as the Judge’s lonely condition had shrivelled his, and kneeling down she took the wee thing in her arms, called it a “little honey,” and then, woman-like, examined its dress, which was of the finest material, and trimmed with costly lace.
“It’s none of your low-flung truck,” she said. “The edgin’ on its slip cost a heap, and its petticoats is all worked with floss.”
“Petticoats be hanged!” roared the Judge. “Who cares for worked petticoats? The question is, what are we to do with it?”
“Do with it?” repeated Rachel, hugging it closer to her bosom. “Keep it, in course. ’Pears like it seems mighty nigh to me,” and she gave it another squeeze, this time uttering a faint outcry, for a sharp point of something had penetrated through the thin folds of her gingham dress. “Thar’s somethin’ fastened to ’t,” she said, and removing the blanket, she saw a bit of paper pinned to the infant’s waist. “This may ’splain the matter,” she continued, passing it to the Judge, who read, in the same handwriting of the letter: “God prosper you, Judge Howell, in proportion as you are kind to my baby, whom I have called Mildred.”
“Mildred!” repeated the judge, “Mildred be——”
He did not finish the sentence, for he seemed to hear far back in the past a voice much like his own, saying aloud:
“I, Jacob, take thee, Mildred, to be my wedded wife.”
The Mildred taken then in that shadowy old church had been for years a loving, faithful wife, and another Mildred, too, with starry eyes and nut-brown hair had flitted through his halls, calling him her father. The Maine woman must surely have known of this when she gave her offspring the only name in the world which could possibly have touched the Judge’s heart. With a perplexed expression upon his face, he stood rubbing his hands together, while Rachel launched forth into a stream of baby-talk, like that with which she was wont to edify her twelve young blackbirds.
“For Heaven’s sake, stop that! You fairly turn my stomach,” said the Judge, as she added the finishing touch by calling the child “a pessus ’ittle darlin’ dumplin’!” “You women are precious big fools with babies!”