The Voice of the People | Page 5

one of the long verandas a sleeping girl lay in a
hammock, a gray cat at her feet. No sound came from the house behind
her, but a breeze blew through the dim hall, fluttering the folds of her
dress. Beyond the adjoining garden a lady in mourning entered a gate
where honeysuckle grew, and above, on the low-dormered roof, a white
pigeon sat preening its feathers. Up the main street, where a few sunken
bricks of a vanished pavement were still visible, an old negro woman,
sitting on the stone before her cabin, lighted her replenished pipe with a
taper, and leaned back, smoking, in the doorway, her scarlet
handkerchief making a spot of colour on the dull background.
The sun was still high when the judge came out upon his porch, a smile
of indecision on his face and his hat in his hand. Pausing upon the
topmost step, he cast an uncertain glance sideways at the walk leading
past the church, and then looked straight ahead through the avenue of
maples, which began at the smaller green facing the ancient site of the
governor's palace and skirted the length of the larger one, which took
its name from the court-house. At last he descended the steps with his
leisurely tread, turning at the gate to throw a remonstrance to an old
negro whose black face was framed in the library window.
"Now, Cæsar, didn't I--"
"Lord, Marse George, dis yer washed-out blue bowl, wid de little white
critters sprawlin' over it, done come ter pieces--"
"Now, Cæsar, haven't I told you twenty times to let Delilah wash my
Wedgwood?"
"Fo' de Lord, Marse George, I ain't breck hit. I uz des' hol'n it in bofe
my han's same es I'se hol'n dis yer broom, w'en it come right ter part. I
declar 'twarn my fault, Marse George, 'twarn nobody's fault 'cep'n hit's
own."
The judge closed the gate and waved the face from the window.
"Go about your business, Cæsar," he said, "and keep your hands off my
china--"

Then his tone lost its asperity as he held out his hands to a pretty girl
who was coming across the green.
"So you are back from school, Miss Juliet," he said gallantly. "I was
telling your mother only yesterday that I didn't approve of sending our
fairest products away from Kingsborough. It wasn't done in my day.
Then the prettiest girls stayed at home and gave our young fellows a
chance."
The girl shook her head until the blue ribbons on her straw hat fluttered
in the wind, and blushed until her soft eyes were like forget-me-nots set
in rose leaves. She possessed a serene, luminous beauty, which became
intensified beneath the gaze of the beholder.
"I have come back for good, now," she answered in a serious sweetness
of voice; "and I am out this afternoon looking up my Sunday-school
class. The children have scattered sadly. You will let me have Tom
again, won't you?"
"Have Tom! Why, you may have him every day and Sunday too--the
lucky scamp! Ah, I only wish I were a boy again, with a soul worth
saving and such a pair of eyes in search of it."
The girl dimpled into a smile and flushed to her low, white forehead,
on which the soft hair was smoothly parted before it broke into sunny
curls about the temples. She exhaled an atmosphere of gentleness
mixed with a saintly coquetry, which produced an impression at once
human and divine, such as one receives from the sight of a rose in a
Bible or a curl in the hair of a saint. The judge looked at her warmly,
sighing half happily, half regretfully.
"And to think that the young rogues don't realise their blessings," he
said. "There's not one of them that wouldn't rather be off fishing than
learn his catechism. Ah, in my day things were different--things were
different."
"Were you very pious, sir?" asked the girl with a flash of laughter.

The judge shook his stick playfully.
"I can't tell tales," he answered, "but in my day we should have taken
more than the catechism at your bidding, my dear. When your father
was courting your mother--and she was like you, though she hadn't
your eyes, or your face, for that matter--he went into her Bible class,
though he was at least five and twenty and the others were small boys
under ten. She was a sad flirt, and she led him a dance."
"He liked it," said the girl. "But, if you will give my message to Tom, I
won't come in. I am looking for Dudley Webb, and I see his mother at
her gate. Good-bye! Be sure and tell Tom to come Sunday."
She nodded brightly, lifted her muslin skirts,