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One given to sonorous and orotund phrases would doubtless have coined a most splendid speech here. But all the old judge, gently patting her hand, said was:

“Well, now, ma’am, that’s powerful fine–the way it’s all turned out. And I’m glad I had a blunderin’ hand in it to help bring it about. I shorely am, ma’am. I’d like to keep on havin’ a hand in it. I wonder now ef you wouldn’t like fur me to be the one to go right now and fetch your mother here to you?”

She shook her head, smiling.

“Thank you, judge, that’s not necessary. She’s here now. She was here when the baby came. I sent for her. She’s in her room right down the hall; it’ll be her room always from now on. I expect she’s sewing on things for the baby; we can’t make her stop it. She’s terribly jealous of Miss McAlpin–that’s the trained nurse Dallam brought back with him from St. Louis–but Miss McAlpin will be going soon, and then she’ll be in sole charge. She doesn’t know, Judge Priest, that what she told to you I now know. She never shall know if I can prevent it, and I know you’ll help me guard our secret from her.”

“I reckin you may safely count on me there, ma’am,” he promised. “I’ve frequently been told by disinterested parties that I snore purty loud sometimes, but I don’t believe anybody yit caught me talkin’ in my sleep. And now I expect you’re sort of tired out. So ef you’ll excuse me I’ll jest slip downstairs, and before I go do that there little piece of writin’ we spoke about a while ago.”

“Wouldn’t you like to see my baby before you go?” she asked. Her left hand felt for the white folds which half swaddled the tiny sleeper. “Judge Priest, let me introduce you to little Miss Martha Millsap Wybrant, named for her grandmammy.”

“Pleased to meet you, young lady,” said he, bowing low and elaborately. “At your early age, honey, it’s easier fur a man, to understand you than ever it will be agin after you start growin’ up. Pleased indeed to meet you.”

If memory serves him aright, this chronicler of sundry small happenings in the life and times of the Honorable William Pitman Priest has more than once heretofore commented upon the fact that among our circuit judge’s idiosyncrasies was his trick, when deeply moved, of talking to himself. This night as he went slowly homeward through the soft and velvety cool of the summer darkness he freely indulged himself in this habit. Oddly enough, he punctuated his periods, as it were, with lamp-posts. When he reached a street light he would speak musingly to himself, then fall silent until he had trudged along to the next light. Something after this fashion:

Corner of Chickasaw Drive and Exall Boulevard:

“Well, sir, the older I git the more convinced I am that jest about the time a man decides he knows a little something about human nature it’s a shore sign he don’t know nothin’ a-tall about it, ‘specially human nature ez it applies to the female of the species. Now, f’rinstance, you take this here present instance: A woman turns aginst the woman she thinks is her own mother. Then she finds out the other woman ain’t her own mother a-tall, and she swings right back round agin and–well, it’s got me stumped. Now ef in her place it had ‘a’ been a man. But a woman–oh, shuckin’s, whut’s the use?”

Corner of Chickasaw Drive and Sycamore Avenue:

“Still, of course we’ve got to figger the baby as a prime factor enterin’ into the case and helpin’ to straighten things out. Spry little trick fur three days old, goin’ on four, wuzn’t she? Ought to be purty, too, when she gits herself some hair and a few teeth and plumps out so’s she taken up the slack of them million wrinkles, more or less, that she’s got now. Babies, now–great institutions anyway you take ’em.”

Corner of Sycamore Avenue, turning into Clay Street:

“And still, dog-gone it, you’ll find folks in this world so blind that they’ll tell you destiny or fate, or whutever you want to call it, jest goes along doin’ things by haphazard without no workin’ plans and no fixed designs. But me, I’m different–me. I regard the scheme of creation ez a hell of a success. Look at this affair fur a minute. I go meddlin’ along like an officious, absent-minded idiot, which I am, and jest when it looks like nothin’ is goin’ to result frum my interference but fresh heartaches fur one of the noblest souls that ever lived on this here footstool, why the firm of Providence, Pedaloski and Poindexter steps in, and bang, there you are! It wouldn’t happen agin probably in a thousand years, but it shore happened this oncet, I’ll tell the world. Let’s see, now, how does that there line in the hymn book run?–‘moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.’ Ain’t it the truth?”

Last street lamp on Clay Street before you come to Judge Priest’s house:

“And they call ’em the opposite sex! I claim the feller that fust coined that there line wuz a powerful conservative pusson. Opposite? Huh! Listen here to me: They’re so dad-gum opposite they’re plum’ cater-cornered!”