Two weeks later Berty and her boy were spending the day at the Judge’s. She arrived early in the morning.

“Dear Judge,” she said, bundling out of a cab with various packages and looking up at him as he stood on his front doorstep throwing crumbs to the sparrows, “dear Judge, I have come to spend the blessed, livelong day with you.”

“I am delighted,” he said, gallantly, and throwing away his bread he hurried down the steps and took the baby from her.

“Yesterday,” she went on, “I was half distracted with calls upon me. ‘Tom,’ I said to my husband, ‘if I’m spared till to-morrow morning I am going to take baby and hide for a day. You get up early in the morning and go to your mother’s for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I am going to close the house and give Daisy and the cook a holiday.’”

“And what did your husband say?” inquired the Judge, as he held open the door for her. “O, my dear lady—”

“What is it?” asked Berty, anxiously.

“This baby—he is putting something in my ear.”

“Gravel,” said his mother, as she stood on tiptoe and examined the side of the Judge’s head. “He had his hands full when we started. He is the most mischievous baby ever born. You would better give him to me. You take the packages, and I will take him.”

“No, no; he is too heavy for you to carry.”

“Have you had breakfast?” inquired Berty, as the Judge went toward the dining room.

“No, not yet. I was just waiting for the children.”

“Here they come,” said Berty, looking up the stairway. “Good morning, lammies.”

Bethany and the boys pressed about Berty. They all loved her, and the baby was a great attraction to them. He pulled out a wisp of Bethany’s hair, untied Dallas’s necktie, and slapped Titus, all in the compass of a minute, but without the slightest resentment they politely crowded each other in endeavoring to get a seat near him during prayer time.

His behavior during the reading of a psalm was so disgraceful that his mother was obliged to carry him out of the room. Chuckling gayly, and not at all abashed, he came back in time for breakfast.

His exploits at the table, especially with a cream jug and his mother’s plate of mush, became so exasperating that at last she put him on the floor with a crust of bread.

He was not hungry, having breakfasted earlier, so, taking his crust, he crawled under the table and polished the children’s shoes with it. In huge delight Bethany and the boys, with little explosive bursts of laughter, submitted to his manipulations, while his mother talked to the Judge.

“Can you love your work and yet get tired of it?” she was inquiring searchingly of her older friend.

The Judge shook his head, not negatively, but in a thoughtful manner. “O, so tired, my dear friend, especially when the flesh grows weak.”

“‘The ghost is willing, but the meat is weak,’ a Frenchman once said,” continued Berty, with a laugh. “Well, Judge, yesterday I thought I would go crazy. They began before I was out of bed. ‘Mrs. Everest,’ said Daisy at my door, ‘the man at the Babies’ Supply Depot says an accident has happened to the fresh-milk van. The cans are upset. What shall he do?’ ‘Do,’ I said, ‘the foolish man! Why, do the best he can. There are other cows. Let him ransack the town for fresh milk. Telephone to the suburban places. There is milk somewhere. We’ve got to have it for the River Street babies. Why does he waste time by coming to me? I put him there; let him look after his business. If he doesn’t I’ll discharge him.’”

“Do have some of this Cloverdale honey,” said the Judge, “it is delicious.”

“Now, Judge, you think I want sweetening,” she said, with a mischievous twinkling of her black eyes, “but you’ve got to hear all my troubles. Let me see, what was the next thing? O, yes, I know—and this, too, before I was out of bed. Daisy calls through the door, ‘Mrs. Everest, the footman from Miss Sally Draylittle’s is here. He says that his lady says that the Angora cat she bought from your cat farm is going round with its leg hanging loose. What shall she do?’”

Dallas, who was listening to Berty, began to laugh.

“I don’t wonder you laugh,” said Berty, indignantly. “Did you ever hear of such a helpless woman trying to run an establishment? ‘Tell the footman to tell Miss Draylittle to send for a good veterinary. The cat has probably broken her leg.’ Then let me see, what came next? I’ve got to tell you quickly while I’m cross about it, for when I get cool I shall be ashamed of myself for telling my trials, even to such dear friends as you all are.”

“You in your work are hampered by inefficient persons in places of trust,” said the Judge, philosophically.

“That’s it in a nutshell,” said Berty. “Why, the average person doesn’t seem to think. My next call was to go to see a sick woman. She wasn’t sick; she was troubled and uneasy. Her husband had left home in a temper the night before and hadn’t come back. She frightened me and I frightened her. She poured out her woes to me, and I said, ‘I don’t blame him. If I were your husband I wouldn’t come back for a week.’ The poor creature stared at me. ‘Why, look about you,’ I said. ‘Look at this dirty room, this filthy room. How could a man sit down in it with self-respect. Stop your crying and clean it.’ And do you know, Judge, I couldn’t make her see it was dirty. I sent for two men and had her moved bag and baggage into two clean rooms in that house you were good enough to buy for my poor people; and now the question is, will she have sense enough to keep it clean?”

“Reform is losing some of its rosy hues to you,” the Judge observed, sententiously.

Berty laughed. “Please give me some more honey, and just you try criticising River Street. Then you will find out where baby gets his temper. I scold those people frightfully, but I love them. Titus, are you coming to live on River Street with me when you get to be a man?” and she turned to the boy.

“No, but perhaps I can help you,” he said, modestly. “I was thinking that on that stock farm grandfather is going to let me have there will be plenty of room for some cottages for poor sick folks, and I would like to have some of the children out every day.”

“You dear,” she said, enthusiastically; then as he began an animated conversation with Titus on the subject of farming she remarked in a low voice to the Judge, “Why, that boy has stopped stammering, hasn’t he?”

The Judge nodded. “I will tell you about it presently.”

When the two boys and the little girl were excused from the table, and got up to go to school, there were simultaneous squeals of laughter from them. Their shoes were all slipping off their feet.

“It’s that cute little baby,” observed Bethany, “he’s untied all our shoes.”

“Mine are not only untied, but off my feet,” said Berty, unconcernedly. “Perhaps Higby will be good enough to find them.”

The old man, who was grinning with delight over the baby’s antics, found one in the coal hod. The other was discovered an hour later out in the yard, where it had been carried by Bylow the dog, he having probably picked it up in the back hall, where it had been thrown by Tom, junior.

“Why, I believe,” said the Judge, shuffling his feet about, “that the little rascal has untied my laces. Dallas, just look before you leave the room. I dislike fussing with my feet after I am fully dressed.”

Dallas went down on his knees, neatly fastened the Judge’s laces, and put his feet on a stool where they would be slightly out of baby’s way.

“Who is going to take Bethany to school this morning?” asked the Judge.

“It’s my turn,” replied Titus.

“Good-bye, Daddy Grandpa,” said the little girl, coming to kiss him.

“Good-bye,” he said, “mind and wait for Jennie to come and bring you home. Don’t leave Mrs. Hume’s alone.”

“No, dear Daddy Grandpa.” Then she went on, anxiously, “Will the baby be here when Bethany comes home?”

“I hope so,” said the Judge, politely.

“Yes, he will,” said Berty, “that dreadful baby will be here for luncheon, and for dinner, too, if he is not turned out before then.”

The Judge smiled. “He won’t be. I have a fellow-feeling for that baby. Many a time I have heard my dear departed mother say that I was one of the worst children she ever saw.”

“O, Judge,” said Berty, vivaciously, “is that true? Can it be that there is hope for my baby of becoming a man like you?”

“Tut! tut! he will be a far better one.”

“Judge, will you take him and bring him up?”

The Judge tried to repress a shudder, but could not. He liked Berty’s baby, and had great patience with him as an occasional visitor, but as steady company—“No,” he said, thoughtfully, “that baby needs a mother.”

“So he does,” said Berty, catching him up in her arms, “mother’s great fat lump of flesh with a naughty little mind inside. Now, Judge, what are you going to do this morning?”

“I am going to entertain you,” he said, politely.

“No, no, I only stay on condition that I don’t interfere with your regular occupations. Baby and I can amuse ourselves.”

“I assure you that I would rather stay with you than do anything else,” said the Judge.

“Well,” she returned, “you are a truthful man, and I believe you. Will you take me to see the pigeons first thing? But what shall we do with baby?”

“Higby,” said the Judge, “you are fond of children. You amuse him.”

The old man deliberately came forward and received the crowing baby in his arms.

Young Tom was too much accustomed to strangers to object, and at once he was fascinated by Higby’s teeth, which were rather large and curiously shaped. Insinuating all his pink fingers in the man’s mouth, to tried to take them out. They would not come.

“If you don’t object to that, Higby,” said Mrs. Everest, “it is a sure way to amuse him.”

Higby gurgled a reply in the affirmative, and Berty went away with the Judge.

“O, the lovely creatures,” she exclaimed, when a few minutes later they entered the pigeon loft, “and how tame they are!”

The pigeons were flying all over the Judge, lighting on his head, his shoulders, his arms, and gently tapping him with their beaks.

“They are becoming tamer every day,” he said. “It is wonderful what kind treatment will do in developing the intelligence of the lower order of creation.”

“I suppose Titus pets these birds very much.”

“O, yes, he and Bethany are indefatigable. I watched him at first, for I thought he might neglect them, but he does not.”

“I used to keep pigeons,” said Berty, wistfully. “I was very fond of them.”

“I am sure Titus would give you a pair or two, if you wish to start again. He won’t let everybody have them, but he would be sure of your devotion to them.”

“I should love to have some,” she said, enthusiastically. “By the way, Judge, tell me about his stammering. Is he really cured?”

“You noticed that he spoke slowly.”

“Yes, I did.”

“He is trying to cure himself, really trying hard now. He got a shock the other day that started him in the right direction. It was after Airy Tingsby’s last visit here. Just as soon as she went away I called him to me. ‘Titus,’ I said, ‘did you notice that Airy stammered quite often during dinner, and in the evening?’

“‘Yes,’ he said, reluctantly, ‘he had.’

“‘Do you know,’ I said, ‘that that little girl has set up a lofty ideal for herself. She wishes to be a perfect lady.’

“Titus said he knew that.

“‘And you,’ I said, ‘are going to be a stumbling-block. So anxious is she to imitate the members of this family in every particular that she is going to copy our bad as well as our good qualities. Now, don’t you think you ought to endeavor to shake off this habit of stammering?’

“Titus asked me if I thought she was imitating him purposely.

“‘Do you think so yourself?’ I asked.

“He gave me to understand that he did not, that she was so consumed by a burning, intense desire to improve that she unconsciously caught up everything he said, absorbed all his words, and his mannerisms with them.

“I did not need to say anything further. The boy was perfectly upset over the affair, so much so that I wondered. He was ashamed of standing in the way of a girl—and such a fragile piece of ambition as Airy. So he set himself resolutely to conquer his failing, and you see he is making good progress. He slips sometimes, but not often.”

“Titus is a noble boy,” said Berty, warmly. “He is going to make a fine man.”