Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 248, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 October 1911 — The Judge’s Daughter [ARTICLE]

The Judge’s Daughter

pmt^cX^d I wj I were was sack a humble little home; onehalf of the house was a log cabin and the other half an unfinished frame structure just Ml father left it when hie (Med, leaving mother with two children. a boy and a airl, myself being but an infant She did sewing for the families near us and I used to envy the girls mother made such dainty dresses for. ; ... * <' When she would be away for a little time to take home some work, I would slip into the unfurnished room where she kept her sewing and don some dainty dress she was making for the judge’s daughter, „ and would prance around in the pretty frock. When I would see another coming I would slip out of the dress, throw It over a chair and run out to play. Mother knew i had had the dress' on, hut she never sal wanything, for I was very careful not to rumple it. ; Judge Garden lived a quarter of a 'mile from our place in a red brick mansion, and his daughter Madge and I had become fast friends. Madge had. a brother, Kent, who was overbearing, aggressive and filled: with self-import-ance, while Madge was a demure little madd as gentle as a kitten and as unlike her brother as black is from white.

I had never been inside of the judge's home, and, although there was scarcely- a day that.M adlge did not come over to my home and bring her dolls, where we would sit under the shade tree by the door and make dolls’ dresses, yet she had never invited me to' her home. ‘Kent sometimes came over to play . with my brother, Tom, and help him make boats which they would sail in the -pond back of the bouse but he never asked Tom over to his house, and, even if he had, mother would have hesitated about giving her consent. She used to say they were too fine for us, but I longed with all my heart to see the inside of the red mansion. - , Then one wonderful day Madge said her mother and father were away and she asked me to come over and take tea with her, as there would be no one there but her brother and the maid. Kent was on the porch as we walked up and grinned at me an ugly grinn, whereupon I promptly forgot my manners mother, had cautioned me about and made a face at him. We went upstairs to Madge's bedroom, which was like a fairy’s room to rhe. A white rug covered .the floor and white ruffled,curtain?, tied back with blue ribbons, drapped the windows. A white iron bed stood cornerwise and a little white dresser and writing desk occupied two corners of the room. I stood looking about in wide-eyed wonder, wheq, Kent came nolsly along the hall ahd'flung the ddof ‘open:“They’ve crime,” he said to his sister, as he looked at me and scowled. Instantly all the pleasure left Madge’s fa;e and she stood there trembling, with a frightened look in her eyes. ..-•••••

“It’s all right, though; you can come down/’ she said to me. Keiit left the room, giving my hair a vicious pull as he passed me. i was’too engrossed noticing Madge’s confusion to pay heed to him, and the next instant a silver bell tinkled below and we went down to lunch. When we entered the dining room the judge and his wife vgefe seated at the table, having returned sooner than they expected. Madge looked at her mother in a frightened way and slid noiselessly into her chair, while I took a seat beside her.

The ’mother had no greeting for the tittle daughter she had been separated from; instead she looked at me coldly for a few minutes, then turned to Madge and said; “The next time I* come home I don't want to see any of your poor trash here.” Madge gave no reply to thia cruel remark. She turned very pale, and Kent looked at me and grinned another of his Ugly grins. The judge and his wife never spoke during the meal, and I thought how different it was from our little home, where teatime was the hour when Tom and I told our troubles and joys to mother and it was an hour in the day we looked forward to. As Madge and I left the dining room Kent was in the hall and scarcely waiting to say goodbye to Madge, I darted through the door onto the porch as Kent called after me: “How’d you likb to come again? Bully, ain’t lt?’» > How fast my feet flew over the ground! They could scarcely bring me fast enough to the home I had so often been ashamed of. As I entered the door mother was sitting by the window sewing A yellow ray of sunlight rested on her hair and as •he beard my hasty step she looked up and smiled, for she expected tq hear a wonderful tale of the glorious time her little daughter had at the judge's grand home; but when I told her about it her face grew sad and abe said. “Poor children." . As I looked about our humbly home, at the bare white floors, the Chairs father made and the old-fash-ioned bureau and mother sitting there with the sunlight on her hair, 1 wondered that they had never looked so dear to me before and I no longer envied Madge her pretty dresses and grand home; and I began to see why Madge came so often to our humble cottage .