"I tell you, we three will go up together, say tomorrow morning, and we'll make a day of it, or better, a couple of days! We'll see the town, have a good dinner, go to the theatre, and Mary can pick out the stuff we want. I'll arrange at the office, and you go along and fix it up with Mary and her people. Tell 'em I'll look after her, and if she _don't_ come I'll buy everything in sight!"
The Judge was accustomed to getting what he wanted. Not considering this threat sufficient, he added a note of pathos.
"Tell her I haven't had a vacation for a coon's age, and if she wants to please an old fellow and give him a good time, she'll come. You're both my guests and I'm going to enjoy myself. Damn it, man, you _fetch_ her. If you don't I'll go after her myself!"
The Judge did enjoy himself. From the train he took a carriage straight to the biggest furniture house on State Street, and there he plunged into a fury of buying. Mary and Laurence stood by, but it turned out that they had very little to say about it. When the Judge found that Mary had no definite ideas about furniture and that she demurred whenever any expensive article was in question, he over-rode her bewildered protests and bought whatever struck his eye. He bought a light carpet with red roses on it for the parlour, a set of shiny mahogany upholstered in flowered brocade, a carved oak set for the dining-room. He bought three cut-glass chandeliers and a grand piano; marble vases, an onyx clock and a service of French china.
It did not take long. He walked rapidly through the room, followed by the salesmen, glancing round with an eagle eye and pointing with his cane to what he wanted. Sometimes he asked Mary's opinion, but she was shy about giving it, and provided a thing was bright enough and costly enough, the Judge was sure she must like it. He discovered that he himself had more taste than he had suspected; he knew a good article from an inferior one in a minute, and he didn't buy any cheap stuff. Everything was handsome.
When they thought he was all through, he beckoned them and announced that now things must be bought for _their_ part of the house, the big rooms upstairs, and these Mary positively must select. But first they would have lunch and take a drive.