And this was emphasized as a further proof of RoBards’ failure as a father. All the summer of 1853 Patty complained of the smallness of the house at Tuliptree. The children required separate rooms. They had guests and there was no place to put them. When Immy had two visitors, and one of his college friends came out to spend a week with Keith, the two boys had to clear a room in the hayloft. They made a lark of it, but it humiliated Patty, and she swore she would never go back to the place until RoBards added a wing to it. To add a wing would mean the opening of the foundation and the demolition of the chimney, and the thought terrified RoBards. He had grown so used to the presence of Jud Lasher there that only some unexpected proposal of this sort wakened him to the eternal danger of a revelation all the more horrible for its delay. Patty found so many places for the spending of his ten thousand that she could decide on none. But the politicians smelled his money and he was visited by an affable ward-heeler with a suggestion that he accept a nomination for a judgeship in the Superior Court. Though RoBards was revolted at the thought of receiving the ermine from hands soiled with such dirty money, his heart longed for the dignity of a judgeship, and he knew that he could never attain the bench without the consent of the politicians. Once aloft he could purify the means by the purity of his decisions. So he gave his consent and promised to contribute the necessary funds for the campaign. And that fall he won the election. On January first he was to mount the throne. Patty made all manner of fun of her politician, but she took pride in his victory and thenceforth began to call him “Judge.” It was a change from the ancient “Mister RoBards,” a little less distant, a little more respectful. But RoBards noted that Immy seemed indifferent to his success or his failure. She pretended enthusiasm over his election, but her smile died almost before it was born. She was distraught, petulant, swift to anger and prompt to tears. She wept at nothing. She took no delight even in gayety. She refused to go to dances. She denied herself to callers. Even when snow came and brought what foreigners called “the American pastime known as sleighing,” and the bells thrilled the muffled streets with fairy jubilation, she kept the house. But the mere hint of calling in a doctor threw her into spasms of protest. One evening when the winter night overlapped the afternoon there came a tempest of sleet and snow and RoBards had to call a hack to take him home from the office. He was lashed as with a cat-o’-nine tails when he ran from the curb to his door. And when he entered the hall in a flurry of sleet, Patty said to him: “We’ve got to go up to Tuliptree at once—to-morrow.” “Why? what for? for how long?” “I don’t know for how long, but we must lose no time in getting Immy out of town.” CHAPTER XXXVII