“She is a remarkable woman!” exclaimed the general, wiping his eyes on his white silk handkerchief as they descended the steps.  “A most unusual woman!  Why, I feel positively unworthy to sit in her presence.  Her manner brings all my past indiscretions to mind.  It is an honour to have such a character in the community, sir!”

The judge acquiesced silently.

The interview had tried his Epicurean fortitude, and he was wondering if it would be necessary to repeat the call before Christmas.

“If Julius Webb had lived she would have made a man of him,” continued the general enthusiastically, the purple flush slowly fading from his flabby face.  “A creature who could live with that woman and not be made a man of wouldn’t be human; he’d be a hound.  There is dignity in every inch of her, sir.  I will allow no man to question my respect for our immortal Lee—­but if Jane Webb had been the commander of our armies, we should be standing now upon Confederate soil—­”

“Or upon the ashes of it,” suggested the judge, adding apologetically, “she is indeed a woman in a thousand.”

He held it to be a lack of courtesy to dissent from praise of any woman whose chastity was beyond impeachment, as he held it to be an absence of propriety to unite in admiration of one who was wanting in the supremest of the feminine virtues.  His code was an obvious one, and he had never seen cause to depart from it.

“I hope the boy will be worthy of her,” he said.  “It is a good name that he bears.”

The general took off his straw hat and mopped his brow.

“Worthy of her!” he exclaimed.  “He’s got to be worthy of her, sir.  If he takes any notion in his head not to be, I’ll thrash him within an inch of his life.  Let him try it, the young scamp!”

The judge laughed easily, having regained his self-possession.  “Well, well, there’s no telling,” he said; “but he’s as bright as a steel trap.  I wish Tom had half his sense.”  Then he turned past the church on his way home, and the general, declining an invitation to dinner, went on to the post-office, where he awaited his carriage.

From this time Dudley Webb attended classes at the judge’s house and became the popular tyrant of his little schoolroom.  He was a dark, high-bred looking boy, with a rich voice and a nature that was generous in small things and selfish in large ones.  There was a convincing air of good-fellowship about him, which won the honest heart of slow-witted Tom Bassett, and a half-veiled regard for his own youthful pleasures, which aroused the wrath of Eugenia.

“I can’t abide him,” she had once declared passionately to Sally Burwell.  “Somehow, he always gets the best of everything.”

When, after the first few years, Nicholas Burr entered the schoolroom and took his place upon one of the short green benches, Mrs. Webb called upon the judge in person and demanded an explanation.