. "Branch--it's one of our names--my
wife's family."

"But I reckon there ain't never been any Truelove Branches in your
family tree. I laugh at Mary when she calls him that. '"Truelove" ain't
any name for a man, Mary,' I tell her. But she says there couldn't be a
better one. And she insisted on naming the child 'Fidelity.' But if
anybody had told me that my little Mary--would take things into her own
hands like that--why, Judge, before she went away to teach school, she
leaned on me and her mother--and now she's as stiff as a poker when we
try to ask about her affairs----"

"Does he support her?" the Judge asked.

"Sends her plenty of money. She always seems to have enough, even when
he doesn't write. He'll be coming one of these days--and then we'll get
the thing straight, but in the meantime there ain't any use in asking
Mary."

He brought out the bag of corn-cakes and fed the dogs. They were a
well-bred crew and took their share in turn, sitting in a row and going
through the ceremony with an air of enjoying not only the food but the
attention they attracted from the two men.

"Of course," said Mr. Flippin as he gathered up the lunch things, "I'm
saying to you what I wouldn't say to another soul. Mary's my girl, and
she's all right. But I naturally have the feelings of a father."

The Judge stretched himself on the grass, and pulled his hat over his
eyes. "Girls are queer, and if that Dalton thinks he can court my
Becky----" He stopped, and spoke again from under his hat, "Oh, what's
the use of worrying, Bob, on a day like this?"

The Judge always napped after lunch, and Bob Flippin, stretched beside
him, lay awake and watched the stream slip by in a sheet of silver, he
watched a squirrel flattened on the limb above him, he watched the birds
that fluttered down to the pools to bathe, he watched the buzzards
sailing high above the hills.

And presently he found himself watching his own daughter Mary, as she
came along the opposite bank of the stream.

She was drawing Fiddle-dee-dee in a small red cart and was walking
slowly.

She walked well. Country-born and country-bred, there was nothing about
her of plodding peasant. All her life she had danced with the
Bannisters and the Beauforts. Yet she had never been invited to the big
balls. When the Merriweathers gave their Harvest Dance, Mary and her
mother would go over and help bake the cakes, and at night they would
sit in the gallery of the great ballroom