Bob Flippin’s eyes twinkled.  “I reckon he liked to look at a pretty girl——­”

The Judge stared at him.  “At Becky?”

Flippin nodded.  “Didn’t you know it?”

“Bless my soul.”  The Judge was unquestionably startled.  “But I don’t know anything about him.  I can’t have him running after Becky.”

“Seems to me he’s been a-runnin’.”

“But what would Claudia say?  I don’t know anything about his family.  Maybe he hasn’t any family.  How do I know he isn’t a fortune-hunter?”

“Well, he isn’t a bird hunter, I can tell you that.  I saw him kick one of your dogs.  A man that will kick a dog isn’t fit to hold a gun.”

“No, he isn’t,” said the Judge, soberly.  “I’m upset by what you’ve said, Flippin.  Dalton’s all right as far as I can see as a friend of mine.  But when anybody comes courting at Huntersfield he’s got to show credentials.”

He ate his lunch without much appetite.  He was guiltily aware of what Claudia would say if she knew what had happened.

But perhaps nothing had happened and perhaps she need not know.  He cheered up and threw a bit of ham to the waiting dogs.  Perhaps Becky wasn’t interested.  Perhaps, after all, Dalton had been genuine in his interest in the stuffed birds.

“Becky’s too young for things like that,” he began hopefully.

But Bob Flippin shook his head.  “Girls are queer, Judge, and you never can tell what they’re goin’ to do next.  Now, there’s my Mary—­running off and getting married, and coming home and not talking much about it.  She—­didn’t even bring her marriage certificate.  Said that he had kept it.  But she’s never lied to me, and I know when she says she’s married, she’s—­married—­but it’s queer.  He ain’t written now for weeks, but she ain’t worried.  She says she knows the reason, but she can’t tell me.  And when I try to ask questions, she just looks me straight in the eye and says, ‘I never lied to you, Father, did I?  And it’s all right.’”

“He has a good name,” said the Judge.  “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.