“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 and watch the dancers, but Mary would not be asked out on the floor.

Seeing the Judge asleep, Mary stopped and beckoned from the other side.

Flippin rose and made his way across the stream, stepping from stone to stone.

“Mother wants you to come right up to the Watermans’, Father.  Mrs. Waterman is to have an operation, and you are to direct the servants in fitting up a room for the surgeons.  The nurse will tell you what to do.”

Mr. Flippin rubbed his face with his handkerchief.  “I don’t like to wake the Judge.”

“I’ll stay here and tell him,” Mary said.  “And you can send Calvin down to carry the basket.”

She was standing beside him, and suddenly she laid her cheek against his arm.  “I love you,” she said, “you are a darling, Daddy.”

He patted her cheek.  “That sounds like my little Mary.”

“Don’t I always sound like your little Mary?”

“Not always.”

“Well—­I’ve had things on my mind.”  Her blue eyes met his, and she flushed a bit.  “Not things that I am sorry for, but things that I am worried about.  But now—­well, I am very happy in my heart, Daddy.”

He smiled down at her.  “Have you heard from T. Branch?”

“Yes, by wireless——­”

He looked his astonishment.  “Wireless?”

“Heart-wireless, Daddy.  Didn’t you get messages that way when you were young—­from Mother?”

“How do I know?  It’s been twenty-five years since then, and we haven’t had to send messages.  We’ve just held on to each other’s hands, thank God.”  He bent and kissed her.  “You stay and tell the Judge, Mary.  He’ll sleep for a half-hour yet; he’s as regular as the clock.”