“I don’t think he will expect to dine with you, Grandfather.  I think if you ask him, he will refuse.  But if you take your friendship from him it will break his heart——­”

“Who said I would take my friendship away from Bob Flippin?”

“He is afraid—­you may——­”

“Because you married Mary?”

“Yes.”

The Judge was breathing hard.  “Whom does he think I’d go fishing with?”

“Do you think he’ll want to go fishing with you if you cast off Mary?”

The Judge had a vision of life without Bob Flippin.  On sunshiny days there would be no one to cut bait for him, no one to laugh with him at the dogs as they sat waiting for their corn-cakes, no one to listen with flattering attention to his old, old tales.

It had not occurred to him that Bob Flippin, too, might have his pride.

He sat down heavily in a porch chair.

“Go and get Mary,” he exploded; “bring her here.  The thing is done.  The milk is spilled.  And there’s no use crying over it.  And if you think you two young people can separate me and Bob Flippin——­”

Mrs. Beaufort and Becky came down presently, to find the old man gazing, frowning, into space.

“I have told him to bring Mary, Claudia, but I must say that I am bitterly disappointed.”

“Mary is a good little thing, Father.”  Aunt Claudia’s voice shook.

The old man looked up at her.  “It is hardest for you, my dear.  And I have helped to make it hard.”

He reached out his hand to her.  She took it.  “He is my son—­and I love him——­”

“And I love you, Claudia.”

“May I get the blue room ready?”

The blue room was the bridal chamber at Huntersfield; kept rather sacredly at other times for formal purposes.

“Do as you please.  The house is yours, my dear.”

And so that night the lights of the blue room shone on Fiddle Flippin and her new grandmother.

“Do you think she would let me put her to bed?” Mrs. Beaufort had asked Mary.

“If you will sing, ‘Jack-Sam Bye.’”

Mary pulled the last little garment from the pink plump body, and Fiddle, like a rosy Cupid, counted her toes gleefully in the middle of the wide bed.

“I told Truxton,” Mary said suddenly, “that he might not want to call her ‘Fiddle.’  The whole neighborhood says ‘Fiddle Flippin.’”

“It is a dear little name,” Aunt Claudia was bending adoringly over the baby, “but Fidelity is better—­Fidelity Branch Beaufort——­”

“I want her to be as proud of her name as I am,” Mary’s voice had a thrilling note.  “It is a great thing to know that my child has in her the blood of all those wonderful people whose portraits hang in the hall.  I want her to be worthy of her name.”

She could have said nothing better.  Aunt Claudia’s face was lighted by the warmth in her heart.  “Such a lot of ancestors for one little fat Fidelity,” she said; “put on her nightgown, Mary, and I’ll rock her to sleep.”