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."

His own two dogs followed him, but the Judge's beagles lay with their
noses on their paws at their master's feet. Now and then they snapped at
flies but otherwise they were motionless.

Before the half hour was up Fiddle-dee-dee fell asleep, and the Judge
waking, saw on the other side of a stream propped against the gray old
oak, the young mother cool in her white dress, her child in her arms.

"Father had to go," she told him, and explained the need; "he'll send
Calvin for the basket."

"I can carry my own basket, Mary; I'm not a thousand years old."

"It isn't that. But you've never carried baskets, Judge."

The Judge chuckled. "You say that is if it were an accusation."

"It isn't. Only some of us seem born to carry baskets and others are
born to--let us carry them." Her smile redeemed her words from
impertinence.

"Are you a Bolshevik, Mary?"

"No. I believ