a rather plain, comfortable, efficient
type. When Mary went in, she was getting supper.

"Has Mother come, Daisy?"

"No, Miss, she ain', an' yo' Poppa ain' come. An' me makin' biscuits."

"Your biscuits are always delicious, Daisy."

"An' me and John wants to go to the movies, Miss Mary. An' efen the
supper is late."

"You can leave the dishes until mornin', Daisy."

Mary smiled and sighed as she went on with Fiddle to her own room. The
good old days of ordered service were over.

She went into the parlor bedroom. It was the one which she and Fiddle
occupied. She bathed and dressed her baby, and changed her own frock.
Then she entered the long, dim parlor. There was a family Bible on the
table. It was a great volume with steel engravings. It had belonged
to her father's father. In the middle of the book were pages for
births and deaths. The records were written legibly but not elegantly.
They went back for two generations. Beyond that the Flippins had no
family tree.

Mary had seen the family tree at Huntersfield. It was rooted in
aristocratic soil. There were Huguenot branches and Royalist
branches--D'Aubignes and Moncures, Peytons and Carys, Randolphs and
Lees. And to match every name there was more than one portrait on the
walls of Huntersfield.

Mary remembered a day when she and Truxton Beaufort had stood in the
wide hall.

"A great old bunch," Truxton had said.

"If they were my ancestors I should be afraid of them."

"Why, Mary?"

"Oh, they'd expect so much of me."

"Oh, that," Truxton said airily, "who cares what they expect?"

Mr. and Mrs. Flippin came home in time for supper. The nurse had
arrived and the surgeons would follow in the morning. "It's dreadful,
Mary," Mrs. Flippin said, "to see her poor husband; money isn't
everything. And he loves her as much as if they were poor."

Daisy washed the dishes in a perfect whirl of energy, donned her
high-heeled slippers and her Washington manner, and went off with John.
It was late that night when Mrs. Flippin went out to find Mary busy.

"My dear," she said, "what are you doing?" Mary was rolling out pastry,
with ice in a ginger-ale bottle. "I am going to make some tarts.
There was a can of raspberries left--and--and well--I'm just hungry
for--raspberry tarts, Mother."

III

It was the Judge who told Becky that Dalton had not gone. "Mrs.
Waterman is very ill, and they are all staying down."

Becky showed no sign of