"I have been in Dorfield lately, though, on business."

"My grandmother's maiden name was Blossom," continued the judge, "and
strange to say, it was also Sally, or Sarah by the time she got to be
my grandmother. But she was a Virginian, a Virginian of tide-water
fame. What Blossom are you?"

"Just Blossom, sir; a blooming Blossom! My father was English," she
said in desperation. "At least I think he was. He died before he was
born--I mean I was born."

"Ah, very sad!" ventured the Judge and Miss Hite-Smith thought so too.
Josie, for her part, thought he was much better dead--that fictitious
Blossom. This questioning was more than she had bargained for. People
usually let her do the questioning. She rather fancied it was the
bobbed wig and the artificial complexion that made persons like the
judge notice her.

"That is a beautiful old house on the corner near here," she ventured.

"You mean the Haskins?" spoke up Miss Denton. "Yes, it is very
handsome, no doubt, but too ornate and pie-crusty for my--taste." Then
a discussion ensued concerning architecture, old and new.

"I mean the house going East from this place," put in Josie, not at all
interested in the Haskins house. "The old home with the ivy and the
box-bushes in the yard."

"Oh, the Waller house!" said Major Denton. "That is perhaps the finest
specimen of the old South left in the city. It was saved from the
Yankee invasion by a piece of luck."

He then plunged into war reminiscences that lasted through three
courses, his table companions listening with bored politeness.

"Do the same people still live there?" asked Josie, after Major Denton
had fired the last shot for states' rights.

"Well, they do and they don't," began the Major.

"I can't see why you say they do," broke in Judge Tuttle. "Chester Hunt
hasn't an ounce of Waller blood in his veins."

"Indeed he has," declared Mrs. Claiborne. "Chester Hunt's mother's
great-grandmother was a niece of old Edmund Waller's, the English
founder of the Waller family. That is a well-known fact."

"Ah, yes, a niece but--ah, well--the presence of ladies would deter my
pressing my point," said Judge Tuttle, who then whispered sibilantly to
a pink-cheeked old man across the table.

"As I was saying," continued Major Denton, "they do and they don't. The
present occupant of the Waller mansion is a stepbrother of Stephen
Waller's. He, poor fellow, was killed during the war, the world war, I
mean, not the war