The people on the porch of the Country Club were very gay and gorgeous,
so that Becky in her careless frock and shabby shoes would have been a
pitiful contrast if she had cared in the least what the people on the
porch thought of her. But she did not care. She nodded and smiled to a
friend or two as the Judge stopped for a moment in the crush of motors.

George Dalton was on the porch. When he saw Becky he leaned forward for
a good look at her.

"Some girl," he said to Waterman, as the surrey moved on, "the one in
the sailor hat. Who is she?"

Oscar Waterman was a newcomer in Albemarle. He had bought a thousand
acres, with an idea of grafting on to Southern environment his own
ideas of luxurious living. The county families had not called, but he
was not yet aware of his social isolation. He was rich, and most of the
county families were poor--from his point of view the odds were in his
favor--and it was never hard to get guests. He could always motor up to
Washington and New York, and bring a crowd back with him. His cellars
were well stocked, and his hospitality undiscriminating.

"I don't know the girl," he told Dalton, "but the old man is Judge
Bannister. He's one of the natives--no money and oodles of pride."

In calling Judge Bannister a "native," Oscar showed a lack of
proportion. A native, in the sense that he used the word, is a South Sea
Islander, indigenous but negligible. Oscar was fooled, you see, by the
Judge's old-fashioned clothes, and the high surrey, and the horses with
the flowing tails. His ideas of life had to do with motor cars and