houses on the great estates had been thrown open for the county
families and their friends. There had been meat and drink for man and
beast.

The servant problem had, however, in these latter days, put a curb on
generous impulse. There were no more niggers underfoot, and
hospitality was necessarily curtailed. The people who at the time of
the August Horse Show had once packed great hampers with delicious
foods, and who had feasted under the trees amid all the loveliness of
mellow-tinted hills, now ordered by telephone a luncheon of
cut-and-dried courses, and motored down to eat it. After that, they
looked at the horses, and with the feeling upon them of the futility of
such shows yawned a bit. In due season, they held, the horse would be
as extinct as the Dodo, and as mythical as the Centaur.

The Judge argued hotly for the things which had been. Love of the
horse was bred in the bone of Old Dominion men. He swore by all the
gods that when he had to part with his bays and ride behind gasoline,
he would be ready to die.

Becky agreed with her grandfather. She adored the old traditions, and
she adored the Judge. She spent two months of every year with him in
his square brick house in Albemarle surrounded by unprofitable acres.
The remaining two months of her vacation were given to her mother's
father, Admiral Meredith, whose fortune had come down to him from
whale-hunting ancestors. The Admiral lived also in a square brick
house, but it had no acres, for it was on the Main Street of Nantucket
town, with a Captain's walk on top, and a spiral staircase piercing its
middle.