punch----! Old times, old manners! The Judge drank his coffee with
the air of one who accepts a good thing regretfully. He stood
staunchly by the Administration. If the President had asked the
sacrifice of his head, he would have offered it on the platter of
political allegiance.

So on this August morning, an aristocrat by inheritance, and a democrat
by assumption, he drove his bays proudly. Calvin, in a worn blue coat,
sat beside him with his arms folded.

Becky was on the back seat with Aunt Claudia. Aunt Claudia was a widow
and wore black. She was small and slight, and the black was made smart
by touches of white crepe. Aunt Claudia had not forgotten that she had
been a belle in Richmond. She was a stately little woman with a firm
conviction of the necessity of maintaining dignified standards of
living. She was in no sense a snob. But she held that women of birth
and breeding must preserve the fastidiousness of their ideals, lest
there be social chaos.

"There would be no ladies left in the world," she often told Becky, "if
we older women went at the modern pace."

Becky, in contrast to Aunt Claudia's smartness, showed up rather
ingloriously. She wore the stubbed russet shoes, a not too fresh
cotton frock of pale yellow, and a brown straw sailor.

"Yon might at least have stopped to change your shoes," Aunt Claudia
told her, as they left the house behind.

"I was out with Randy and the dogs. It was heavenly, Aunt Claudia."