"Heart-wireless, Daddy. Didn't you get messages that way when you were young—from Mother?"
"How do I know? It's been twenty-five years since then, and we haven't had to send messages. We've just held on to each other's hands, thank God." He bent and kissed her. "You stay and tell the Judge, Mary. He'll sleep for a half-hour yet; he's as regular as the clock."
His own two dogs followed him, but the Judge's beagles lay with their noses on their paws at their master's feet. Now and then they snapped at flies but otherwise they were motionless.
Before the half hour was up Fiddle-dee-dee fell asleep, and the Judge waking, saw on the other side of a stream propped against the gray old oak, the young mother cool in her white dress, her child in her arms.
"Father had to go," she told him, and explained the need; "he'll send Calvin for the basket."
"I can carry my own basket, Mary; I'm not a thousand years old."
"It isn't that. But you've never carried baskets, Judge."
The Judge chuckled. "You say that is if it were an accusation."
"It isn't. Only some of us seem born to carry baskets and others are born to—let us carry them." Her smile redeemed her words from impertinence.