Mary smiled and sighed as she went on with Fiddle to her own room. The good old days of ordered service were over.
She went into the parlor bedroom. It was the one which she and Fiddle occupied. She bathed and dressed her baby, and changed her own frock. Then she entered the long, dim parlor. There was a family Bible on the table. It was a great volume with steel engravings. It had belonged to her father's father. In the middle of the book were pages for births and deaths. The records were written legibly but not elegantly. They went back for two generations. Beyond that the Flippins had no family tree.
Mary had seen the family tree at Huntersfield. It was rooted in aristocratic soil. There were
Huguenot branches and Royalist branches—D'Aubignes and Moncures, Peytons and Carys, Randolphs and Lees. And to match every name there was more than one portrait on the walls of Huntersfield.
Mary remembered a day when she and Truxton Beaufort had stood in the wide hall.
"A great old bunch," Truxton had said.
"If they were my ancestors I should be afraid of them."
"Why, Mary?"
"Oh, they'd expect so much of me."
"Oh, that," Truxton said airily, "who cares what they expect?"