"Yes, sir, thank you, sir."
The Judge was as pleased as Punch. "That man up there in Waterman's box has heard of my collection," he explained to his party. "He wants me to settle a point about the Virginia partridge."
"Which man?" Randy's tone was ominous.
Dalton's arrival saved the Judge an answer. In his hunting pink, with his Apollo head, Dalton was upon them. The Judge, passing him around to the members of his party, came at last to Becky.
"My granddaughter, Becky Bannister."
With George's sparkling gaze bent full upon her, Becky blushed.
Randy saw the blush. "Oh, Lord," he said, under his breath, and stuck his hands in his pockets.
"I've always called it a quail," Dalton was saying.
"You would if you come from the North. To be exact, it isn't either, it's an American Bob-white. I'd be glad to have you come up and look at my collection. There is every kind of bird that has been shot in Virginia fields or Virginia waters. I've got a Trumpeter Swan. The last one was seen in the Chesapeake in sixty-nine. Mine was killed and stuffed in the forties. He is in a perfect state of preservation, and in the original glass case."