"Well, you've heerd tell o' married men with big famblies a pa.s.sin' off fer single men, hain't you, afore today, and ever' onct in a while a sneakin' off to see their wife and childern?" With this last pointed remark, Mrs. Doggett opened the side door of the kitchen.

"No, thank you, Miss Nancy, I can't stay nary 'nother minute," she declared in a tone of regret: "jest tell Miss Lucy fer me I'm still a lookin' fer her, and both of you come down real soon!" The door closed behind her, leaving Miss Nancy in anything but an amiable state of mind.

At the buggy-house in the corner of the back yard, Mrs. Doggett encountered Mr. Lindsay putting away the buggy, and his saddle, and greeted him effusively.

"Eph's been a lookin' fer you down, Mr. Lindsay," she tendered him in smiling farewell, as Mr. Lindsay courteously brushed the snow aside and opened the gate for her, "but you're a flyin' too high fer us now, I reckon!"

Late that afternoon, when Mr. Lindsay took the milk-buckets from Miss Lucy's hand, and went with her to the barn lot, to a.s.sist her at the milking, as he had done each time since the beginning of his stay with the Jameses, Miss Nancy stood looking after him with a rigid air of offended propriety. Mrs. Doggett's whisper, suggesting vague possibilities of evil, had been accepted with due allowance by Miss Nancy, but for many days, a worm had found an abiding place in her bosom, and the other information Mrs. Doggett had given her to which she could give credence, fed this worm into a mighty thing that bit her heart cruelly.

She angrily watched Miss Lucy and her aid, as they moved about the barn-yard, to the serious hindering of the supper preparations. On her second unnecessary trip to the sitting-room, she threw the door open wide.

"Jest look!" she sneered. "Jest look, Pa! How does that look, him and her out there a milkin' together? Ef I was you, Pa, I'd stop it!"

"Hit _hain't_ modest lookin'," agreed the old man: "Lucy'd orter know better'n to allow that. She'd aggervate the patience o' Job with her foolishness. I sha'n't let her milk no more while he's here!"

After that, the pleasure of the evenings spent around the sitting-room fire was marred by the unpleasant insinuations directed at Mr. Lindsay by Miss Nancy, and the covert stabs she inflicted on Miss Lucy. One unusually cold evening Mr. Lindsay came in with a slight chill and flushed cheeks.

"Bein's. .h.i.t's so cold, Mr. Lindsay, and you ain't well," remarked Miss Lucy kindly, placing a smoothing-iron on the fender, "I'll heat this iron for you to take to bed with you. Them upstairs rooms havin' no fire in 'em, is awful chilly these nights."

Presently Miss Nancy pushed the iron away from the fire.

"You're jest a burnin' that ir'n up, Lucy Ann!" she scolded.

Miss Lucy said nothing, but when Miss Nancy left the room a moment, quietly put the iron nearer the fire again, and when her sister returned and once more moved it away, she lifted it off the fender.

"I'll jest take your iron to the kitchen, Mr. Lindsay," she said in a low tone, "and get a flannel rag to wrap hit in,--that is," she looked at him with apologetic eyes, "ef you are about ready for hit!"

Mr. Lindsay arose and followed Miss Lucy to the kitchen.

"Miss Lucy," he said gravely, "I see I'm a causin' trouble a stayin'

here: I'm a makin' a disturbance in the family."

"Why no, Mr. Lindsay," Miss Lucy's voice shook in eager denial of his a.s.sertion. "No, you ain't--you ain't a doin' n.o.body nothin' but good. We all ain't been so happy sence Mother was taken away."

"Miss Nancy," began Mr. Lindsay, but Miss Lucy interrupted him.

"Don't you pay no 'tention to Nancy, Mr. Lindsay," she supplicated: "Nancy, she has to work so hard, and she gits so tired and nervous: Nancy don't mean no harm!"

"You can't fool me, Miss Lucy," Mr. Lindsay's forehead knotted itself in a frown. "I hain't blind and I hain't deef, and I can't holp seein' the way she does, and a hearin' her bemean _you_ about me all the time nearly. I don't want to make no disturbance, so I'll jest leave!"

In the winter of the year before, an unusually severe winter, Miss Lucy and Miss Nancy, without help (they could get none in the time of tobacco stripping, and their father was not allowed to work by the doctor's orders) had been compelled, with damp skirts, wet by the deep snows, and fingers frosted by the cold, to feed the stock, hauling shocks of fodder from the field. At Mr. Lindsay's words, Miss Lucy's hand went up to her face in the familiar worried gesture, and a look of anxiety widened her eyes. But it was not the thought of the work that brought a hoa.r.s.e sob to her throat.

"O Mr. Lindsay," she begged with dry lips, "don't leave us! We can't do without you. Don't leave us before spreng comes noway!"

Mr. Lindsay took her cold hand and held it between his own, hot and feverish.

"Ef you feel that away about hit, Miss Lucy," he said soothingly, "I reckon I can make out untel then."

Miss Lucy hastily drew away her hand, stooped to wrap the iron that he might not see the flood of joy in her face.

The hall with the stairway that led to Mr. Lindsay's room, and the sitting-room also, opened on the back porch. When they had crossed the porch, Miss Lucy paused with one hand on the sitting-room doork.n.o.b.

"I don't know how we can ever repay you, Mr. Lindsay, for your kindness to us," she murmured, her face shining with something more than sweet gratefulness. Miss Lucy did not know that her eyes held the dangerous gift of personal speech.

Because of what he read in the translucent blue eyes, Mr. Lindsay suddenly became very bold.

"I could tell you, Miss Lucy,"--mindful of the pair of sharp ears behind the door, he lowered his voice--"I could tell you how you could repay me for the little I've done for you, ef you'd listen to me!"

But Miss Lucy had fled, and had closed the door softly behind her.

CHAPTER VII

RIVALS

"Every man in the time of courtship, puts on a behavior like my correspondent's holiday suit!"

The month of February was bitterly cold, and a deep snow lay unmelted for three weeks,--a condition of weather that seriously hindered interchange of social calls on the Silver Run creek. The last Sunday morning, however, brought a thaw that made it possible for the socially inclined, comfortably to stir out.

After the James' breakfast, Mr. Lindsay, according to his every Sunday's custom between milking times, dressed himself in his best black suit and his shining Sunday shoes, and with the more than a few white threads that were beginning to come in his hair and mustache, decently colored, and a suggestion of perfume about him, came into the sitting-room.

Miss Nancy, whose Sabbath attire was a change from a soiled brown calico to a similar unattractive clean one, professed to disapprove of this Sunday's dressy toilet, and when her sister came into the kitchen, dressed in a pretty maroon woolen house waist (one of the "remnant"

waists), her second-best black woolen skirt, and wearing her watch, with its slender chain, and with the white threads in _her_ hair concealed in a manner similar to Mr. Lindsay's, she raised her voice in sarcastic reproof.

"I see you've got on your red sack you thenk you look so purty in. The idy of an old theng like you a wearin' _red_! And I see you've wore a right smart of the gold off your Sunday specs too, a wearin' 'em ever'

day. You and him a dressin' up ever' Sunday, like you was a goin' to church, when you know you ain't goin' to do nothin' but set around all day, makes me plumb sick! And I'm jest a gittin' tired of all the piller slips a bein' blacked up with hair dye, on account of two old fools a bein' afraid of bein' thought as old as they are!"

Miss Lucy turned a pained, guilty red. The little bottles she kept hidden in her trunk were of recent acquisition, and she had thought their work was as yet her own secret. Knowing it was useless to attempt to defend herself, she put forth a plea for her friend.

"Maybe Mr. Lindsay don't color his hair, Nancy,--hit's a mighty pretty brown, and shines jest like Sister Isabinda's used to."

"Maybe he don't," derided Miss Nancy: "but you jest tell him for me, when he puts. .h.i.t on in the dark or before daylight, to take a little more pains, and don't come downstairs with hit smeared on slantways of his mustache, not techin' the roots, and leavin' 'em white on one side, and see what he says!"

Miss Lucy did not wait to hear any more, but went quietly back to the sitting-room where Mr. Lindsay sat alone.

"I jest know hit's the nicest day for meetin'," she smiled: "ef the road wasn't so rough a body could go! It'll be lonesome for you today, I'm afraid, Mr. Lindsay, with jest us," she went on: "I wish somebody'd come in to keep you company."

Mr. Lindsay looked behind him, then moved his chair nearer Miss Lucy's rocker. "I have all the company I want, Miss Lucy," he said in daring tone, "all the company I want in this world is here by me!"

Miss Lucy's eyes fell beneath the compelling power of the bright brown ones opposite her, and a warm flush dyed her face. Mr. Lindsay waited smiling for her to speak, but at this moment there came a knock, and Mr.

Galvin Brock, newly shaved, so highly collared that the linen cut cruelly into the fat beneath his ears, and wearing a top coat, a gray suit, gaiters, and glossy shoes that all bore the hall-mark of recent purchase, came in.

"Why, Mr. Brock!" stammered Miss Lucy, in her surprise and embarra.s.sment, giving the visitor a rather warmer welcome than she intended,--"I am so glad you come, and Pa'll be awful glad to see you. I was jest a tellin' Mr. Lindsay as you come in I wished somebody'd come to keep _him_ company, too. Sunday is sech a long day when a body can't git out to church. Lemme take your coat and hat, Mr. Brock, and you set down in this rocker and warm your feet."

Mr. Brock sat, the unexpectedly cordial reception filling his heart with so much of satisfaction that the glow above the punishing neck linen rivaled the crimson in his nose, which particular spot Mr. Lindsay mentally stigmatized a "grog-blossom." On this occasion, the color of the "grog-blossom" was deeper than usual, owing to the fact that the owner of the nose was suffering from a cold which necessitated the frequent display and desecration of a beautiful hemst.i.tched China silk handkerchief.