The latch of the yard gate rattled: Miss Lucy tried to pull away her fingers, but his hand tightened its grip, and his other arm went around her.

"O Nathan," she gasped, frantic with fear, "go away! go away quick! Ef Nancy was to see me out here with _you_--Don't Nathan!"

A moment after, Miss Lucy, blushing furiously, sped through the garden, trying to compose an explanation as to her rumpled hair, the fireless stove, and the unstrung beans, lying wilting on the kitchen table, while a determined man of fifty, with the stride of a boy, and a decidedly youthful glow in his face, hurried toward the home of Jim and Henrietty Doggett.

CHAPTER XV

"WEEP NO MORE, MY LADY"

"G.o.d's in His Heaven, All's right with the world."

The opportunity for speaking to her father alone, for which Miss Lucy watched all Sunday afternoon after Mr. Doggett's departure, did not present itself until after supper. Then, while Miss Nancy remained in the kitchen for her half-hour's cleaning--an occupation in which she would brook no a.s.sistance--Miss Lucy, tremulously resolute, hastened to broach a subject that meant much to her dress-loving soul.

"Pa," she murmured humbly, "you remember you helped Sister Isabindy, and the others to git some nice clothes when they married: now, s'pose I was to take a notion to marry, would you do the same by me?"

The old man frowned impatiently. "I thought I'd made hit plain to you, Lucy Ann," he reminded her, "that ef you wuz to marry, I'd cut you out o' my will!"

"I understood that, Pa," Miss Lucy explained with a look of pleading: "but in case I was to git ready to marry, and would ask you to jest give me a dollar or two to help pay for my dress, you'd say you would, wouldn't you?"

Mr. James looked at her as though he had not heard her aright.

"What'd I say?" he jerked out, after a moment. "I'd say 'I shan't give you nothin'.' Hain't I been a feedin' you longer'n I done any o' the others?"

Miss Lucy thought of the thirty-five years of uncomplaining toil for the household,--her portion since her young womanhood: her heart quivered with the injustice of her father's words, but she bit her trembling lip and went on: "Anyway, Pa, ef I was to marry, I could take old Blackie, couldn't I?"

"Naw, you shouldn't take that cow! I need that cow."

"But she's mine, Pa," persisted Miss Lucy, "and you sold her yearlin'

calf last spring and I--I--never got none of the money."

"That don't make no difference," insisted her father, obstinately, "you shouldn't have her!"

On Monday morning Miss Lucy went to town with the marketing, and came back with a silver gray costume--a dress of soft veiling, a gray silk turban, a pair of dainty laced shoes, and a depleted purse.

Miss Nancy sternly disapproved of her purchases.

"What on earth made you git 'em, Lucy Ann?" she asked. "Hit's awful early to be gittin' a new dress and hat, even ef they was suitable fer winter."

"Mr. Claine was a sellin' out his left over thengs at cost," replied Miss Lucy, "and I thought I could wear 'em a good deal this fall, and then have 'em ready for next spreng."

"What did you git _gray_ fer?" demanded Miss Nancy: "the idy of an old theng like you a wearin' gray!"

An hour afterward, Miss Lucy sat in the sitting-room, hemming towels and talking to her cousin, Simeon Willis, who had brought their mail from the post-office: Mr. James was walking in the pasture field. Presently Miss Nancy came hurriedly into the room.

"What you got your new dress and shoes, and hat, and parasol, and ever'theng laid out on the company-room bed fer, Lucy, like you was ready to start somewheres?" she queried, irritably. "Look's like you'd know enough to put 'em away where they wouldn't ketch dust!"

"I'm a goin' to put 'em away after a while, Nancy," Miss Lucy flushed a little as she met her sister's suspicious eyes: "I jest laid 'em out to see how they looked. Any news, Simeon?" she asked to turn the subject.

"Nothin' much," replied Mr. Willis: "I saw Lindsay in town. He's a goin'

to raise a crop of tobacco next year for Archie Evans. Told me this mornin' he wuz a goin' to move his thengs there tomorrow in Archie's house the carpenter's have jest got done--a mighty fancy little house it is for a tenant house, too--and keep bachelor's hall, ef he couldn't do no better. He was buyin' a cook-stove and a bed-stid and some cheers and thengs today."

Mr. Willis was not prepared for the result of this innocently imparted information.

Without comment, Miss Lucy quitted the room, and picking up her egg basket, scurried off to the hens' nest at the barn. Miss Nancy sat recklessly back on the bed whose smoothness had hitherto never been disturbed in the daytime, and throwing her ap.r.o.n over her head, burst into pa.s.sionate weeping. Mr. Willis gaped.

"What on earth is the matter with you, Nancy?"

Miss Nancy dropped the ap.r.o.n from her face and groaned dismally.

"I don't want to live--ef he--ef he--"

"Ef he, what?" demanded her cousin, impatiently.

"Marries!" screamed Miss Nancy. "Ef Lucy and him marries--I'm--I'm--a--a goin' to take poison!"

Mr. Willis looked at her in astonishment. "Aw shucks, Nancy," he remarked, putting on his hat, "jest save your pizen for the rats. Lucy hain't a goin' to marry, and ef she wuz married, what worse off'd you be, I'd like to know? Unless," he added, under his breath, "unless you wanted her man yourse'f."

When Miss Lucy, ignorant of her sister's outburst, came back to count her eggs into the brown-painted sugar-trough gourd in the sitting-room closet, she expected Miss Nancy to say something about Mr. Lindsay, but to her relief, a grumpy silence prevailed the rest of the afternoon.

"I reckon I won't have nothin' else to worry me between now and bedtime," thought Miss Lucy. But her congratulations were premature.

After supper, at the sound of a troubled outcry, Miss Nancy looked up to see Miss Lucy standing in the doorway, shaking nervously, her face whiter than the kitchen wall.

"Nancy, have you been usin' some lye or somethin'?" She choked out the question with difficulty.

"I doctered a chicken this mornin' while you was gone, with some carbolic acid," answered Miss Nancy, "and I might 'a' left a few dregs in the cup."

"Did you use the broke-handled teacup I wash my teeth in?" Miss Lucy's voice rose to a wail. Miss Nancy reddened uncomfortably.

"I ain't certain but what I did," she acknowledged.

"O Nancy, whatever made you put hit back in the safe fer me to use?"

Miss Nancy hastened to get a cup of warm water and the glycerine bottle, but she did not express much sorrow for the accident.

"There ain't no use in takin' on so, Lucy," she admonished her sister; "looks like them few drops of carbolic mixed with water wouldn't hardly burn your mouth, let alone poisonin' you."

"My mouth ain't burnt to hurt," quavered the tearful victim, "but I'm afraid my lower teeth's ruined: I run the brush over them before I tasted hit!"

Miss Lucy's first thought when the rain roused her from a troubled sleep in the morning, was of her maltreated teeth. She felt of them with one tentative forefinger. Four of them moved before her reluctant pressure.

"Ef hit hadn't 'a' happened jest _now_," she lamented: "but ever'theng goes against me!"

"Nancy," she announced with unwonted determination, after their breakfast, "I'm a goin' to town today, and see ef the dentist can do anytheng for my teeth."

"'Twouldn't be no bad idy," admitted Miss Nancy, whose conscience, for reasons known only to herself, had not been an easy one, for some hours: "but whyn't you wait 'tel the soreness goes out of your mouth? Looks like to me, most any day when 'tain't rainin' would do," she added, not unkindly. Miss Lucy was not gifted at prevarication.