"Hit's hard to git a boy to stay," interrupted Mr. James, smiling affably at the minister, "but I shan't let the girls do the work by theirselves no way this winter. I've got the promise o' a mighty good man."

"Who've you got, Pa,--Mr. Lindsay?" hazarded Miss Nancy as she economically extinguished the small lamp she had just brought in from the kitchen, and slightly lowered the flame of the large one on the mantel.

"Yes, Lindsay," a.s.sented her father. A little pleased gasp escaped Miss Lucy, but no one noticed it but little Mrs. Avery, sitting next her.

"Lindsay, he come by here this mornin' a goin' to my nephew, Simeon Willises, and stopped a few minutes. He's lookin' mighty puny: said he hain't felt well all this fall, not sence he got p'izened with Paris green in Archie Evans' terbaccer last August. Archie, he would have him to spray fer him, wantin' a man o' jedgement to do hit. Lindsay's been plumb laid up fer about two weeks, he said. I told him he ort to 'a'

come here and staid while he wuz laid up, but he's been a stayin' at Doggett's.

"He said he didn't allow to do no regular work this winter, and I put at him to come and stay with us ontel spreng and holp the girls out. I told him ef he'd jest come and stay, I'd give him his board, and his washin'

shouldn't cost him nary cent, and he agreed to breng his trunk and come day after termorrer--Sat.u.r.day.

"Lindsay's a mighty fine man--raised down hyonder whar I wuz, in Wayne, though I never knowed him ontel he come to Simeon's to work. He used to keep store down thar ontel he got burnt out, and sence then he's been a croppin' in terbaccer part the time, and part the time travellin' around fer his health, helpin' folks with their farm work and terbaccer when he feels like hit."

"He's a mighty nice man," volunteered Miss Nancy: "Cousin Becky said when he was workin' there, her stovewood box was always full, and when she wanted to clean hit, she had to empty hit. They ain't many men that'll do that!"

Miss Lucy said nothing, and the lights were too low for the warm color in her face to tell any tales.

"Hit's a wonder, too," went on Miss Nancy, "he'd be so nice, bein' a tobacco man: most them tobacco people are awful rough: they don't seem to care for church goin' ner nothin' that way, and all their idy of pleasure is c.r.a.p shootin', and drinkin', and dancin' at them all-night parties they have around among theirselves durin' the winter."

"Mr. Lindsay ain't no regular tobacco man, Nancy; he jest learned how to raise hit when he was stayin' in Fayette," corrected Miss Lucy. "And besides," she remonstrated, flushing at her own temerity, "I don't think you ought to blame the tobacco folks so much; they don't have much chance to learn refinement and genteel ways, but they ain't all rough.

Mr. Doggett's folks are as polite as anybody. And as fer goin' to church, I reckon ef me and you was to work in the tobacco all day ever'

Sat.u.r.day, we wouldn't feel much like dressin' up on Sunday. Some of 'em ain't got suitable clothes to wear to church neither, and sometimes they have to work on Sunday, too."

"It's hard for any one of us to put himself in a brother's place,"

remarked the minister gently. Miss Nancy said no more, and Mr. James resumed his theme.

"Lindsay hain't no trouble to wait on nuther: he's jest as tidy as a womern," he remarked, "and that's one reason I got him to come. I want to spar' the girls all I can."

"You are right, Brother James," commended the bride, dimpling seductively, "they're so good to you! You are surely to be congratulated for having two such good daughters to care for you."

"Thar hain't no danger o' me a losin' 'em, nuther." Mr. James' tone was confident. "I've allus been mighty good to 'em, and I've paid 'em fer teckin' keer o' me!"

Miss Lucy looked up from the sock she was knitting,--one of a dozen pairs she had knit to pay for her winter hat.

"Why, Pa," she protested mildly, "I've never saw any of the money you ever give anybody for takin' care of you!"

"Money fer takin' keer o' me?" cried the old man in a tone of surprise: "I've been a feedin' you I reckon, and a feedin' you a mighty long time too!"

When the minister and his wife were safely upstairs in their room, her clear, low laugh filled the little apartment.

"I don't mean to be disrespectful," she cried out softly, "but Glen, I'm worried about the pay those two women received for their trouble in getting up that delicious supper!"

"The pay?" The Reverend Avery's puzzled face sent his helpmeet off in another gurgle of laughter.

"Their food, Stupid," she railed softly, "what a high estimate our brother must put on his '_feed_!'"

"That isn't what's troubling me," responded the young man in mock trepidation: "I'm worried lest when we are in a house of our own, I shan't be able to come up to Miss Nancy's wood-box standard!"

Miss Lucy crept cautiously to her bedroom on the ground floor, lighted only by the moon. In the kitchen Miss Nancy took down the papers she had hung the day before on the wall nails on which to hang her skillets and pans, and replaced them with fresh papers, and laid the morning's sticks in the stove by the light of the only lamp she would permit to be lighted beside the one in the guest-chamber. Miss Lucy pressed her face against the window and looked serenely out in the moonlit yard.

"Them two are so happy together," she said to herself as a sound of laughter came to her ears, "I wish--"

A shade of regret saddened her face for an instant.

"But a body has always got somethin' to be glad over," she mused: "there's havin' _them_, such pleasant company, here tonight, and Pa and Nancy so agreeable, and--and Mr. Lindsay a comin' to stay with us a Sat.u.r.day."

The sudden warmth that came into her heart brought a faint heat to her cheeks. She remembered something Mr. Lindsay had said to her when he sat beside her in her buggy on the way to Callie Brock's burial, in the last month of the summer. On that occasion, he had no way to go and some one had pointed out to him a vacant seat in Miss Lucy's buggy.

It was something about the loneliness of a man with no home ties, and the look that accompanied the words was responsible, though Miss Lucy did not realize it herself, for the various soft-hued and pretty "remnants" she had bought and made into waists for everyday wear for herself,--waists Miss Nancy supposed were long since sold to the negroes in Plumville, to whose trade Miss Lucy catered. In reality they were locked in Miss Lucy's trunk, away from chance of Miss Nancy's revilement of their colors and rebukement of her for extravagance. Miss Nancy herself wore prints, patched, and faded to a nondescript brown, for everyday.

Miss Lucy went to the end window of her room and looked wistfully out on the coal-shed with its meager pile.

"I wish," she said to herself, "considerin' we ain't got no wood hardly on the place, Nancy and Pa'd agreed to get a little more coal, so's we could have bigger fires when we are all a settin' around when the work's done up, and could set up later of nights."

CHAPTER III

AT THE STRIPPING-HOUSE

"It is easy to tell the toiler How best he can carry his pack: But no one can rate a burden's weight Until it has been on his back."

It was the last of January and every snow-laden twig in the little thicket that fringed the brook back of the Castle barn that stood across the road in front of the James dwelling, shimmered like an oriental woman's tiara in the brilliant sunshine that suggested a not far distant thaw. The thaw was not today however; the icy air nipped the fingers and sent a trail of vapor after little Dock Doggett, carrying sticks of tobacco from the south end of the barn to the stripping-house twenty yards away.

But the stripping-house stove was a dull red, and the atmosphere of the room was eminently satisfactory to the strippers standing by the high platform that ran the length of the house under the eight window sashes ranged in a long single row. Four of Mr. Doggett's sons,--Jim, the second married son, j.a.ppy, Joe and Dock, who lived at home, and Bunch Trisler, a short, trim, and amiable little man of thirty worked at the stripping, while Gran'dad Doggett sat, an interested spectator, on a box beside the stove.

"I declare," Trisler remarked wearily, about two o'clock in the afternoon, "my feet is plumb blistered a standin' so long!"

"He wants a stool,--a cushion' stool like one them store counter stools, Pap," grinned Dock facetiously.

"We are sorry not to be able to accommodate you, Bunch," averred Mr.

Doggett, smiling, and his long hand dexterously lifted some leaves Trisler had wrongly graded to their proper places on the platform along the opposite side of the room where the stripped and tied "hands" were placed: "but we jest possible couldn't. Thar hain't no room ner place fer seats in a strippin'-house. Though ef you'd pay a leetle more 'tention to your fengers, so's not to git a green leaf in ever hand, maybe hit'd draw your 'tention offen your feet. A man can't hardly study about two thengs at the same time right handy, and we don't want people a sayin' 'Bunch, he don't _strip_, he jest takes the terbaccer offen the stalks!'"

"How you thenk terbaccer prices'll be this time, Mr. Doggett?" queried he of the sore feet after the laugh that went around had ended in a t.i.tter from Dock.

"Better'n they're been, I am in hopes," answered Mr. Doggett: "Mr.

Castle, he says sometimes, 'Less hold our terbaccer a while, Doggett,'

but hit looks like I'm jest bound to sell ever'time as soon as I git done strippin', bein' in debt. A feller has to buy his flour and groceries, and clothes, and most his meat on the credit, and ef I don't pay up my store debt onct a year, the store-keeper, he can't credit me.

He has to live, too. And then, after ever'theng's counted in, I don't have nary dollar left ahead. Hit's 'howdy money,--good-bye money,' with me, when I sell my terbaccer, Bunch. The old lady blames me fer stickin'

to hit, but I don't know nothin' else but terbaccer. Been at hit so long, I wouldn't know how to quit croppin'."

"Prices don't come in a hundred miles o' the hard work that hit takes to raise terbaccer," observed Bunch: "them buyers--"

"Them buyin' companies does mighty curis and onreasonable," interrupted Mr. Doggett. "Fer a long time now, they've been a sendin' out a agent er two to each County, er givin' one man all the ground, say on one side the pike, fer his territory, and orders not to go on t'other man's ground. Ef your barn happens to be on the t'other side from him, hit's the hardest matter in the world to git him to come anigh hit. A many a time, Mr. Castle, he's had to go out on the pike, and bag, and persuade a buyer to come and jest _look_ at the terbaccer. Sometimes he wouldn't come neither, and a body'd jest have to buy hogsheads, and prize and ship hit, and then maybe, after he'd went to the extry expense o' paying fer prizin' and shippin' and ware-house charges after he got hit shipped, he would git less'n somebody else got right here at home.

"And some them buyers don't keer what they say to a body neither. Last spreng wuz a year, when that thar man, Garred, wuz goin' 'round, he acted as independent as a couple o' hounds settin' by a dead hoss, yes, sir!