"Mistu Linney is oo lovin' Miss Luty?"
Miss Lucy's agility, considering her years, was something remarkable, when her ears were electrified by this remark from little Katie, who with a pup in the bend of each fat arm, stood gazing in innocent wonder at her friends. Miss Lucy gave a little cry of consternation, but Mr. Lindsay laughed, and placing an overturned box against one of the great center beams of the barn, drew Miss Lucy to this improvised chair, sat down beside her, and took the child and her dogs in his lap.
"When we're married, Lucy," he said gaily, "we'll git Henrietty to let Katie holp us keep house."
"Oh, what will Pa and Nancy say?" moaned Miss Lucy, remembering her tormentors. The happy glow in her face fled, leaving her very pale. At this moment, the loud rumble of an empty farm-wagon, driven rapidly on the road that passed the south end of the barn, ceased abruptly.
"'Tain't what her and him says that matters to me," Mr. Lindsay soothed her: "I reckon you and me are the next theng to old enough to know our own business, ain't we?"
"I know hit," Miss Lucy mourned, "but they worry me so. Ef you don't keer, Mr.—Mr.—"
"I'm Nathan to you, Lucy," Mr. Lindsay corrected her tenderly.
"I jest wanted to say I'd love to keep hit a secret a while any way. 'Twon't be no harm, will hit?"
"Ef you want to, of course hit won't," Mr. Lindsay assured her cheerfully. "I've been thenkin' about hit," he said after a moment, "and I believe ef prices are anyways good this spreng, I'll go into tobacco raisin' ag'in. Jest us two to live, a body might make a little somethin' at hit. Next year I might fill a barn as big as this ef I had no bad luck."
Neither of them had observed the fact that the rumble of the passing wagon had ceased when it reached the barn, nor did they notice the shadow that at this moment fell across the light that came in between two beech planks at the corner of the barn nearest them, made by the pressing of a coarse ear to the fissure. The owner of the ear had caught the sound of voices, and thinking he heard Miss Lucy speak, wished to assure himself of the fact before entering the barn.
"O Miss Luty," little Katie shrilled, "somebody's dot in de shunshine!"
There was a hasty removal of the coarse ear from the timbers, and a lusty cough, and just as the astonished pair of sitters within the barn sprang to their feet, Mr. Brock's stolid face appeared in the doorway.
"Mr. Castle asked me to keep a sharp lookout for night riders about the barns, Miss Lucy," he said, breaking the embarrassed silence. "Mr. Castle's mighty scarey, you know."
Miss Lucy turned white and red, by turns, in an agony of embarrassment, and remained dumb. Mr. Lindsay found his voice.
"I ain't heard of no night riders a bein' out in the daytime, so far," he offered, then added, turning to the door, unmindful of the entreaty in Miss Lucy's eyes, "I guess I'll be goin', Miss Lucy: my work's a waitin' fer me."
"Little Katie—I come out here with her, Mr. Brock, to see the puppies, and Mr. Lindsay he jest happened along, and opened the door fer us."
Ladies do not usually sit on boxes in tobacco barns with their admirers, and Miss Lucy trembled so she could hardly stand, in her attempt to explain her presence in the barn with Mr. Lindsay.
"You're a gittin' cold, Miss Lucy," Mr. Brock took pity on her confusion and evident misery: "s'pose you take Katie on to the house. I'll be gittin' along."
Following her sister's directions, Miss Lucy came home in the dusk. Mr. Lindsay accosted her as she passed through the barn lot where he was milking.
"I hope you didn't thenk hard of me fer leavin' you so sudden this mornin', Miss Lucy": his voice was tenderly apologetic, "but I 'lowed you could explain better what you was a doin' in the barn, ef—ef—I wasn't there."
Miss Lucy smiled into his anxious eyes, a smile of trust and happiness. "I knowed you was a tryin' to do the best you could fer me, and to keep us from bein' talked about," she assured him sweetly, forgetting for once her usual precautionary glance.
Mr. Lindsay set the milk bucket down and came close to her.
"There's somethin' of my mother's, I want you to have," he murmured, looking down at her slender fingers: "I put hit in the little pink vase on the mantel-piece, and when you go to the house, I wish you'd git hit."
Before Miss Lucy could answer, he added abruptly: "I hate to tell you, Lucy, but there's somebody a holdin' the settin'-room door open. Jest tell 'em ef they ask you anytheng that I wuz a askin' you ef old Blackie'd fell off any in her milk. Hit don't look like she has, does hit?" He held the half-filled milk bucket toward her. Miss Lucy shook her head, and walked quickly to the house.
"What on earth was you a talkin' to Mr. Lindsay about?" her sister asked her as she came in.
"About old Blackie," murmured Miss Lucy, obeying her mentor: "Mr. Lindsay asked me ef I thought she was a fallin' off in her milk, and I told him I didn't see that she was."
"I think your tongue needs oilin', ef hit took you all that time to git off them few words," Miss Nancy replied suspiciously.
Miss Lucy did not reply to this taunt, but slipping out into the kitchen, she hastily emptied the grounds from the coffee-pot into the ashbarrel, and pouring several tablespoonfuls of coffee berries in the hopper of the little coffee-mill, she carried it stealthily down into the dairy, where the sound would not reach her sister's ears, and ground the coffee quickly.
"He loves his coffee strong," she whispered to herself, as she poured the freshly ground coffee into the pot, with a look of determination that sat oddly upon her: "and Nancy sha'n't give him weak stuff made out of old grounds, tonight, nohow!"
Miss Nancy took care that Miss Lucy had no more words alone with Mr. Lindsay that evening, but when he took his lamp to retire, he found a little twisted slip of paper on the middle step of the stairway, that he read with satisfaction, and laid carefully in his pocket-book, while Miss Lucy went to sleep with her hand closed on a worn chased ring suspended about her neck with a little silken cord.