"Weep no More, My Lady"
"God'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 assistance—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 apron over her head, burst into passionate weeping. Mr. Willis gaped.
"What on earth is the matter with you, Nancy?"
Miss Nancy dropped the apron 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.
"I'm—I'm afraid some more of 'em might git loose ef I wait," she explained lamely. "Don't you thenk, Nancy, hit's a lightenin' up some in the east?"
Miss Nancy smiled grimly. "Ef you call a black cloud 'lightenin' up,' hit's a lightenin' up!"
To Miss Lucy's great disappointment, dusk only brought a cessation of the steady down-pour. To go to town in the rain was to invite both illness and Miss Nancy's suspicions, and her care was to avoid these calamities. She remained at home. After another sleepless night, Miss Lucy rejoiced to see Wednesday morning dawn clear, and as soon as her nervous hands could harness the big bay, she started to town.
But early as was Miss Lucy, there was on the road an earlier traveller from the neighborhood of the Silver Run. Before she reached the turnpike she overtook Dunaway, tramping along in the mud. She stopped old Ailsie quickly.
"Mr. Bronston, won't you get in and ride?" she invited him. "There's plenty of room, and I'd be glad of your company."
"Mr. Bronston" accepted her invitation with a smile, but as he climbed gracefully in the buggy, he gave a deprecative wave of his hand: "These everyday clothes of mine, which the mud compelled me to wear,"—he indicated the short jeans pantaloons, and the long needle-pointers—"I am afraid are not suitable to a lady's carriage, Miss James."
Mrs. Doggett, in the rush of cooking for Mr. Doggett's force of tobacco cutters, had not been able to compass laundry work for the space of two weeks: both the bondman's pairs of overalls were in an oppressively dirty condition, and on this, the first day Mr. Doggett had allowed him to go to town, he was compelled to resort to his "Sunday" clothes.
"Has Mr. Doggett got his tobacco all housed?" Miss Lucy inquired of him.
"Every stalk is hanging in the barn, else I could not have gotten off today," he told her in pleasant mendacity. In reality, Mr. Doggett had many days more of cutting, but there was no cutting to be done until the rain had dried off the tobacco, and Dunaway had promised to be back in time for the morrow's work.
Despite Miss Lucy's protestations, when they were about a quarter of a mile from town, Dunaway insisted on alighting from the buggy, that she might not be mortified in the town by having so clumsily garbed a companion. He threw his bulky and evidently hastily-tied bundle over his shoulder, thanked Miss Lucy effusively, and as she drove off tipped his derby with grace. After driving a few hundred yards, Miss Lucy looked back to remark the progress of "Mr. Bronston," but there was no longer any such gentleman on the level stretch of "pike."
It was nine o'clock when she presented herself at the office of Doctor Everett Bell.
"The four lower front teeth will certainly have to come out, Miss James," he told her regretfully. Miss Lucy paled at this confirmation of her fears.
"I thought maybe you could tighten 'em some way for me, so they'd stay in a while," she faltered.
The dentist was young, sympathetic, accommodating and full of resource. "I'll tell you what I'll do, Miss James," he said comfortingly, after a half-moment's thought: "I'll tie them in with thread, so they'll stay in a while, as they are."
"Will they stay in a week?" asked Miss Lucy, hopefully.
"Why, yes, three weeks," the young man assured her: "then come back to me."
A dance would better have suited Miss Lucy's feelings when she left Dr. Bell's office, than the decorous walk to which she held her feet. In her relief and happiness, she lingered an hour in town talking to her acquaintances in the dry goods stores, and when, on getting into her buggy, she was accosted by a black-veiled Sister of Charity, soliciting aid for the Italian families suffering from an epidemic of typhoid fever, in a mountain railroad town, her last twenty-five cents went into the woman's black glove.
She reached home, jaded but joyous, near one o'clock. Miss Nancy met her with a lowering brow.
"Now you're back from town at last, Lucy, you can light to and help me a little," she informed Miss Lucy coming in from taking the horse to the barn.
"I'm so tired, Nancy, I 'lowed to rest some this evenin'."
Miss Nancy's face stiffened. "Sunday jest gone, and you a talkin' about restin' a weekday evenin'!" she derided. "Old body, you jest git to work, and rake and clean up them leaves the wind's scattered over the front yard, and when you git done that you jest heat some water and make suds and wash them fall fly specks off the settin'-room winders, and the glass in the door o' the press."
Miss Lucy looked after her sister in dismay. "I'm afraid she's found out somethin'," she said to herself: "anyway she's mad, and ef I don't help her, she'll thenk I'm a restin' up fer somethin'. Ef she had jest only took a cleanin' up spell some other day!"
But there was no help for it. Miss Lucy put her aching feet in a pair of old carpet slippers, and wearily struggled through her allotted tasks.
With an aching back, she milked the cows in the dusk, and after a pretense at eating supper, at six o'clock crept into bed in her room off the sitting-room.
At eight o'clock, she woke with a start of remembrance. Rising hastily, she threw on a wrapper, and peeped cautiously into the sitting-room, where her father slept. The old man breathed deeply. With a velvet touch, she opened the door at the foot of the stairs that led up to Miss Nancy's bedroom, and with a mighty sigh of thankfulness, listened to the slow even breathing which proclaimed that Miss Nancy had been asleep at least an hour.
Miss Nancy never permitted but two lamps to be filled with oil: one of these was in her room, the other on the sitting-room table by Mr. James' bed. Miss Lucy, however, had a private illuminator of her own, a purchase of the morning.
She lighted her candle, and packed her trunk and a large valise with the contents of her bureau drawers. The trunk, she locked; the valise, and a little covered basket she carried noiselessly out to the drive and set by one of the great poplars, carefully covering the basket with an old rug. This done, she mounted the hall stairway to the company bedroom, and began hurriedly to dress herself in the new clothes. She threw off the carpet slippers, and reached under the breadths of the silver gray skirt for her new shoes. They were not there, neither in the bureau drawers, nor the closet,—nowhere in the room. In distressed wonder, she went down stairs, and made a thorough search of her bedroom: but, to her consternation, they were not there, and the second-best shoes she had worn to town, and even her rough "everyday" shoes were gone!
"Nancy must have hid 'em!" thought Miss Lucy, sitting weakly on the side of her bed, "and what will I do?"
Tears sprang to her eyes, but she wiped them away and resuming the carpet slippers, clothed herself in the new dress and hat, extinguished her candle, and sat silent in the darkness by the window, listening eagerly. The room was chilly, but her cheeks burnt with the flush of excitement, and her hands were feverishly warm.
At half-past ten, the end of a long fishing-pole tapped on the window. In answer to this summons, Miss Lucy groped her way downstairs and out into the yard. It was very dark, for there was no moon. A long hand shot out from the darkness and caught her shaking arm, and a hoarsely whispered drawl assured her cheerfully:
"He's a waitin'—a waitin' in a buggy right down at the road, Miss Lucy, and he sent me to fetch you. He wanted to come to the house to git you hisse'f, but he's got a raisin' on his heel a tack made, and I told him hit wuzn't no use to irrigate hit walkin' in them new shoes any more'n was necessary. He's a wearin' patent leathers, and they're powerful drawin' on a sore foot. I told him he ortn't to 'a' got that kind o' shoes, but he 'lowed he wanted to honor you by wearin' what other bridegrooms wears!"
"I've got to git my valise, and basket, Mr. Doggett," whispered Miss Lucy at the gate.
"You jest hang on to my arm, Miss Lucy!" Mr. Doggett gathered up the articles with a sweep of his right arm. "I'll 'tend to them satchels!"
A few hurried steps brought them to the road. A hasty head was poked from the waiting buggy, and a questioning face shone in the light of a lantern.
"Here she is, Mr. Lindsay! Here's your lady!" cried Mr. Doggett, in soft reassurance, setting down his burdens to adjust the buggy's top.
As Mr. Lindsay stepped out, his foot struck the covered basket. The lid flew open: there was a scared spitting, and with a loud "miaouw," the occupant of the basket extricated itself, ran a dozen yards up the road, and climbed wildly upon the stone fence which bordered one side of the highway.
"Well I do say!" Mr. Doggett's eyes widened to their utmost. "I didn't know you had a cat in thar, Miss Lucy! I 'lowed maybe hit wuz a Cubiun parrit!"
"O Nathan," faltered Miss Lucy, apologetically, "hit's the kitty you give me, and I was afraid Nancy might—might kill her, ef I didn't take her with me!"
"All right," Mr. Lindsay smiled cheerfully: "I hain't never heerd o' no cats goin' to a weddin' before to be saved from execution, but ef Uncle Eph and me together can ketch her, she can go!"
He crept cautiously up to the fence, and put out a propitiating hand. Kitty was not to be propitiated, but bounced down, and fled farther up the road, where she paused, a white spot in the darkness.
"Jest git in, Mr. Lindsay," advised Mr. Doggett, "and drive erlong ontel you git most to her, and Miss Lucy can sorter talk to her a leetle, and maybe git her to come to the buggy."
Mr. Doggett's advice proved good. This time, kitty, lured by the call of her mistress, allowed herself to be caught and replaced in her travelling-cage.
"Bein's hit's so muddy, I'll jest walk to the pike," announced Mr. Doggett, when the basket was safely stowed under the seat, "I'm afeerd ef I wuz to git in now, hit might delay us some. Big Money, he hain't lazy, but I have sometimes knowed him to take a notion to bear easy on a cold collar."
"Better let me do the walkin', Uncle Eph," protested Mr. Lindsay: "we don't aim to let you make a plumb dog of yourse'f fer us."
"Now, Mr. Lindsay," expostulated Mr. Doggett, "you hain't a talkin' o' pullin' through the mud on that foot!"
"I fergot my plagued foot."
"Listen to him, Miss Lucy," chuckled Mr. Doggett. "Fergot a ready when he got with you, and all the way up here, he wuz a frettin' over that foot! I told him thar wuzn't nothin' so bad but what hit might be wuss! I knowed a man that had a raisin' come in his jaw the day of his weddin': he couldn't open his mouth, and the weddin' had to be put off!"
"Ain't he good to us, Nathan?" murmured Miss Lucy, from behind the thick barege veil she had tied over the bridal hat to protect it from the night dampness, as Mr. Doggett strode ahead with the lantern.
"Whose buggy did you git?" she asked after a moment.
Mr. Lindsay smiled wickedly in the darkness. "I never got no buggy—Uncle Eph—he got hit. This is Mrs. Doggett's new buggy she got last week with her hogs (Johnny Leeds ordered hit fer her cheap), and hit hain't been rid in before. She tuck some of her butter'n-aig money and bought tarred paper to make a roof over hit, she's so choice of hit."
Miss Lucy gasped. "Hit's a wonder she'd a loaned hit!"
The darkness again hid a grin, a still more wicked one.
"She never loaned hit. Uncle Eph slipped hit out after her office hours—I mean after she was asleep."
Miss Lucy looked uneasy. "Do you thenk hit's right fer us to be a ridin' in hit?"
"Don't give yourse'f no worry about that, my dear," said Mr. Lindsay calmly: "she owes you that much on her account of stealin' your letter out of my Bible Sunday week."
At the juncture of the dirt road with the turnpike, Mr. Doggett cleaned his boots carefully, climbed into the buggy, and shutting himself up like a jackknife, with his knees touching his breast, seated himself on the floor of the vehicle on a small box he drew from under the seat.
"I'm afraid you ain't comfortable, Mr. Doggett," Miss Lucy protested.
"S'pose'n you let me set on the box, Uncle Eph," proposed Mr. Lindsay: "I take up some less room than you."
"Keep your seat, Mr. Lindsay," insisted Mr. Doggett, gathering up the reins: "this buggy top wuzn't built fer a man o' my height, and I do better on the floor whar I can fold myse'f three times."
"Hain't hit a gittin' dark!" murmured Miss Lucy fearfully, as the few stars disappeared in a black cloud: "somebody might run into us on the pike."
"Hit's a comin' up a rain after a leetle," remarked Mr. Doggett: "but don't you git oneasy, Miss Lucy: this here huntin' lantern Mr. Lindsay borryed from Archie Evans, helt in front o' a buggy'll make t'other feller on wheels thenk he's a meetin' a ottermobill', and he'll hug t'other side the road. Now, Big Money, git 'long towards town!"
"Big Money done mighty well over that mud we jest passed," complimented Mr. Lindsay.
Mr. Doggett's face beamed. "Now hain't he turned out well to be a swapped-for plug? I'm a purty good jedge o' hosses, yes, sir! Anybody can fool Lem with any old plug, ef hit's jest fat enough, but I can't be fooled much. Marshall, he said when he seed the false tail they had tied on this un come off jest after I left town the Court day I got him—'Pap,' he said, 'you've got cheated! You'll have to sell that hoss fer a song and seng hit yourse'f!' But old Big Money, he's turned out to be a right peert old nag, yes, sir, a right peert old nag!"
"We wouldn't be puttin' you to all this trouble, Mr. Doggett," regretted Miss Lucy, presently, "ef Brother Avery hadn't moved to Lexington."
"Hit hain't no trouble," protested Mr. Doggett, covertly feeling of one knee to assure himself that it was not paralyzed—"I'm injoyin' hit!"
"Whar are you goin' from Lexington?" he asked when he had, by a gentle wriggle, slightly eased his position.
"We're a talkin' of goin' to visit Mr. Lindsay's nephew: hit's in Owensboro, ain't hit, where he lives?" Miss Lucy turned to Mr. Lindsay.
"Goin' to Owensboro, I reckon," answered the bridegroom, a perceptible touch of sarcasm in his tone, "to see that wife and family some the good people o' this neighborhood has saddled on to me!"
Had there been sufficient light to distinguish facial tints, it would have been observed that a shamed color sat upon Mr. Doggett's countenance.
"Now, Mr. Lindsay," he petitioned the unforgiving gentleman, "don't hold that ag'in the old lady. She don't mean fer truth much over a quarter o' what comes out'n her mouth. Me and her gits along mighty well, though, considerin'. They say a man and his wife orter be one, and fer all people passin' our house sometimes might thenk instid o' me and her bein' one, we wuz half a dozen, we are one, and she's the one."
"Why, Mr. Doggett," exclaimed Miss Lucy, "Mrs. Doggett thenks the world of you!"
"Yes, sir, Miss Lucy, although she hain't as foolish over me as a old lady I used to know over in Bourbon. This old lady wouldn't let her husband out'n her sight, and when their spreng went dry one summer, and they had to go a mile to git water, he used to carry a bucket o' water on hossback on his head, and she'd be a settin' behind him on the hoss. The fust time my old lady saw 'em a doin' that, she says to me, 'Eph Doggett, a body never lives to be too old to learn—look, I've learned that!'"
As the lights of town met the travellers, Miss Lucy, who had for many minutes been trying to muster up courage to tell of her shoeless condition, burst out desperately: "O Nathan, I ain't got on no shoes! Mine got—got misplaced tonight, ever' pair, while I was takin' a nap, and I—I—ain't got on nothin' but a pair of carpet slippers!"
She did not add that they were a home-made pair, fashioned by Miss Nancy out of an ancient and moth-eaten carpet satchel.
"The dry goods stores, I'm afeerd, are all closed now," remarked Mr. Lindsay: "maybe you can sorter hide your feet under your skirts, until we git to Lexington," he added encouragingly.
"I'll tell you what," suggested Mr. Doggett, "I seed some women's shoes in Johnny Leeds' grocery store a leetle while back. Johnny he tole me his boss keeps 'em to give fer prizes when a body's bought thirty dollars wuth. Johnny, he sets up night' aver' night, 'tel twelve, and I'll jest git him to onlock the store and fetch Miss Lucy out a pair o' them!"
"You jest hold the hoss, Mr. Lindsay." Mr. Doggett drew Big Money to a standstill beside the depot platform. "I'll jest clip around to Johnny's and be back inside o' ten minutes!"
It was not until the ten minutes had lengthened themselves to twenty-five, however, and the train was whistling at the first crossing, that Mr. Doggett, his whiskers cutting the air like whips, and his blowing rivalling the incoming engine's, reappeared, to find Mr. Lindsay and Miss James, standing beside the buggy in a high state of nervous tension.
"Johnny," panted Mr. Doggett, "Johnny, he wuz in bed, but I h'isted him, and we tore to the store, and," he thrust a slackly-tied newspaper-wrapped bundle in Miss Lucy's trembling hands,—"here them shoes is, Miss Lucy! You'll have to put 'em on after you git on the cars!"
Miss Lucy clutched the knobby bundle thankfully. "O Mr. Doggett," she cried with shining eyes, "I can't never pay you for what you've done for me!"
"We'll never fergit you in the world, Uncle Eph, fer this night's work fer us," declared Mr. Lindsay fervently, as he wrung Mr. Doggett's hand, "and week after next, ef you'll say the word, I'm a goin' to cut the stovewood, and she's a goin' to cook a big dinner fer you in our house!"
"I'll be thar," promised Mr. Doggett, as Mr. Lindsay, bearing the valise, quickly drew Miss Lucy, holding fast to the handle of the cat's basket, and to the strings of the bundle to the steps of the rear coach. "Ef ever you git in a tight place in your terbaccer, Mr. Lindsay, you know who to send fer. Teck keer yourselves, and good luck go with you ferever and ever!"
Mr. Doggett turned to a tall lady in a black dress and flowing veil, the only other passenger to take the midnight train.
"Can I holp you to git on, Ma'am?" he asked her deferentially. The Sister of Charity for it was she, laid her black-gloved hand in his, as he started down the steps.
"May God be with you, brother," she wished him devoutly, "and prosper you in your life of toil!"
When the train had thundered over ten miles of ties, Miss Lucy, hesitating and blushing, unwrapped the Johnny Leeds shoes.
Mr. Lindsay considerately walked to the water cooler in the opposite end of the coach, and after getting a drink, sat down on the seat behind it, that his intended bride might change her shoes without embarrassment. He found himself facing the Sister of Charity.
"It's beginning to rain. Had you observed it, sir?" the Sister said to him, presently.
"I hain't surprized," he answered her: "the clouds have been comin' up fer a rain fer about two hours. Seems like I've seen you before, ma'am, somewhere: your voice is familiar," he added, looking at her quickly and sharply.
The Sister deliberately winked at him. An amused light of recognition came into his eyes: she saw it and bent toward him, whispering: "When the mouse slips out of the trap, you're never the man to set the cat on his trail, are you, Mr. Lindsay?"
"Not I," Mr. Lindsay whispered back, a precaution which seemed wholly unnecessary, since Miss Lucy, at the far end of the car, was busy over her shoes, and the other two passengers, weary long-distance travellers, their soft hats shading their faces, slept heavily. "I hain't blamin' you fer wantin' to git away from the terbaccer patch jest now!"
"You'd be less than human, if you did! God, man, what do they raise it for? The world, and myself with it, would quit chewin' tomorrow, if I had to raise its tobacco and mine. Mr. Long-beard assured me this morning, we'd have less than eight more days of it, but one more day in that hell's vestibule would have been my finish, and I preferred ignominious flight to pauper burial!"
"So I see," grinned Mr. Lindsay, with his eyes on the kid buttoned woman's shoe that protruded from the Sister's black skirts: "but where'd you git them church clothes, Dunaway?"
Mr. Dunaway indulged in another wink. "In the closet of an upstairs bedroom not a thousand miles from Chicago," he cited oracularly, "there were wont to hung the black garments of a mother, in mourning for a daughter whose last name was not Block. They no longer hang there!"
Mr. Lindsay's restrained laugh expressed both understanding and enjoyment.
"But the funds—the travelling funds?" he persisted.
Dunaway grinned cheerfully. "I once knew a Sister of Charity, in one day of soliciting aid for a town of fever-stricken dagoes (Italian workmen, I should say), to collect enough, had it been applied to such a purpose, to buy a ticket to Los Angeles."
"When'll the mournin' rig quit hit's travels?" chuckled Mr. Lindsay.
"'I could exscribe him over the tillephorm, and he wouldn't hev no chance a runnin'!'" quoted Dunaway, irrelevantly. "Say, Mr. Lindsay, how far is it from here to Kansas City? The telephone service doesn't claim to be good over eight hundred miles, I believe."
"No, hit don't," Mr. Lindsay answered him, "although hit won't be necessary to go as a lady more'n a tenth that fur. But you hain't a goin' to throw them cothes away, are you? I've got a right to hold a grudge agi'n her, ef anybody has, but I hain't a holdin' hit fur enough to want to see her lose her wearin' thengs. The poor theng has to work so hard for what few she has, and never sees a cent o' the terbaccer money fer clothes. What's ag'in expressin' 'em back to her, onct you git on male togs, Sister?"
"Nothing!" Dunaway assured him. "How much are you willing to contribute toward the good cause (of express charges), my brother?"
Mr. Lindsay laid fifty cents in the palm of Mrs. Doggett's black glove. "Be shore you send 'em, Dunaway," he whispered: "I've got to go back to her; she'll be a wonderin'."
A flicker of uneasiness passed over Dunaway's face, and the ghost of an expression of shame came into his eyes. "You'll not tell her," he petitioned: "I'm a true Catholic Sister to her! She gave me a quarter this morning, besides—"
"Do you thenk I haven't got any gratitude in me, Dunaway, after all you've done fer us, that I couldn't do a turn fer you?" rebuked Mr. Lindsay. "I give you my word, she'll never know from me!"
"Who was that lady in mournin' you was a talkin' to, Nathan?" inquired Miss Lucy, when Mr. Lindsay had resumed his seat beside her: "she makes me thenk of a Sister of Charity I saw on the street today."
"Hit's the same person," answered Mr. Lindsay: "he—she was a tellin' me about them sick Italians, she'd been a collectin' fer."
"I wisht you'd 'a' give her a little money, Nathan, ef you'd thought of hit, to help those poor folks."
"I give her fifty cents: hit certainly was fer a good cause," responded Mr. Lindsay.
"Ain't hit pleasin' to our Maker to be livin' sech a saintly life?" whispered Miss Lucy, a little wistfully: "a body don't never have to deceive ner nothin'. I believe, ef I hadn't seen you, Nathan, I'd love to have been a nun or somethin'. They're always so good."
"I am glad you ain't one, Lucy," murmured Mr. Lindsay, letting the arm he had extended along the back of the seat, drop gently down in a more comfortable position: "you're good enough for me!"
When Mr. Doggett ceased staring after the outgoing train, the rain was falling on him and dampening the splendors of the sow-and-pig purchased buggy: there lay before him the long homeward drive, and the dreary prospect of working until dawn, that the buggy might be washed clean, and mounted on its pedestal once more, before the awakening of the "old lady." But nothing could mar his serenity of mind, nor take the sunshine of rejoicing for his friends' happiness out of his heart.
"Mr Lindsay's sore heel'll pester him some when he goes to step out fer the saremony," he mused, as he drove through the silent streets. "Miss Lucy's teeth won't stay tied in but a week er so: Johnny Leeds' prize shoes is sorter slazy and ill-fittin': the old man'll ondoubtedly cut her out of his will, and, although I'm mighty hoped up about terbaccer prices a goin' up reasonable, a body can't tell. But a body can't have ever'theng like they want hit in this world, and they've got a heap to be thankful fer, anyhow!"