A dull, slow flush crept into the girl's face and she put one hand over the other as they rested on the fence. One looked so much less monstrous than two.
Claude went on, "Yes, sir! I'd brace up and go to Yankee meeting instead of Dutch; you'd pick up a Yankee beau like as not."
He gathered his cream while she stood silently by, and when he looked at her again she was in deep thought.
"Good-day," he said cheerily.
"Good-by," she replied, and her face flushed again.
It rained that night and the roads were very bad, and he was late the next time he arrived at Haldeman's. Nina came out in her best dress, but he said nothing about it, supposing she was going to town or something like that, and he hurried through with his task and had mounted his seat before he realized that anything was wrong.
Then Mrs. Haldeman appeared at the kitchen door and hurled a lot of unintelligible German at him. He knew she was mad, and mad at him, and also at Nina, for she shook her fist at them alternately.
Singular to tell, Nina paid no attention to her mother's sputter. She looked at Claude with a certain timid audacity.
"How you like me to-day?"
"That's better," he said, as he eyed her critically. "Now you're talkin'! I'd do a little reading of the newspaper myself, if I was you. A woman's business ain't to work out in the hot sun—it's to cook and fix up things round the house, and then put on her clean dress and set in the shade and read or sew on something. Stand up to 'em! doggone me if I'd paddle round that hot corn-field with a mess o' Dutchmen—it ain't decent!"