Miss Pitt blushed and smiled and said that she was glad to meet him. She looked like a spirit of the woods, on a day when red buds and white blossoms are mingled; she was not handsome, but striking, fresh, and with an early morning brightness in her eyes; she was an untrained athlete of the farm, ready to put a back-log into the yawning fire-place or to choke a greedy calf off from its mother. She had no manners and was shy; and, without knowing how to play with a man's affection, was coy. Lyman looked into her eyes and thought of the bluish pink of the turnip. She blushed again and said: "I reckon we'd have rain if it was cloudy, but it ain't. Where's pa?" And then looking round she called: "Come on, pap."
"Comin'," the old man replied, walking with a limp in his Sunday shoes. He did not wait for an introduction to Lyman, but shook hands with him, glanced upward and said: "Mighty bright day."
"Just as fresh as if this were the first one," Lyman replied.
"Well, sir, I hadn't thought of that, but I reckon you're right." His daughter reached over and brushed a measuring-worm off his shoulder. "Going to get a new coat," she said. "Worm measuring you."
"Put him on me," said Lyman, looking about as if searching for the worm.
"Get away," Warren broke in, shoving him to one side. "I want him. Well, let him go. How far do you live from here, Mr. Pitt?"
"Well, a leetle the rise of three mile and a half, at this time of the year, but when the weather is bad, the road stretches powerful. My wife wanted to come today to hear the new preacher, but along come some folks visitin' from over the creek, with a passul of haungry children, and she had to stay and git 'em a bite to eat. Her doctrine is that it's better to feed the haungry than to eat, even if the table is served by a new preacher. Well," he added, as a hymn arose within the church, "they've struck up the tune of sorrow in there and I reckon we'd better go in."
Warren walked with Nancy. "What, we ain't going in the same door?" she said as they approached.
"Yes," he replied, "and I'm going to sit with you during the sermon."
"No," she said, drawing back. "That won't do. I have heard that in town the women and the men sit together in church, but they don't out here, and if I did I'd never hear the last of it."