Full of wrathful suspicion, she locked her smoke-house in the daytime, kept an eye on the milk at the spring, and sent Lily Pearl running to the nests at every hen's cackle.
Dunaway, during his ten days' stay in the Doggett household, had become an intimate of Dock: the "hands," including Gran'dad and Joey, liked him, like Desdemona the Moor, because of the tales he told, and his glib pleasantries: even Mr. Doggett, despite the trouble to which he was put to get his bondman to work any, fell under his charm.
Not so Mrs. Doggett. After the between-meal pilfering of her provisions, although she did not openly accuse Dunaway, her dislike and distrust of him were glaringly apparent, and although he was unfailingly polite and respectful to her, and adroitly concealed his enmity, he heartily returned her dislike.
Little Dock Doggett would have pressed through fire or an iron wall, had there been an apple or a plum on the other side the flames or the metal: he knew the whereabouts of every wild haw, (red or black), pawpaw, or persimmon tree, or wild grape vine, in the neighborhood, and nobody's fruit orchard or melon patch was immune from his visits.
When the Castles moved to town, leaving Mr. Brock to occupy a portion of their country residence, and in full and absolute control of their strawberry beds, grape-arbors, and fruit-orchards, invasion of these fruiteries was no longer easy.
Dock had never liked Mr. Brock, and when his inner part began to cry for fruit whose acquisition Mr. Brock's presence prevented, his hatred of that gentleman became violent.
Mr. Brock prided himself on an annual patch of fine melons, and at the time of the coming of Dunaway, his melons were approaching maturity. There was no other melon patch in the neighborhood, and for days, Dock's dreams at night had been of nothing else.
"I know whar thar's ripe mush and water millerns," he confided to Dunaway, the next morning after Mrs. Doggett's securing of her provisions against thieves. "A body has to go at night to git 'em though, 'cause they're right next to a terbaccer patch whar the man is workin' ever'day." Dock was an arrant coward at night.
"If it's a partner you want," Dunaway grinned, "I'm your man!"
Dock agreed that this was the desire of his heart, and a compact was made for the evening.