"If you see him, Dock," she besought when Dock took his leave, "tell him not to be mad at me for not answerin' his letter: I'd love to answer hit the best in the world, but—Tell him I say maybe I've done somethin' wrong and the Lord's a holdin' happiness back from me because of that sin. And tell him ef they won't let—ef I have to give him up, I'll never fergit him while I live!"
"I 'lowed they'd give out a marryin'," remarked Mr. Doggett, Sunday morning at the breakfast table, when Dock, who found it impossible longer to keep so interesting a a story to himself, had told Miss Lucy's tale of the lost letter. "I hain't heerd Mr. Lindsay say but mighty little about Miss Lucy, sence back in plowin' time, when the old man ordered him to not set foot in the house no more. He's mighty proud and he wuz so insulted, I 'lowed he'd never git over hit. Brock, he's been a lottin' on standin' fust with Miss Lucy, hain't he, old lady? Hit's cur'is how he got a holt o' old man Lindsay's letter, now, hain't hit? Look's like a man'd teck better keer o' a love-letter than to be drappin' hit in the road."
Dunaway, between quick mouthfuls, looked keenly at Mrs. Doggett. The morning was warm, but its heat was not responsible for the red spots that burnt on her usually pale cheeks.
"Hit's strange Mr. Lindsay didn't come in last night," went on Mr. Doggett: "although he wuz like us I reckon—worked so late in the terbaccer yisterday, he was jest too tired to possibly walk hit."
"He'll be along this morning probably; let's go down to the creek to meet him," suggested Dunaway.
When Mr. Lindsay crossed the felled sycamore, that stretched across the creek, which served when the riffle rocks were under water, for a foot-bridge, he found his friends awaiting him.
The smile with which he greeted them vanished, and his eyes hardened as he listened to Dunaway's story of the letter.
"That's the reason," he muttered, "I hain't got no letter from her this week: I've been a lookin' ever' day, and a wonderin' why none never come, and all the time the poor theng's been afeerd to write!"
"Hain't she the feerdest and the tender-heartedest woman you ever seed?" said Mr. Doggett. "Dock said he left her a cryin' t'other night like a child lost from hits mother. And ever sence we've been a livin' here, she's been a cryin', oft and on, over somethin'. Yes, sir! The wonder is how any person can leak all the tears that she does, and be any juice left in her. Accordin' to my calculatin', by this time, she ort to be a lookin', after fifty years o' quiet weepin', and them last few days o' tornader weepin' like one them dried Gypsum mummets Jim says he seed in the Cincinnati amusin'-pen."
"It looks like to me," remarked Dunaway, after a sudden, and to Mr. Doggett, unaccountable burst of laughter, "a person of that age ought to be able to take up for self some."