"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."