Miss Nancy's last words (she never mumbled her speeches, but invariably made them sharp and distinct) had reached him, and given his resolution to speak to Miss Lucy at the earliest opportunity, a sudden impetus, like that given a door that bursts open behind a fierce blast of wind.
The little dairy under the harness-room was out of range of the kitchen windows, and quite out of earshot.
"Let me carry the milk down the milk-house steps fer you, Miss Lucy," he suggested, as Miss Lucy attempted to lift one of the pails from the table: "the wind's a blowin' turrible hard, and might blow you down with them full buckets." But Miss Nancy forestalled him.
"Me and Lucy together can git them two buckets safe in the milk-house, I reckon, Mr. Lindsay. Ain't no use you a doin' ever'thing," she said, with the handle of each tin pail in a tenacious grasp.
"Open the milk-house door, Lucy."
Mr. Lindsay, rebuffed, withdrew to the woodpile, defeated for the time, but with purpose undaunted. Under cover of the stone walls of the dairy, Miss Nancy further browbeat her sister.
"Lucy, hain't you ashamed o' yourse'f a lettin' Lindsay foller you around all the mornin'?"
"He ain't been a follerin' me around, Nancy," faltered Miss Lucy.
"He ain't?" Scorn gave Miss Nancy's voice a hoarse note. "I reckon you're green enough to thenk, too, old Zeke's hind feet don't foller his front ones when he's a walkin': but I ain't! See here, Lucy Ann, this foolishness is got to be stopped. You don't want to have folks a talkin' about you, do you?"
Nothing to the sisters was more dreaded than to be "talked about."