Not for many weeks had Miss Lucy been allowed at the Doggetts. Mr. Lindsay kept his trunk there, and came back occasionally. This Miss Nancy knew, and though she was quite happy in the thought that Mr. Lindsay, in his anger toward her father, had given up Miss Lucy, she reasoned that if Miss Lucy were allowed to go to the Doggetts, it were possible she might sometime see him there, and the spell of his anger might be broken. So Mr. James, instructed by his youngest daughter, had ordered Miss Lucy to keep away from the Doggetts.
"People'll be a talkin' about you, Lucy Ann, ef you go there," they had said, and Miss Lucy meekly accepted their dictum, and staid away.
"I don't know ef there ever was a woman situated like me," she thought to herself, as she ran down the familiar little path, "fifty years old—afraid of her folks—afraid to do like she wants to!"
A sob escaped her, a rebellious sob for the hard fate that rendered her path of love, one so stony.
"Jest look at these here plants, Ann. Ef I do say hit, I've got the purtiest plant beds in the country, and I've seed all the beds around whar they are a raisin' hit this year, and went to some purty night' over the Kentucky River country! Jest let a feller have the weather to sow his seed in February, and he'll shore have early plants!"
Mr. Doggett, who might have posed for a member of the Grallatores family, with his bare feet, and ungainly exposure of muddy red leg, coming into the yard with a great basket of newly pulled tobacco plants, was astonished to see Miss Lucy hurrying to meet him.
"Why, yes, sir, Miss Lucy," he acquiesced, hastily brushing off a little of the mud plastering from his lengthy stretch of blue overalls: "I'm shorely one the busy ones: got up at three this mornin', and won't git to tech bed 'tel nigh on to ten. Them two days' rain we had has give us a plantin' season right. Thar's enough wet in the ground fer four days, and ef we jest do the work, we'll have a fine set.
"A body has a heap to be thankful fer, now don't they? Me and my hands, we helped Jim a yistiddy and the day afore, and Jim and his hands is holpin' me today, aimin' to git done by termorrer, so's not to have to do no Sunday plantin'."
When Mr. Doggett paused for breath, Miss Lucy, who was listening in a nervous tremor, jerked out her errand. Mr. Doggett's face fell.
"I don't see how I kin jest possible spare the time. I'm a payin' the hands eighteen cents a hour, and I'm all the one thar is to keep 'em in plants and time 'em. But I'll jest go anyhow fer a few minutes. A body ortn't to be selfish, no, sir. I'll jest step over to the field and take these plants to the boys. You jest tell your Pa I'll come right on. Maybe I'll git thar time you do, hit's so nigh from the patch. Jest speak to the old lady thar in the house,—maybe she'll try to hobble up thar with you."