Part 57

He seldom got further, for Lucindy always said (in substance), "Oh, you go 'long."

There need be no mystery in the matter. 'Cindy was the girl for whose delight he wore the green and red. He made no secret of his love, and she made no secret of her scorn. She laughed at his green 'spenders and the "red shoestring" in his shirt; but Claude considered himself very learned in women's ways, by reason of two years' driving the creamery wagon, and he merely winked at Mrs. Kennedy when the girl was looking, and kissed his hand at 'Cindy when her mother was not looking.

He looked forward every afternoon to these little exchanges of wit, and was depressed when for any reason the women folks were away. There were other places pleasanter than the Kennedy farm--some of "the Dutchmen" had fine big brick houses and finer and bigger barns, but their women were mostly homely, and went around bare-footed and bare-legged, with ugly blue dresses hanging frayed and greasy round their lank ribs and big joints.

"Someway their big houses have a look like a stable when you get close to 'em," Claude said to 'Cindy once. "Their women work so much in the field they don't have any time to fix up--the way you do. I don't believe in women workin' in the fields." He said this looking 'Cindy in the face. "My wife needn't set her foot outdoors 'less she's a mind to."

"Oh, you can talk," replied the girl, scornfully, "but you'd be like the rest of 'em." But she was glad that she had on a clean collar and apron--if it was ironing-day.

What Claude would have said further 'Cindy could not divine, for her mother called her away, as she generally did when she saw her daughter lingering too long with the creamery man. Claude was not considered a suitable match for Lucindy Kennedy, whose father owned one of the finest farms in the Coolly. Worldly considerations hold in Molasses Gap as well as in Bluff Siding and Tyre.

But Claude gave little heed to these moods in Mrs. Kennedy. If 'Cindy sputtered, he laughed; and if she smiled, he rode on whistling till he came to old man Haldeman's, who owned the whole lower half of Molasses Gap, and had one ummarried daughter, who thought Claude one of the handsomest men in the world. She was always at the gate to greet him as he drove up, and forced sections of cake and pieces of gooseberry pie upon him each day.

"She's good enough--for a Dutchman," Claude said of her, "but I hate to see a woman go around looking as if her clothes would drop off if it rained on her. And on Sundays, when she dresses up, she looks like a boy rigged out in some girl's cast-off duds."

This was pretty hard on Nina. She was tall and lank and sandy, with small blue eyes, her limbs were heavy, and she did wear her Sunday clothes badly, but she was a good, generous soul, and very much in love with the creamery man. She was not very clean, but then she could not help that; the dust of the field is no respecter of sex. No, she was not lovely, but she was the only daughter of old Ernest Haldeman, and the old man was not very strong.

Claude was the daily bulletin of the Gap. He knew whose cow died the night before, who was at the strawberry dance, and all about Abe Anderson's night in jail up at the Siding. If his coming was welcome to the Kennedy's, who took the Bluff Siding Gimlet and the county paper, how much the more cordial ought his greeting to be at Haldeman's, where they only took the Milwaukee Weekly Freiheit.

Nina in her poor way had longings and aspirations. She wanted to marry "a Yankee," and not one of her own kind. She had a little schooling obtained at the small brick shed under the towering cottonwood tree at the corner of her father's farm; but her life had been one of hard work and mighty little play. Her parents spoke in German about the farm, and could speak English only very brokenly. Her only brother had adventured into the foreign parts of Pine County, and had been killed in a sawmill. Her life was lonely and hard.

She had suitors among the Germans, plenty of them, but she had a disgust of them--considered as possible husbands--and though she went to their beery dances occasionally, she had always in her mind the ease, lightness, and color of Claude. She knew that the Yankee girls did not work in the fields,--even the Norwegian girls seldom did so now, they worked out in town,--but she had been brought up to hoe and pull weeds from her childhood, and her father and mother considered it good for her, and being a gentle and obedient child, she still continued to do as she was told. Claude pitied the girl, and used to talk with her, during his short stay, in his cheeriest manner.

"Hello, Nina! How you vass, ain't it? How much cream already you got this morning? Did you hear the news, not?"

"No, vot hass happened?"

"Everything. Frank McVey's horse stepped through the bridge and broke his leg, and he's going to sue the county--mean Frank is, not the horse."

"Iss dot so?"

"Sure! and Bill Hetner had a fight, and Julia Doorflinger's got home."

"Vot wass Bill fightding apoudt?"

"Oh, drunk--fighting for exercise. Hain't got a fresh pie cut?"

Her face lighted up, and she turned so suddenly to go that her bare leg showed below her dress. Her unstockinged feet were thrust into coarse working shoes. Claude wrinkled his nose in disgust, but he took the piece of green currant pie on the palm of his hand and bit the acute angle from it.

"First rate. You do make lickin' good pies," he said, out of pure kindness of heart; and Nina was radiant.

"She wouldn't be so bad-lookin' if they didn't work her in the fields like a horse," he said to himself as he drove away.

The neighbors were well aware of Nina's devotion, and Mrs. Smith, who lived two or three houses down the road, said, "Good-evening, Claude. Seen Nina to-day?"

"Sure! and she gave me a piece of currant pie--her own make."

"Did you eat it?"

"Did I? I guess yes. I ain't refusin' pie from Nina--not while her pa has five hundred acres of the best land in Molasses Gap."

Now, it was this innocent joking on his part that started all Claude's trouble. Mrs. Smith called a couple of days later, and had her joke with 'Cindy.

"'Cindy, your cake's all dough."