Part 58

"Why, what's the matter now?"

"Claude come along t'other day grinnin' from ear to ear, and some currant pie in his musstache. He had jest fixed it up with Nina. He jest as much as said he was after the old man's acres."

"Well, let him have 'em. I don't know as it interests me," replied 'Cindy, waving her head like a banner. "If he wants to sell himself to that greasy Dutchwoman--why, let him, that's all! I don't care."

Her heated manner betrayed her to Mrs. Smith, who laughed with huge enjoyment.

"Well, you better watch out!"

The next day was very warm, and when Claude drove up under the shade of the big maples he was ready for a chat while his horses rested, but 'Cindy was nowhere to be seen. Mrs. Kennedy came out to get the amount of the skimming, and started to reënter the house without talk.

"Where's the young folks?" asked Claude, carelessly.

"If you mean Lucindy, she's in the house."

"Ain't sick or nothin', is she?"

"Not that anybody knows of. Don't expect her to be here to gass with you every time, do ye?"

"Well, I wouldn't mind," replied Claude. He was too keen not to see his chance. "In fact, I'd like to have her with me all the time, Mrs. Kennedy," he said, with engaging frankness.

"Well, you can't have her," the mother replied ungraciously.

"What's the matter with me?"

"Oh, I like you well enough, but 'Cindy'd be a big fool to marry a man without a roof to cover his head."

"That's where you take your inning, sure," Claude replied. "I'm not much better than a hired hand. Well, now, see here, I'm going to make a strike one of these days, and then--look out for me! You don't know but what I've invested in a gold mine. I may be a Dutch lord in disguise. Better not be brash."

Mrs. Kennedy's sourness could not stand against such sweetness and drollery. She smiled in wry fashion. "You'd better be moving, or you'll be late."

"Sure enough. If I only had you for a mother-in-law--that's why I'm so poor. Nobody to keep me moving. If I had some one to do the talking for me, I'd work." He grinned broadly and drove out.

His irritation led him to say some things to Nina which he would not have thought of saying the day before. She had been working in the field, and had dropped her hoe to see him.

"Say, Nina, I wouldn't work outdoors such a day as this if I was you. I'd tell the old man to go to thunder, and I'd go in and wash up and look decent. Yankee women don't do that kind of work, and your old dad's rich; no use of your sweatin' around a corn-field with a hoe in your hands. I don't like to see a woman goin' round without stockin's, and her hands all chapped and calloused. It ain't accordin' to Hoyle. No, sir! I wouldn't stand it. I'd serve an injunction on the old man right now."

A dull, slow flush crept into the girl's face and she put one hand over the other as they rested on the fence. One looked so much less monstrous than two.

Claude went on, "Yes, sir! I'd brace up and go to Yankee meeting instead of Dutch; you'd pick up a Yankee beau like as not."

He gathered his cream while she stood silently by, and when he looked at her again she was in deep thought.

"Good-day," he said cheerily.

"Good-by," she replied, and her face flushed again.

It rained that night and the roads were very bad, and he was late the next time he arrived at Haldeman's. Nina came out in her best dress, but he said nothing about it, supposing she was going to town or something like that, and he hurried through with his task and had mounted his seat before he realized that anything was wrong.

Then Mrs. Haldeman appeared at the kitchen door and hurled a lot of unintelligible German at him. He knew she was mad, and mad at him, and also at Nina, for she shook her fist at them alternately.

Singular to tell, Nina paid no attention to her mother's sputter. She looked at Claude with a certain timid audacity.

"How you like me to-day?"