"You can't fool me, Miss Lucy," Mr. Lindsay's forehead knotted itself in a frown. "I hain't blind and I hain't deef, and I can't holp seein' the way she does, and a hearin' her bemean _you_ about me all the time nearly. I don't want to make no disturbance, so I'll jest leave!" In the winter of the year before, an unusually severe winter, Miss Lucy and Miss Nancy, without help (they could get none in the time of tobacco stripping, and their father was not allowed to work by the doctor's orders) had been compelled, with damp skirts, wet by the deep snows, and fingers frosted by the cold, to feed the stock, hauling shocks of fodder from the field. At Mr. Lindsay's words, Miss Lucy's hand went up to her face in the familiar worried gesture, and a look of anxiety widened her eyes. But it was not the thought of the work that brought a hoarse sob to her throat. "O Mr. Lindsay," she begged with dry lips, "don't leave us! We can't do without you. Don't leave us before spreng comes noway!" Mr. Lindsay took her cold hand and held it between his own, hot and feverish. "Ef you feel that away about hit, Miss Lucy," he said soothingly, "I reckon I can make out untel then." Miss Lucy hastily drew away her hand, stooped to wrap the iron that he might not see the flood of joy in her face. The hall with the stairway that led to Mr. Lindsay's room, and the sitting-room also, opened on the back porch. When they had crossed the porch, Miss Lucy paused with one hand on the sitting-room doorknob. "I don't know how we can ever repay you, Mr. Lindsay, for your kindness to us," she murmured, her face shining with something more than sweet gratefulness. Miss Lucy did not know that her eyes held the dangerous gift of personal speech. Because of what he read in the translucent blue eyes, Mr. Lindsay suddenly became very bold. "I could tell you, Miss Lucy,"--mindful of the pair of sharp ears behind the door, he lowered his voice--"I could tell you how you could repay me for the little I've done for you, ef you'd listen to me!" But Miss Lucy had fled, and had closed the door softly behind her. CHAPTER VII RIVALS "Every man in the time of courtship, puts on a behavior like my correspondent's holiday suit!" The month of February was bitterly cold, and a deep snow lay unmelted for three weeks,--a condition of weather that seriously hindered interchange of social calls on the Silver Run creek. The last Sunday morning, however, brought a thaw that made it possible for the socially inclined, comfortably to stir out. After the James' breakfast, Mr. Lindsay, according to his every Sunday's custom between milking times, dressed himself in his best black suit and his shining Sunday shoes, and with the more than a few white threads that were beginning to come in his hair and mustache, decently colored, and a suggestion of perfume about him, came into the sitting-room.