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“I hope you’ll excuse me fer not gettin’ up,” she drawled; “I guess you c’n get a-past me. Idy, come an’ set a rocker fer Mr. Lowe.”

“I’ve got my hands in the dough,” called her daughter hilariously, from the pantry; “Mr. Lowe’ll have to set on his thumb till I get these biscuits in the pan.”

Parker’s head swam. The domestic familiarity of it all filled him with ecstasy. He got himself a chair, and inquired solicitously concerning Mrs. Starkweather’s health.

“Oh, I’m just about the same,” complained his hostess; “not down sick, but gruntin’. Folks that’s up an’ down like I am don’t get nigh as much sympathy as they ‘d ought. I tell Starkweather, well folks like him an’ Idy ain’t fittin’ comp’ny fer an inv’lid.”

“Mr. Starkweather’s lookin’ better ‘n he did,” said Parker, listening rapturously to the thumps of the rolling-pin in the pantry. “I think this climate agrees with ‘im.”

“Oh, he’s well enough,” responded Mrs. Starkweather dejectedly, “if he didn’t make ‘imself so much extry work. Grubbin’ out that vineyard, now! I can’t fer the life o’ me see”–

“Maw!” called Idy warningly, opening the battened door with a jerk–“you maw! look out, now!”

Mrs. Starkweather drooped her mouth, and raised her brows, with a sigh of extreme and most self-sacrificial virtue.

“Oh, of course Idy fires up if anybody says anythin’ ag’in’ ‘er fawther. I guess that’s always the way; them that does least fer their fam’lies always gets the most credit. I think if some folks was thinkin’ more about their dooties an’ less about their queer notions, some other folks wouldn’t be laid up with miseries in their backs.”

Having thus modestly obscured herself and her sufferings behind a plurality of backs, Mrs. Starkweather arose and dragged herself into the house.

“Gi’ me the chicken,” said Idy, slamming her biscuits into the oven, and taking the hunchbacked and apparently shivering fowl from her mother. “I ain’t a-goin’ to have anybody talkin’ about pappy, an’ you know it. If I was a man, I’d get even with that lyin’ Barden, or I’d know the reason why.”

“That’s just what I was sayin’,” returned Mrs. Starkweather, with malicious meekness. “If your fawther was the man he’d ought to be, he wouldn’t be rode over that way by nobody.”

The girl’s face flamed until it seemed that her blonde thatch of hair would take fire.

“Pappy ain’t to blame,” she said angrily; “he can’t help thinkin’ the way he does. There ain’t no call to be mad with pappy; it’s all that miser’ble, lyin’ Barden. It’ll be a cold day fer him when I ketch ‘im.”

Parker gazed at her admiringly. She had laid the chicken on a corner of the table, and was vigorously cutting it into pieces, cracking its bones, and slashing into it with an energy that seemed to her lover deliciously bloodthirsty and homicidal.

“Barden’s got back from the East,” he announced. “I see ‘im over t’ Elsmore Saturday, tryin’ to peek over the top of his high collar. You’d ought to seen ‘im; he’s sweet pretty.”

The girl refused to smile, but the blaze in her cheeks subsided a little.

“It’s just as well fer him I didn’t,” she said, whetting her knife on the edge of a stone jar. “He mightn’t be so pretty after I’d got done lookin’ at ‘im.”

Parker laughed resoundingly, and the girl’s face relaxed a little under his appreciative mirth. When her father stepped upon the platform at the kitchen door, she left the frying chicken to hiss and sputter in the skillet, and went to meet him.

“Now, pappy,” she said, taking hold of him with vigorous tenderness, “I’ll bet you’ve been workin’ too hard. Here, let me fill that basin, and when you’ve washed, you come in an’ let Mr. Lowe give ye a pointer on settin’ ’round watchin’ other folks work.” She raised her voice for Parker’s benefit. “He come out here fer his health, an’ he’s gettin’ so fat an’ sassy he has to live by ‘imself.”