CHAPTER EIGHT.

“Hello, Carlia”, greeted Dorian as he stopped at the yard and stood leaning against the fence.

Carlia was just finishing milking a cow.  As she straightened, with a three-legged stool in one hand and a foaming milk pail in the other, she looked toward Dorian.  “O, is that you?  You scared me.”

“Why?”

“A stranger coming so suddenly.”

The young man laughed.  “Nearly through?” he asked.

“Just one more—­Brindle, the kickey one.”

“Aren’t you afraid of her?”

Carlia laughed scornfully.  The girl had beautiful white teeth.  Her red cheeks were redder than ever.  Her dark hair coiled closely about her shapely head.  And she had grown tall, too, the young man noticed, though she was still plump and round-limbed.

“My buckets are full, and I’ll have to take them to the house before I can finish,” she said.  “You stay here until I come back—­if you want to.”

“I don’t want to—­here, let me carry them.”  He took the pails from her hand, and they went to the house together.

The milk was carried into the kitchen where Mrs. Duke was busy with pots and pans.  Mr. Duke was before the mirror, giving the finishing touches to his hair.  He was dressed for meeting.  As he heard rather than saw his daughter enter, he asked: 

“Carlia, have you swilled the pigs?”

“Not yet,” she replied.

“Well, don’t forget—­and say, you’d better give a little new milk to the calf.  It’s not getting along as well as it should—­and, if you have time before meetin’, throw a little hay to the horses.”

“All right, father, I’ll see to all of it.  As I’m not going to meeting, I’ll have plenty of time.”

“Not goin’?” He turned, hair brush in hand, and saw Dorian.  “Hello, Dorian,” he greeted, “you’re quite a stranger.  You’ll come along to meetin’ with Carlia, I suppose.  We will be late if we don’t hurry.”

“Father, I told you I’m not going.  I—­” she hesitated as if not quite certain of her words—­“I had to chase all over the hills for the cows, and I’m not through milking yet.  Then there are the pigs and the calves and the horses to feed.  But I’ll not keep Dorian.  You had better go with father”—­this to the young man who still stood by the kitchen door.

“Leave the rest of the chores until after meetin’,” suggested the father, somewhat reluctantly, to be sure, but in concession to Dorian’s presence.

“I can’t go to meeting either,” said Dorian.  “I’m not dressed for it, so I’ll keep Carlia company, if you or she have no objections.”

“Well, I’ve no objections, but I don’t like you to miss your meetin’s.”

“We’ll be good,” laughed Dorian.

“But—­”

“Come, father,” the mother prompted, “you know I can’t walk fast in this hot weather.”

Carlia got another pail, and she and Dorian went back to the corral.