“Even so,” said Natalie, severely, “I’m surprised at you.”  Then she laughed.

Church seemed very long that day, but at last they were out in the sunshine again and Gip was given her full head.  No sooner had Zeke, the hired man, seized the bit than Natalie sprang from the cart and rushed to the kitchen.  She found mammy going placidly about her business.

“Doan’ yo’ talk to me, chile,” she burst out at sight of Natalie.  “Doan’ yo’ dast talk to me!”

Natalie threw her arms about her.

“You poor mammy,” she murmured.  “Aren’t you hurt?”

“Hurt!” snorted mammy.  “Yo’ mammy mought ‘a’ been killed ef she didn’ carry her cushions along wif ’er pu’sson.”

CHAPTER XLIII

Six miles away from Aunt Jed’s, on the top of a hill overlooking the Housatonic Valley, stood the Leighton homestead, a fine old-fashioned house, now unoccupied save for a care-taking farmer and his wife, who farmed the Leighton acres on shares.  The homestead belonged to Lewis’s father, and in the natural course of events was destined to become Lewis’s property.

Great was the excitement at Homestead Farm when a telegram arrived announcing the imminent arrival of owner and son.

“Land sakes!  William,” gasped Mrs. Tuck, “in two days!  You’ll hev to send ’em a telegram tellin’ ’em it can’t be done nohow.  I told you my conscience was a-prickin’ me over the spring cleanin’.  Seems like Providence was a-jostlin’ my elbow all these days, and I was jest too ornery to pay heed.”

“In two days, it says,” repeated William; “and we can’t send no telegram because there ain’t no address.”

Tuck and his wife had no children.  They occupied the kitchen for a living-room and the big bedroom over it at night.  The main part of the house was shut up.  The hired hands occupied rooms in the barn that had once been the quarters of a numerous stable force, for the Leightons had always gone in for horses, as two or three long-standing trotting records at neighboring county fairs gave evidence.

Mrs. Tuck was not long in facing the inevitable.  First of all she commandeered all the labor on the farm; then she sent a call for aid to a couple of neighbors.  Within an hour all the green shutters had swung wide on their creaking hinges, and the window-sashes were up.  Out of the open windows poured some dust and a great deal of commotion.  Before night the big house was spick and span from garret to cellar.

“Does seem to me,” said Mrs. Tuck, as she placed a very scrappy supper before William, “like dust is as human as guinea pigs.  Where you say it can’t get in, it jest breeds.”

“Now you sit down and take it easy, Mrs. Tuck,” said William, who had married late in life and never got on familiar terms with his wife.  “I reckon them men-folks ain’t so took with reddin’ up as you think they be.”