“I can’t,” she called back.  Didn’t he have the nerve!

“Why can’t you?” the skeptical question came from halfway up the stairs.  “I saw you on the side-porch, just as I came up.”

Nelly cast about for an excuse.  Of course you had to have some reason for saying you couldn’t see a neighbor who came in.  She had an inspiration.  “I’m washing my hair,” she called back, taking out the hair-pins hastily, as she spoke.  The great coils came tumbling down on her shoulders.  She soused them in the water pitcher, and went to the door, opening it a crack, tipping her head forward so that the water streamed on the floor.  “Can’t you ask Mother Powers for whatever it is?” she said impatiently.  She wished as she spoke that she could ever speak right out sharp and scratchy the way other people did.  She was too easy, that was the trouble.

“Well,” said Frank, astonished, “you be, for a fact.”

He went back down the stairs, and Nelly shut the door.  She was hot all over with impatience about that butter.  When it wasn’t one thing to keep her from her work, it was another.  Her hair all wet now.  And such a job to dry it!

She heard voices in the kitchen, and the screen-door open.  Thank goodness, Frank was going away!  Oh my!  Maybe he was going to the village!  He could bring some of the pink mercerized cotton on his way back.  He might as well be of some use in the world.  She thrust her head out of the window.  “Frank, Frank, wait a minute!” she called.  She ran back to her work-basket, cut a length from a spool of thread, wound it around a bit of paper, and went again to the window.  “Say, Frank, get me two spools of cotton to match that, will you, at Warner and Hardy’s.”

He rode his horse past the big pine, under her window, and stood up in the stirrups, looking up boldly at her, her hair in thick wet curls about her face.  “I’d do anything for you!” he said jokingly, catching at the paper she threw down to him.

She slammed the window down hard.  How provoking he was!  But anyhow she would have enough thread to feather-stitch that hem.  She’d got that much out of him.  The thought made up to her for some of the annoyance of the morning.  She put a towel around her shoulders under her wet hair, and waited till he was actually out of sight around the bend of the road.  It seemed to her that she saw something stir in the long grass in the meadow there.  Could the woodchucks be getting so close to the house as that?  She’d have to tie Towser up by her lettuce, nights, if they were.

Gracious, there it was thundering, off behind the Rocks!  She’d have to hustle, if she got the butter done before the storm came.  When Frank had really disappeared, she ran downstairs, and rushed out to her churn.  She felt of it anxiously, her face clearing to note that it seemed no warmer than when she had left it.  Maybe it was all right still.  She began to plunge the dasher up and down.  Well, it had gone back some, she could tell by the feel, but not so much, she guessed, but what she could make it come all right.