"What's the matter, Lyd?" asked Kent.

"I don't know," she panted. "I—I guess I'm tired."

"Tired already! Gosh! And you've always worn me out. Come on up to the shore, and I'll make a fire, so's you can rest."

Lydia, who always had scorned the thought of rest, while at play, followed meekly and stood in silence while Kent without removing his skates hobbled up the bank and pulled some dead branches to the shore. Shortly he had a bright blaze at her feet. He kicked the snow off a small log.

"Sit down—here where you get the warmth," he ordered, his voice as gruff as he could make it.

Lydia sat down obediently, her mittened hands clasping her knees. Kent stood staring at his little chum. He took in the faded blue Tam, the outgrown coat, the red mittens, so badly mended, the leggings with patches on the knees. Then he eyed the heavy circles around her eyes and the droop to the mouth that was meant to be merry.

"I'm sorriest for Lydia," his mother had said that morning. "No mother could feel much worse than she does, and she's got no one to turn to for comfort. I know Amos. He'll shut up like a clam. Just as soon as they're out of quarantine, I'll go out there."

Kent was only a boy, but he was mature in spite of his heedless ways. Staring at the tragedy in Lydia's ravished little face, a sympathy for her pain as real as it was unwonted swept over him. Suddenly he dropped down beside her on the log and threw his boyish arms about her.

"I'm so doggone sorry for you, Lydia!" he whispered.

Lydia lifted startled eyes to his. Never before had Kent shown her the slightest affection. When she saw the sweetness and sympathy in his brown gaze,

"Oh, Kent," she whispered, "why did God let it happen! Why did He?" and she buried her face on his shoulder and began to sob. Softly at first, then with a racking agony of tears.

Even a child is wise in the matter of grief. Kent's lips trembled, but he made no attempt to comfort Lydia. He only held her tightly and watched the fire with bright, unseeing eyes. And after what seemed a long, long time, the sobs grew less. Finally, he slipped a pocket handkerchief into Lydia's hand. It was gray with use but of a comforting size.

"Wipe your eyes, old lady," he said in a cheerful, matter of fact tone. "I've got to put the fire out, so's we can start home."

Lydia mopped her face and by the time Kent had the fire smothered with snow, she was standing, sad-eyed but calm except for dry sobs. Kent picked up one of the sticks he had brought for the fire.

"Catch hold," he said, "I'll pull you home."

Old Lizzie was watching for them and when they came stamping into the dining-room, they found a pitcher of steaming cocoa and a plate of bread and butter with hot gingerbread awaiting them.

"See if you can get her to eat, Kent," said Lizzie.

"Sure, she'll eat," Kent answered her. "Gimme back my hanky, Lyd!"

Lizzie gave a keen look at Lydia's tear-stained face and turned abruptly into the kitchen. She came back in a moment to find Lydia silently eating what Kent had set before her.

Kent ate hugely and talked without cessation. About what, Lydia did not know, for the sleep that had been long denied her was claiming her. She did not know that she almost buried her head in her second cup of cocoa, nor that Kent helped carry her to the couch behind the living-room base burner.

"Is she sick? Shall I get the doctor?" he whispered as old Lizzie tucked a shawl over her.

"Sick! No! No! She's just dead for sleep. She's neither cried nor eat nor had a decent hour of sleep since it happened. And now, thanks to you, she's done all three. You are a good boy, Kent Moulton."

Kent looked suddenly foolish and embarrassed. "Aw—that's nothing," he muttered. "Where's my coat? Maybe I'll come out again to-morrow, if I ain't got anything better to do."

All the rest of the winter afternoon, Lydia slept. The sun dipped low beyond the white hills, filling the living-room with scarlet for one breathless moment, before a blanket of twilight hid all save the red eyes of the base burner. Amos came home at seven and he and Lizzie ate supper in silence except for the old lady's story of Kent's visit.

"Poor young one," muttered Amos, looking slowly toward the quiet blond head on the faded brown cushion. "I'm glad she's a child and 'll forget it soon."

Lizzie gave Amos a curious glance. "You don't know Lydia, Amos," she said.

He did not seem to hear her. He moved his chair toward the stove, put his feet on the fender, lighted his pipe and then sat without moving until a stamping of feet and a hearty rap on the door roused him. Lizzie let John Levine in.

"Where's Lydia?" was Levine's first Question.

Lizzie pointed to the couch, where, undisturbed, Lydia slept on.

"Good!" said John. He drew his chair up beside Amos' and the two fell into low-voiced conversation.

It must have been nine o'clock when Lydia opened her eyes to hear Amos say fretfully,

"I tell you, I went to him to-day as I'll go to no man again. I begged him to renew the note, but he insisted his duty to the bank wouldn't let him. I told him it would put you in a terrible fix, that you'd gone on the note when you couldn't afford it. He grinned a devil's grin then and said, 'Amos, I know you've got nothing to lose in this. If you had, for the sake of your children—I mean Lydia, I'd hold off. But Levine can fix it up!'"

"So I could, ordinarily," said Levine in a troubled voice. "But it just happens that everything I've got on earth is shoe-stringed out to hang onto that pine section of mine up in Bear county. I'm mortgaged up to my eyebrows. Marshall knows it and sees a chance to get hold of the pines, damn him!"

Lydia sat up and rubbed her eyes.

"Well! Well! young Lydia," cried Levine. "Had a fine sleep, didn't you!"

"I'm awful hungry," said the child.

"Bless your soul," exclaimed Lizzie. "I'll warm your supper up for you in a minute."

Lydia stood with hands outstretched to the base burner, her hair tumbled, her glance traveling from Amos to Levine.

"What makes Mr. Marshall act so?" she asked.

"Sho," said Levine, "little girls your age don't know anything about such things, do they, Amos? Come here. You shall eat your supper on my lap."

"I'm getting too old for laps," said Lydia, coming very willingly nevertheless within the compass of John's long arms. "But I love you next to Daddy now, in all the world."

John swept her to his knees and put his cheek against hers for a moment, while tears gleamed in his black eyes.

"Eat your supper and go to bed, Lydia," said Amos.

"Don't be so cross, Amos," protested Levine.

"God knows I'm not cross—to Lydia of all people in the world," sighed Amos, "but she worries over money matters just the way her mother did and I want to finish talking this over with you."

"There's nothing more to talk about," Levine's voice was short. "Let him call in the loan, the fat hog!"

Lydia slept the long night through. She awoke refreshed and renewed. After first adjusting herself to the awful sense of loss, which is the worst of waking in grief, the recollection of the conversation she had heard the night before returned with sickening vividness. After she had wiped the breakfast dishes for Lizzie she stood for a long time at the living-room window with Florence Dombey in her arms staring at the lake. Finally, she tucked the doll up comfortably on the couch and announced to Lizzie that she was going skating.

An hour later, Dave Marshall heard his clerk protesting outside his door and a childish voice saying, "But please, just for a minute. He likes me. He truly does."

Then the door opened and Lydia, breathless and rosy and threadbare, came into his little private office. She closed the door and stood with her back against it, unsmiling.

"I'm in quarantine," she said, "so I won't come near you."

"Why, Lydia!" exclaimed Marshall, "where did you come from!"

"Home. Mr. Marshall, won't you fix Daddy's note if he gives you me?"

"Huh!" ejaculated Marshall.

"You said last fall," the child went on, her voice quavering but her eyes resolute, "that if Daddy ever wanted to sell me, you'd buy me. I think I ought to be worth a thousand dollars. I can do so much work around the house and help you train Margery! I can work hard. You ask John Levine."

Marshall's fat face was purple and then pale.

"Does your father know you're here, Lydia?" he asked.

She clasped her mittened hands in sudden agitation.

"Nobody knows but you," she exclaimed. "Oh! you mustn't tell the man out there my name. I'm in quarantine and I'd be arrested, if the health office knew!"

"I won't tell," said Dave, gently. "Come over here by me, Lydia. Margery is away on a visit so I'm not afraid for her."

Lydia crossed the room. Marshall took the skates from her shoulders and unfastened her coat.

"Sit down on that chair and let's talk this over. You know what a note is, do you, Lydia?"

"It's money you owe," she said, her blue eyes anxiously fixed on Marshall's face.

He nodded. "Yes. When your mother was sick, your father asked my bank here to lend him a thousand dollars for two years. Now, your father is very poor. He doesn't own anything that's worth a thousand dollars and I knew he could never pay it back. So I told him he must get some one to promise to pay that money for him if he couldn't, at the end of the two years. Understand?"

Lydia nodded.

"Well, he got John Levine. Now the two years are up and unless that thousand dollars is paid, the people whose money I take care of in the bank, will each lose some of that thousand. See?"

Lydia stared at him, struggling to take in the explanation. "I see," she said. "But if you'd pay a thousand dollars for me, that would fix it all up."

"Why Lydia, do you mean you would leave your father?"

"I wouldn't want to," she answered earnestly, "but Lizzie could take care of Daddy. He doesn't really need me. There isn't anybody really needs me—needs me—now—"

She swallowed a sob, then went on. "Mr. Levine just mustn't pay it. He's awful worried. His land's fixed so's he'd never get over it. And he's the best friend we have in all the world. He just mustn't pay it. It would kill mother, if she knew. Oh, she hated borrowing so."

Marshall chewed his cigar. "Levine," he growled, "is a long legged crook."

Lydia flew out of her chair and shook her fist in the banker's face. "Don't you dare say that!" she cried. "He's a dear lamb, that's what he is."

Dave's fat jaw dropped. "A dear lamb, eh? Ask him some time what a land shark is—a dear lamb?"

He went on chewing his cigar and Lydia returned to her chair. Whether it was the anxious round eyes, above the scarlet cheeks, whether it was the wistful droop of the childish lips, whether it was the look that belongs to ravished motherhood and seemed grossly wrong on a child's face, whether it was some thought of his own pampered little daughter, whether it was that curious appeal Lydia always made to men, or a combination of all, that moved Marshall, he could not have told. But suddenly he burst forth.

"Good God, I've done hard things in my life, but I can't do this! Lydia, you go home and tell your father I'll renew that note, but he's got to pay the interest and ten per cent. of the principal, every year till he's paid it up. Here, I'll write it down. And tell him that I'm not doing it for him or for that skunk of a Levine, but I'm doing it for you. Here, I'll write that down, too."

He folded the bit of paper and put it in an envelope. "Come here," he said. He pinned the note into the pocket of her blouse. "Understand, Lydia," he said in a low voice, tilting her head up so that he looked down into her eyes, "I'm buying your friendship with this. You go on living with your father and taking care of him, but I'm buying your friendship for me and Margery—for good and all." He looked out of the window with a curious air of abstraction. Then, "Button your coat and run along."

"I haven't thanked you," exclaimed Lydia, "I can't thank you. Oh, but thank you, Mr. Marshall—I—I—" she began to tremble violently.

"Stop!" roared Marshall. "And you tell your father to look out for your nerves. Now skip." And Lydia's trembling stopped and she skipped.

She did not tell Lizzie of her errand and that faithful soul was too glad to see her eat her dinner to think to ask her why she had skated so long. Kent came out in the afternoon and the two fished through the ice until sunset, when they came in with a string of fish sufficiently long to divide and make a meal for the Dudleys and the Moultons. At dusk, Kent departed with his fish and "Men of Iron," loaned by Lydia as a special favor, under his arm.

Old Lizzie cleaned the fish and Lydia fried them, with the daintiness and skill that seemed to have been born in her. She laid an envelope at her father's plate and when he sat down, silent and abstracted, without heeding the fish, she shook her head at Lizzie who was about to protest.

"Where'd this come from?" he asked, absentmindedly opening the envelope. Then, "For God's sake! Lydia—where? how?"

"It was like this," said Lydia. "Set the fish back to warm, while I explain, Lizzie. It was like this—" and she gave a full history of her morning's visit, to her two speechless listeners. "And I ran all the way to the lake and I skated like the wind, and I never told Lizzie a word, though I nearly busted!"

Amos looked from Lydia to Lizzie, from Lizzie to Lydia.

"Lydia—my little daughter—" he faltered.

The tears flew to Lydia's eyes and she spoke hastily, "Lizzie, show him the fish we caught!"

Amos smiled while he shook his head. "I won't forget it, Lydia. In spite of little Patience's going, you've taken ten years off me this night. What do you suppose John Levine will say?"

"He'll say," replied Lydia, taking her serving of fish, "'If you were ten years older, Lydia, and I were ten years younger,' and I'll say—'then we'd travel.'"



CHAPTER V

ADAM

"A thousand deaths have fed my roots—yet to what end?"—The Murmuring Pine.

The days slipped by, as days will, even though they are grief laden. Slowly and inarticulately for the most part, Lydia struggled to adjust herself to her new loss. She went back to school, after the quarantine was lifted and the familiar routine there helped her. She was a good student and was doing well in the eighth grade. During school hours her books absorbed her, and she worried through the evenings reading or sewing, with Florence Dombey always in her lap.

Florence Dombey was a great comfort to the child. She slept at night with her black head beside Lydia's yellow one. Sometimes she slipped into the middle of the bed and fat Lizzie rolled on her and woke with a groan.

"I'd just as soon sleep with a cannon-ball at my back," the good soul told Lydia. But she never uttered a more violent protest.

Lydia never entered the locked bedroom off the kitchen. Amos, self-absorbed and over-worked, asked no questions, but one night in April, John Levine saw Lydia at work on a night dress for Florence Dombey.

"Where does the young lady sleep?" he asked.

Lydia explained and Lizzie uttered her mild plaint, adding, "Lydia ought to be getting back to her own bed, now warm weather will be coming in."

Lydia caught her lower lip in her teeth but said nothing. Levine scrutinized the curly head bent over the sewing, then went on with his conversation with Amos. He was working quietly on his campaign, a year hence, for the office of sheriff and Amos, who was an influential Mason, was planning to use his influence for his friend. Lydia, absorbed in sad little memories over her sewing or happily drugged in some book, heeded these discussions only subconsciously.

Just before leaving, John asked for a drink of water and Amos went to the pump to bring in a fresh pail. He stopped while there to fuss over a barrel in which he had an old hen setting on some eggs he had got from Mrs. Norton. Lizzie had gone to bed early.

"Young Lydia," said John, as soon as they were alone, "come here."

When she was perched in her old place on his knee, "Don't you think it's time for you to get back to your own bedroom with its view of the lake?" he asked.

Lydia looked at him dumbly.

"You don't like to sleep in that stuffy bedroom with Lizzie, do you, dear?"

"No," replied the child. "She's fat and snores and won't have the window open—but—"

"But what?" Levine's voice was gentle.

"I'm afraid to sleep alone."

"Afraid? Lydia—not of any memory of dear little Patience!"

"No! No! but I have nightmares nearly every night—she—she's choking and I—I can't help her. Then I wake up and catch hold of Lizzie. Oh, don't make me sleep alone!"

"Why, my dear little girl—" John caught the child's thin hands in a firm, warm grip. She was trembling violently and her fingers twitched. "This won't do! That's what keeps the dark rings round your eyes, is it? Of course you shan't sleep alone! How does school go?"

"Fine," answered the child. "I hate grammar and diagramming, but the rest is easy."

"And what book are you reading now?"

"I'm starting 'David Copperfield.'"

"Here comes your father. It's bedtime, isn't it? Good night, my dear."

Lydia picked up Florence Dombey and went slowly off to bed as her father came in with a glass of water.

"That fool hen isn't fully convinced she wants a family," he said.

The bedroom door closed after Lydia.

"Amos," said John, "that child's nerves are all shot to pieces." He related his conversation with Lydia.

"What can I do?" asked Amos, with a worried air. "Seems to me she's just got to wear it out. It's awful hard she's had to be up against these things—but, I swan!—"

Levine grunted and put on his hat. "I wish she was my daughter," he said. "If you'll ask Brown to come around to the Elks Club to-morrow, I'll talk to him."

Amos nodded and John mounted his bicycle and rode away. On the Friday afternoon following when Lydia got home from school, she found the house apparently deserted. But there issued from the neighborhood of the kitchen a yipping and ki-yi-ing that would have moved a heart of stone. Lydia ran into the kitchen. The puppy wails came from behind the door of the old bedroom.

"Who's in there!" she called.

The yipping changed to deep barks of joy. Lydia tried the door. It opened easily and a great, blundering puppy hurled himself at her. Lydia was a dog lover.

"You love! You lamb!" she cried. She squatted on the floor and the pup crowded his great hulk into her lap, licking her face and wagging his whole body.

There was a note tied to his collar. Lydia untied it: "Dearest Young Lydia:—Here is a friend who wants to share your bedroom with you. You must bring him up to be a polite, obedient dog, and a credit to your other friend, John Levine."

"Oh!" squealed Lydia. "Oh! but why did they tie you in here!" She looked about the room. The old bed had been moved out and the dining-room couch moved in. The bureau had been shifted to another corner. There was nothing to be seen of all little Patience's belongings. It did not look like the same room.

As she clung to the squirming puppy and stared, Lizzie came in.

"Ain't it nice?" she asked. "Mr. Levine came out with the dog this afternoon and suggested the change. He helped me. We stored all the other things up in the attic. See the old quilt in the corner? That's for the dog to sleep on. Ain't he as big as an elephant! I'm afraid he'll eat as much as a man."

"He can have half of my food," cried Lydia. "Oh, Lizzie, isn't he beautiful!"

"Well, no," replied Lizzie, truthfully. "He looks to me as if some one had stepped on his face. You'd better take him out for a run."

John Levine never did a wiser or a kinder thing than to give the brindle English bulldog to Lydia. He was a puppy of nine months, well bred and strong. Lydia took him into her empty little heart with a completeness that belongs to the natural dog lover and that was enhanced by her bereavement. And he, being of a breed that is as amiable and loyal as it is unlovely to look upon, attached himself unalterably and entirely to Lydia. She and Kent cast about some time before deciding on a name. At first they thought seriously of naming him John, after the donor, but decided that this might lead to confusion. Then they discovered that Levine's middle name was Adam, and Adam the brindle bull became, forthwith.

Lydia made no objection to returning to the old room. It had lost its familiar outlines. And Adam, refusing the quilt on the floor, established himself on the foot of the couch where all night long he snuffled and snored and Lydia, who had objected to Lizzie's audible slumbers, now, waking with nightmares, heard Adam's rumbling with a sigh of relief, pressed her feet for comfort against his warm, throbbing body, and went off to sleep immediately.

In May the garden was planted and in June, Lydia graduated from the eighth grade, and the long summer vacation had begun. Margery Marshall, although Lydia's age, was not a good student and was two grades below her. After the episode of the note, Lydia made a conscientious effort to play with Margery at recess and when vacation began, she called for the banker's daughter regularly every week to go swimming.

Occasionally Elviry would invite her into the house to wait for Margery. At such times Lydia would stare with wondering delight at the marvels of the quartered oak, plush upholstered furniture, the "Body-Brussels" rugs, and the velour portieres that adorned the parlor.

Outwardly this summer was much like the previous one, except that there was a quiet contentment about Amos in spite of his real mourning for his baby daughter, that had been foreign to him for years. It was the garden that did this. Not only was it a wonderful garden to look on and to eat from, but with it Amos paid for milk and butter from the Nortons and for a part of his groceries. This made possible the year's interest and payment on the note.

Lydia sewed for Florence Dombey, climbed trees, swam and played pirates with Kent. But as a matter of fact, the old childish zest for these things had gone. For Lydia's real childhood had left her that December night she had spent under the far corner of her father's bed. She had not prayed since then. Her young faith in the kindness and sweetness of life, badly shaken by her mother's death, had been utterly destroyed when little Patience had been taken from her.

With Adam at her heels, she took to solitary tramping through the neighboring woods where at times she met Indians from the reservation—a buck asleep on a log—a couple of squaws laughing and chatting while they ate food they had begged—an Indian boy, dusty and tired, resting after a trip to Lake City. Lydia was a little afraid of these dark folk, though they always smiled at her. She would jerk at Adam's collar and cuff his ears for growling, then make off toward home.

It was a walk of just a mile from the cottage to the High School. Lydia was very nervous about her first day at High School. Kent was entering at the same time and she would have liked to have asked to go with him but she knew he would resent violently being associated with a girl on so important an occasion.

So it was that one of the teachers observed a child in a faded but clean galatea sailor suit, with curly blond hair barely long enough to tie in her neck, standing in one of the lower halls after the mob of seven or eight hundred boys and girls had been successfully herded into the great Assembly room.

"What is your name, my dear?" asked the teacher.

Lydia silently presented her promotion card. The teacher nodded.

"Come along, Miss Dudley, or you'll miss the principal's speech."

She seated Lydia near her in the Assembly room, then looked her over curiously. The child's face was remarkably intelligent, a high bred little face under a finely domed head. The back of her ears and the back of her neck were dirty, and her thin hands were rough as if with housework. The galatea sailor suit was cheap and coarse.

"A sick mother or no mother," was the teacher's mental note. "I must inquire about her. Almost too bashful to breathe. Precocious mentally, a child physically. I'll look out for her to-day."

Miss Towne had the reputation of an unfeeling disciplinarian among the pupils, but Lydia did not know this. She only knew that by some miracle of kindness she came to understand the classroom system of recitations, that she was introduced to different teachers, that she learned how to decipher the hours of her recitations from the complicated chart on the Assembly room blackboard, and that at noon she started for home with a list of textbooks to be purchased, and a perfectly clear idea of what to do when she returned on the morrow.

The streets were full of children of all ages flocking toward the book stores. Lydia walked along slowly, thinking deeply. She knew that her list of books came to something over five dollars. She knew that this sum of money would floor her father and she knew that she would rather beg on the streets than start Amos on one of his tirades on his poverty.

She pegged along homeward, half elated over the excitement of the day, half depressed over her book problem. When she turned into the dirt road. Billy Norton overtook her. He was wearing a very high starched collar and a new suit of clothes. Billy was a senior and felt his superiority. Nevertheless, he wanted to tell his troubles—even to a first year pupil.

"Gee, don't I have the luck!" he groaned. "I could get on the School football team, I know it, if I didn't have to come home right after school to deliver milk. Hang it!"

Lydia looked at him quickly. "How much milk do you have to deliver?"

"Aw, just a snag. Two quarts up the road to Essers' and two to Stones'. They both got babies and have to have it. Think of putting me off the school team for four quarts of baby milk!"

"Oh, Billy," gasped Lydia, "I'll do it for you—if—Billy, have you got your freshman textbooks still?"

"Sure," answered the boy. "They're awful banged up, but I guess all the pages are there."

Lydia was breathless with excitement. "Billy, if you'll let me have your books, I'll carry the milk for you, all winter."

The big boy looked at the little girl, curiously.

"They're a ratty lot of old books, Lydia. Half the fun of having school books is getting new ones."

"I know that," she answered, flushing.

"Hanged if I'll do it. Let your dad get you new ones."

"He'd like to as well as any one, but he can't right now and I'm going to look out for my own. Oh, Billy, let me do it!"

"You can have 'em all and welcome," exclaimed Billy, with a sudden huskiness in his voice. "Gosh, you're awful little, Lydia."

Lydia stamped her foot. "I won't take anything for nothing. And I'm not little. I'm as strong as a horse."

"Well," conceded Billy, "just till after Thanksgiving is all I want. Come on along home now and we'll fix it up with Ma."

Ma Norton twisted Lydia around and retied her hair ribbon while she listened. They all knew Lydia's pride, so she quenched the impulse to give the child the books and said, "Till Thanksgiving is plenty of pay, Billy, and when the snow comes, the two mile extra walking will be too much. Get the books out of the parlor closet. You got a—a—ink on the back of your neck, Lydia. Wait till I get it off for you."

She wet a corner of a towel at the tea kettle and proceeded to scour the unsuspecting Lydia's neck and ears. "Children in the high school are apt to get ink in the back of their necks and ears," she said. "Always scrub there, Lydia! Remember!"

"Yes, Ma'm! Oh, gosh, what a big pile! Thank you ever so much, Billy. I'll be here right after school to-morrow, Mrs. Norton."

Lydia spent a blissful evening mending and cleaning Billy's textbooks, with Adam snoring under her feet and her father absorbed in his newspaper.

The delivering of the milk was no task at all, though had it not been for Adam trudging beside her with his rolling bulldog gait and his slavering ugly jaw, she would have been afraid in the early dusk of the autumn evenings.

The High School was a different world from that of the old ward school. The ward school, comprising children of only one neighborhood with the grades small, was a democratic, neighborly sort of place. The High School gathered together children from all over town, of all classes, from the children of lumber kings and college professors, to the offspring of the Norwegian day laborer and the German saloon keeper. There were even several colored children in the High School as well as an Indian lad named Charlie Jackson. In the High School, class feeling was strong. There were Greek letter societies in the fourth grade, reflecting the influence of the college on the lake shore. Among the well-to-do girls, and also among those who could less well afford it, there was much elaborate dressing. Dancing parties were weekly occurrences. They were attended by first year girls of fourteen and fifteen as well as by the older girls, each lass with an attendant lad, who called for her and took her home unchaperoned.

It took several months for Lydia to become aware of the complicated social life going on about her. She was so absorbed while in school in adjusting herself to the new type of school life,—a different teacher for each study, heavier lessons, the responsibility of collateral reading—that the Christmas holidays came before she realized that except in her class room work, she had nothing whatever in common with her classmates.

All fall she saw very little of Kent. He was on the freshman football squad and this was a perfectly satisfactory explanation of his dereliction—had he cared to make any—as far as Saturdays went. In the Assembly room because he had chosen the Classical course, his seat was far from Lydia's, who had chosen the English course.

Saturday was a busy day for Lydia at home. Old Lizzie, who was nearing sixty, was much troubled with rheumatism and even careless Lydia felt vaguely that the house needed a certain amount of cleaning once a week. So, of a Saturday morning, she slammed through the house like a small whirlwind, leaving corners undisturbed and dust in windrows, but satisfied with her efforts. Saturday afternoon, she worked in the garden when the day was fair, helping to gather the winter vegetables. Before little Patience's death she had gone to Sunday School, but since that time she had not entered a church. So Sunday became her feast day. She put in the entire morning preparing a Sunday dinner for her father and nearly always John Levine. After dinner, the three, with Adam, would tramp a mile up the road, stopping to lean over the bars and talk dairying with Pa Norton, winter wheat with Farmer Jansen, and hardy alfalfa with old Schmidt. Between farms, Amos and John always talked politics, local and national, arguing heatedly.

To all this, Lydia listened with half an ear. She loved these walks, partly because of the grown up talks, partly because Adam loved them, mostly because of the beauty of the wooded hills, the far stretch of the black fields, ready plowed for spring and the pale, tender blue of the sky that touched the near horizon. If she missed and needed playmates of her own age, she was scarcely conscious of the fact.

Christmas came and went, sadly and quietly. Lydia was glad when the holidays were over and she was back in school again. On her desk that first morning lay a tiny envelope, addressed to her. She opened it. In it was an invitation from Miss Towne to attend a reception she was tendering to the members of her Algebra and Geometry classes, freshmen and seniors.

For a moment Lydia was in heaven. It was her first formal invitation of any kind. Then she came rapidly to earth. She had nothing to wear! It was an evening party and she had no way to go or come. She put the precious card in her blouse pocket and soberly opened her Civil Government.

At recess, she sat alone as she was rather prone to do, in the window of the cloak room, when she heard a group of girls chattering.

"Who wants to go to grouchy old Towne's reception when you can go to a dance? I've got two bids to the Phi Pi's party," said a fourteen-year-old miss.

"Oh, we'll have to go or she'll flunk us in Algebra," said another girl. "I'll wear my pink silk organdy. What'll you wear?"

"My red silk. Maybe she'll let us dance. I suppose Charlie and Kent'll both want to take me."

"Terrible thing to be popular! Hasn't Kent the sweetest eyes! Do you know what he said to me the other night at the Evans' party?"

The girls drifted out of the cloak room. Lydia sat rigid. Pink organdy! Red silk! Kent's "sweetest eyes"! Then she looked down at the inevitable sailor suit, and at her patched and broken shoes. So far she had had few pangs about her clothes. But now for the first time she realized that for some reason, she was an alien, different from the other girls—and the realization made her heart ache.

The bell rang and she went to her recitation. It was in Civil Government. Lydia sat down dejectedly next to Charlie Jackson, the splendid, swarthy Indian boy of sixteen.

"Did you learn the preamble?" he whispered to Lydia.

She nodded.

"He didn't say we had to," Charlie went on, "but I like the sound of it, so I did."

The rest of the class filed in, thirty youngsters of fourteen or fifteen, the boys surreptitiously shoving and kicking each other, the girls giggling and rearranging their hair. Mr. James rapped on his desk, and called on young Hansen.

"Can you give the preamble to the Constitution?" he asked, cheerfully.

The boy's jaw dropped. "You never told us to learn it," he said.

"No, I merely suggested that as Americans, you ought to learn it. I talked to you during most of yesterday's period about it. I wondered if you were old enough to take suggestions and not be driven through your books. Miss Olson?"

Miss Olson, whose hair was done in the latest mode, tossed her head pertly.

"I was too busy to learn anything extra."

Mr. James' eyebrows went up. "A dance last night, I suppose." He continued with his query half way round the class, then paused with a sigh. "Has any one in the class learned it?"

A muscular brown hand shot up, boldly. A thin white one timidly followed.

"Ah!" Mr. James' face brightened. "Miss Dudley, try it."

Lydia clutched the back of the seat before her and began timidly. Then the dignity and somewhat of the significance of the words touched her and her voice became rich and full.

"'We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.'"

"Good. Try it, Mr. Jackson."

The young Indian rose and began. "We, the people of the United States—" He too was letter perfect.

After he was seated, the teacher, a gray-haired, stern-faced man, looked at the two attentively.

"Miss Dudley," he said finally, "does the preamble mean anything to you?"

Lydia's round childish eyes regarded him steadfastly. "Two of my ancestors were delegates to the first Convention," she said hesitatingly. "One of 'em lived in a log farmhouse with loop holes in it. They used to shoot Indians—" she paused and looked at Charlie Jackson, then went on. "I—I like the sound of the words."

The teacher nodded. "And you, Jackson?"

The boy scowled. "I know the words are lies as far as Indians are concerned. And I know they needn't have been if whites weren't natural hogs. Anyhow, I'm the only real American in the class."

Lydia looked up at the brown face eagerly, questioningly. Mr. James nodded. "Quite right, Jackson."

Young Hansen spoke up. "We're all Americans. What's he giving us?"

"Has your father been naturalized, Hansen?" asked the teacher.

The Norwegian boy shook his head, shamefacedly.

"And were you born in this country?"

"I was a baby when they came over."

"Well then, are you an American, or aren't you? You don't really know, do you? And you haven't enough interest in the country you've lived in fourteen years to find out—or to know what was the impulse that gave birth to our laws, the thing that makes an American different from a Norwegian, for instance. The two people in the class who needed the preamble least are the ones that have learned it. I'm disappointed. We'll go on to the lesson. Reisenweber, what is a demesne?"

Lydia sat looking from the teacher's face to Charlie Jackson, and from Charlie to the blond faces of the other pupils. Vague wonderments were stirring in her mind; the beginnings of thoughts she never had had before. Tramping home that night through the snowy road she had a new set of thoughts. What had made her stiffen and at the same time feel sorry and ashamed when Charlie Jackson had said the Preamble was a lie for Indians! And could she, could she possibly in the two weeks before Miss Towne's reception make herself a dress that would be presentable?

Adam, slavering and slobbering, was waiting for her as usual by the front gate. His deep brown eyes always showed phosphorescent glimmers of excitement when Lydia came. He lunged up against her now with howls of delight and she knelt in the snow, as she always did, and hugged him. Then he seized her book strap and lugged her Algebra and English Composition up to the house.

Lizzie was as excited as Lydia when she heard of the invitation.

"There's that gray serge of your mother's," she said. "It's awful faded. And there's a piece of a light blue serge waist she had, Lydia, let's get 'em dyed red. Smitzky's will do it in a couple of days for us. They did lots of work for me in bygone days and I'll pay for it out of the grocery money."

"Do you think we can fix it so it won't look made over?" asked Lydia, torn between hope and doubt.

"Of course we can. You choose your pattern tomorrow and I'll get in to town in the morning with the goods, rheumatiz or no rheumatiz."

Amos heard of the invitation with real pleasure. Nor did the clothes problem trouble him. "Pshaw, wear that green Sunday dress of yours. You always look nice, Lydia; whatever you wear. And I'll take you up there and call for you. If all the boys in school was running after you, I wouldn't let one of 'em beau you round before you was eighteen. So put that kind of a bee out of your bonnet for good and all."

Lydia lived the next two weeks in the clouds. The new-old dress was finished the day before the reception. There had been minutes of despair in creating this festive garment. The dyeing process had developed unsuspected moth holes. The blue and the gray serge did not dye exactly the same shade, nor were they of quite the same texture. However, by twisting and turning and adding a yoke of black silk, which had for years been Lizzie's Sunday neck scarf, a result was produced that completely satisfied the little dressmaker and old Lizzie.

Miss Towne was the only daughter of one of the old New England families of Lake City. Teaching was an avocation with her and not a bread and butter necessity. She lived in one of the fine old stone houses that crowned the lake shore near the college. At eight o'clock on a Saturday evening, Amos left Lydia at the front door of the house, and in a few minutes Lydia was taking off her hat and coat in the midst of a chattering group of girls. The pink organdy was there as well as the red silk,—so were blue organdies and white, as well as dainty slippers.

After a general "Hello," Lydia slipped downstairs to find her hostess. Miss Towne, the grouchy, the strict and the stern Miss Towne, moving among her guests, saw the thin little figure hesitating in the doorway, saw the cobbled red dress, with skirt that was too short and sleeves that were too long and neck that was too tight, saw the carefully blacked school shoes, saw the intelligent high bred head nobly set on straight shoulders and the wonderful dusty gold of the curly hair, and the puzzled, bashful blue eyes.

"Oh, Lydia!" cried the grouchy Miss Towne, "weren't you a dear to come clear into town for my party. Mother—-" this clearly for all the children to hear, "this is the pupil I've told you of, the one of whom we're all so proud. Come over here, Lydia."

Lydia moved carefully. Her most moth eaten breadth was at the back and it was difficult to cross the room without unduly exposing that back. But she reached the safe haven of Miss Towne's side before the bevy of multi-colored organdies entered the room.

Kent was there. He had brought the pink organdy. He waved a gay hand to Lydia, who waved back, gaily too. Her cheeks were beginning to burn scarlet, partly because a real party was a wonderful thing and partly because of the multi-colored organdies. Charlie Jackson was there. He lived with Dr. Fulton as office boy and general helper and the doctor was clothing and educating him. Charlie was half-back of the school football team, a famous player and a great favorite. The girls flirted with him. The boys were jealous of his favor. Even in the snob-ridden High School there was here a hangover of the pure democracy of childhood.

Miss Towne had provided games and refreshments bountifully. The elocution teacher recited some monologues and the music teacher sang. But it was a difficult matter to entertain these youngsters already accustomed to a grown up social life. Miss Towne had declared that there should be no dancing. But the games were neglected and the guests stood about in frankly bored groups. So when a bevy of organdies begged for permission to dance, Miss Towne, with obvious reluctance, gave in.

From that moment, the party was an assured success. Lydia, who had stuck like a little burr at Miss Towne's side all the evening, looked on with wonder and a growing lump in her throat.

"Don't you dance, my dear?" asked Mrs. Towne.

"Of course she doesn't, Mother," answered Miss Towne, "she's just a child. There's time enough for those things after High School. I don't know what's going to become of this generation."

This was small comfort to Lydia, watching the pretty groups twirl by.

Kent, hugging the pink organdy, stopped on the far side of the room from Lydia to get a drink of lemonade.

"Isn't Lydia's dress a scream," said Olga.

"Huh?" asked Kent in surprise. He followed his partner's glance across the room.



CHAPTER VI

THE COOKING CLASS

"We pines have been useful to man and so he has destroyed us."—The Murmuring Pine.

Lydia with parted lips and big, wistful eyes stood quietly beside Miss Towne.

"What you giving us," said Kent. "Red's my favorite color."

"Red's all right," Olga tossed her head, "but that dress! She ought to know better. A five cent cheese cloth would have been better'n that."

Kent was truly enamored of pretty Olga but he looked at her angrily.

"You girls make me sick," he grunted and started dodging among the dancers, across the room to Lydia's side. Olga stood pouting.

"What's the matter?" asked Charlie Jackson.

"Oh, I just said Lydia's dress was a fright and Kent went off mad."

Charlie in turn stared at Lydia.

Kent in the meantime was grinning at Lydia amiably.

"Hello, Lyd! Want to dance?"

"I can't. Don't know how," replied Lydia, despondently.

"Easy as anything. Come on, I'll teach you."

Lydia seized Kent's lapel with fingers that would tremble slightly. "Kent, I dassn't stir. My back breadth don't match and my skirt hangs awful."

"Oh, shucks!" replied Kent, angrily, "you girls are all alike. Red's my favorite color."

"Mine too," said Charlie Jackson at his elbow. "What're you two arguing about?"

"Her dress," growled Kent, "I don't see anything the matter with it, do you?"

"Nope, and it's on the prettiest girl in the room too, eh, Kent?"

"You bet," returned Kent, believing, though, that he lied, for Olga was as pretty as a tea rose.

Lydia blushed and gasped.

"If you won't dance, come on over and have some lemonade," suggested Kent.

"If I sit in the window, will you bring me a glass?" asked Lydia, still mindful of the back breadth.

"You take her to the window and I'll get the lemo, Kent," said Charlie.

Kent led the way to the window-seat. "You're a good old sport, Lyd," he said. "Charlie'll look out for you. I gotta get back to Olga."

he returned to make peace with the pink organdy. She was very lovely and Kent was having his first flirtation. Yet before he went to sleep that night the last picture that floated before his eyes was of a thin little figure with worn mittens clasped over patched knees and a ravished child's face looking into his.

Charlie Jackson sat out two whole dances with Lydia. Their talk was of Adam and of fishing. Lydia longed to talk about Indians with him but didn't dare. Promptly at ten, Amos appeared at the front door.

Lydia's first party was over. Amos and old Lizzie were charmed with Lydia's description of it and were sure she had had a wonderful time. But Lydia felt that the dress had made of the party a hideous failure. She knew now that she was marked among her mates as a poverty stricken little dowd whom popular boys like Kent and Charlie pitied.

And yet because life is as kind to us as we have the intelligence to let it be, it was out of the party that grew slowly a new resolve of Lydia's—to have some day as pretty hands and as well shod feet as Olga and Hilda and Cissy, to learn how to make her dresses so that even the composing of an organdy might not be beyond her.

They saw less of John Levine during the late winter and early spring. He was running for sheriff on the Republican ticket. He was elected early in April by a comfortable majority and invited Amos and Lydia to a fine Sunday dinner in celebration at the best hotel in town. Kent's father in April was promoted from a minor position in the office of the plow factory to the secretaryship of the company. The family immediately moved to a better house over on the lake shore and it seemed to Lydia that Kent moved too, out of her life.

She missed him less than might have been expected. Her life was so different from that of any of the children that she knew, that growing into adolescence with the old bond of play disappearing, she fell back more and more on resources within herself. This did not prevent her going faithfully once a month to call on Margery Marshall. And these visits were rather pleasant than otherwise. Margery was going through the paper doll fever. Lydia always brought Florence Dombey with her and the two girls carried on an elaborate game of make-believe, the intricacies of which were entirely too much for Elviry Marshall, sitting within earshot.

Elviry Marshall had two consuming passions in life—Margery and gossip. The questions she asked always irritated Lydia vaguely.

"What wages is your Pa getting now, Lydia?"

"Just the same, Mrs. Marshall."

"Don't you pay Lizzie anything yet?"

"No, Ma'am."

"How much is your grocery bill this month?"

"I don't know."

"Does your Pa ever talk about getting married again?"

"No, Ma'am! Oh, no, Ma'am!"

Lizzie almost exploded with anger when Lydia retailed these questions, but Amos only laughed.

"Pshaw, you know Elviry!"

"Yes, I know Elviry! She's a snake in the grass. Always was and always will be."

"She's a dandy housekeeper," murmured Lydia. "I wonder where she learned. And she isn't teaching Margery a thing. I like Mr. Marshall."

"Dave's a miser. He always was and he always will be," snapped Lizzie. "I despise the whole kit and biling of them, money or no money. Dave never earned an honest cent in his life."

"Lots of rich men haven't," replied Amos.

Amos' garden was a thing of beauty. Its trim rows of vegetables were bordered with sunflowers, whose yellow heads vied in height with the rustling ears of corn. Amos had a general grudge toward life. He had a vague, unexpressed belief that because he was a descendant of the founders of the country, the world owed him an easy living. He had a general sense of superiority to his foreign born neighbors and to the workmen in the plow factory.

But in his garden, all his grudges disappeared. Every evening until dark and every Sunday he worked away, whistling softly to himself. He always felt nearer to his wife, in the garden. She too had been bred on a New England farm. He always felt as if the fine orderliness of the rows was for her.

Lydia greatly preferred weeding the garden to cleaning the house. Indeed the contrast between the fine garden, the well kept patch of lawn and the disorderly house was startling. Amos grumbled and complained but Lydia was in the hobble-de-hoy stage—she didn't care and she had no one teach her.

One afternoon in August, clad in her bathing suit, now much too small for her, she was working in the garden, when a voice behind her grunted,

"Eat!"

Lydia jumped and turned. The old squaw of two years before stood begging. She was as pitifully thin as ever. As she stared at the ugly old Indian, Lydia's throat tightened. She seemed to feel baby Patience's fingers clinging to hers in fear.

"Want some vegetables?" she asked, motioning toward the garden.

The squaw nodded eagerly and held up the dirty apron she was wearing. Lydia began slowly to fill it, talking as she worked.

"Where do you live?" she asked.

The Indian jerked her gray head toward the north. "Big Woods."'

"But that's twenty miles. It must take you a long time to walk it. Poor thing!"

The squaw shrugged her shoulders. Lydia stared at the toothless, trembling old mouth, hideous with wrinkles, then at the gnarled and shaking old hands.

"Haven't you any one to take care of you?"

"All sick—boy sick—man sick—girl sick. All time sick, all time nothing to eat."

"But won't some other Indian make you a garden, a little one?"

Again the squaw shrugged her shoulders. Her apron was full now. She produced a string from inside her waist and tying the apron up bag-like, she slung it over her shoulder. Then she gave Lydia a keen glance.

"Friend," she said, briefly, and turning, she tottered painfully out of the gate.

Followed by Adam, Lydia walked thoughtfully out upon the little pier Amos had built. They had no boat, but Lydia fished and dived from the pier. It was hard to understand how the Indians with all their rich pine land could be so poor. She resolved to ask her father and Levine about it and turned a somersault into the water. She swam about until tired, then turned over on her back to rest. Lying so a shadow drifted across her face and she raised her head. A gray birch bark canoe floated silently beside her. In it, in a gray bathing suit, sat Charlie Jackson.

"Goodness!" exclaimed Lydia. "How in the world you do it so quietly, I don't see."

"I saw something that looked like a wet yellow pup in the water, and stole up on it," grinned Charlie.

"Come on in. It's as warm as suds."

Charlie shot his canoe to the pier and in a moment, was floating beside Lydia. She took a deep breath, let herself sink and a moment or two later came up several yards beyond him. He did not miss her for a moment, then he started for her with a shout. A game of tag followed ending in a wild race to the pier which they reached neck and neck. Adam wept and slobbered with joy over their return.

"You certainly are a little sunfish in the water," panted Charlie, as they sat with feet dangling off the pier.

"Ought to be, I'm in it enough," returned Lydia. "Charlie, there's a poor old squaw came here to-day. What's the matter with the Indians? Why don't they work?"

Charlie turned to look at the white child, uneasily. The two made a wonderful contrast. Charlie was big and bronze and deep chested, with regular features although they were a little heavy. Lydia, growing fast, was thinner than ever but cheeks and eyes were bright.

Charlie's mouth twisted in a sneer. "Why don't they work? Why don't the whites give 'em a chance? Dirty thieves, prowling round like timber wolves. Ask Dave Marshall. Ask that gumshoeing crook of a Levine. Don't ask me."

"Levine's not a crook," shouted Lydia. "He's my friend."

The sneer left Charlie's face and he laughed. "Your friend is he, little sunfish!"

"Yes," said Lydia, furiously. "He gave me Adam," hugging the dog's ugly, faithful head. He immediately tried to sit in her wet lap. "And he's done as much for me as my own father."

"If he's your friend," said the Indian gently, "I won't speak against him to you again."

Lydia instantly was mollified. Charlie was so old and so young! He was so different from Kent that staring into his deep black eyes, Lydia suddenly felt his alien race.

"I must go in and dress," she said. "It's time to get supper."

Charlie nodded and untied his canoe. After he was seated with paddle lifted, he glanced up at her mischievously.

"You're a very nice little girl," he said; "I shall come again. You may call me Uncle Charlie."

Lydia put out her tongue at him. "Good-by, Uncle!" she called and raced up the bank to the house.

"Daddy," she said that night at supper, "why should Mr. Marshall and Charlie Jackson both say Mr. Levine is a crook?"

Amos ate a piece of bread meditatively before replying. "Any man that goes into politics in this country leaves his reputation behind him. You and I'll never have a better friend than John Levine."

Lydia nodded. She was only a child after all and still retained implicit faith in the opinion of those she loved. She went back to school that fall full of interest and importance. She was a sophomore now and very proud of the fact that she knew the ropes. Her arrangement with Billy held for his second year books. With much pinching of the grocery money, Lizzie had achieved two new galatea sailor suits and so while she felt infinitely inferior to the elaborately gowned young misses of her grade, Lydia was not unhappy.

There was a new course of study offered the pupils this year. It was called the Cookery Course and was elective, not required. Lydia turned her small nose up at it. She was a good cook, without study, she told herself. But Miss Towne thought differently. She called Lydia into her room one day, early in the term. "Lydia, why don't you take the Cooking Course?"

"I can cook, Miss Towne. I do all our cooking and Daddy says I'm fine at it."

"I know, my dear, but there are other things connected with the Course that you need."

"What things?" asked Lydia, a trine obstinately.

"That's what I want you to find out for yourself. Come, Lydia, take my word for it. It's only two hours a week and no outside study required. If after a term of it, you still think it's useless, why drop it."

So behold Lydia entered in the Cooking Course which was not popular. The mothers of the majority of the girls did not, they said, send their daughters to school to be taught kitchen service. But by the efforts of Miss Towne and one or two other teachers, a dozen children ranging in age from fourteen to eighteen, with Lydia as the infant of the class, were enticed into the bright model kitchen in the basement.

It was not long after this that Lydia said to her father, one evening,

"Daddy, I've got to have twenty-five cents."

Amos looked up from his newspaper. "What for, Lydia? A quarter's a good deal of money. Takes me pretty near two hours to earn it."

"I know it," answered Lydia, wincing, "but I've got to buy a nail file. You ought to see my hands compared with the other girls. And you ought to see dirty finger nails under the microscope. The cooking school teacher showed us before we made bread, today."

Amos looked at Lydia thoughtfully for a moment, then he carefully abstracted a quarter from his pocket, laid it on the table and went back to his reading.

Lydia planned a real feast for Thanksgiving. She negotiated with Billy Norton for the exchange of two pounds of fudge for a brace of wild duck. The Saturday before Thanksgiving, she gave the house its usual "lick and promise" and then started out with her skates to enjoy the first ice of the season.

She had a glorious morning. There was no snow and the lake had frozen crystal clear. The air was breathless. As she skated she chanted, to improvised tunes, bits of verse.

"The stag at eve had drunk his fill Where danced the moon on Monan's rill And deep his midnight lair had laid In lone Glenartney's hazel shade.

"I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris and he, I galloped, Dirk galloped, we galloped all three. 'Good speed!' cried the watch as the gate bolts undrew, 'Speed' echoed the wall to us galloping through."

She hunted through Scottish mountains and moors, she whirled from Ghent to Aix and still high hearted and in the land of visions, took off her skates and entered the house. She banged the door, then stood for a moment staring. Elviry and Margery were seated before the living-room stove, while old Lizzie sat on one edge of Amos' arm chair eyeing the two belligerently.

Margery was wearing a new fur coat. Her beautiful black eyes looked out from under a saucy fur-trimmed hat with a scarlet quill on the side. Elviry wore black broadcloth with fox collar and muff. Lydia, in a remodeled coat of her mother's, and her old Tam and mended mittens, recovered from her surprise quickly.

"Hello!" she said. "When did you come? This is the first time you've ever been in our house, Mrs. Marshall, isn't it?"

"Yes," replied Elviry, "and," with a glance at Lizzie, "I wouldn't be here now if Mr. Marshall hadn't made me."

"Oh, Mamma," protested Margery, "I wanted to come."

"You hush up, Margery! What I came for is that Mr. Marshall would like to have the three of you come to our house for Thanksgiving dinner."

Lydia suddenly giggled. "Don't worry, Mrs. Marshall, we can't come. We're going to have company ourselves for Thanksgiving."

Elviry gave a huge sigh of relief. "Well, that's too bad," she said. "We're going to have a grand dinner, too."

"So are we," retorted Lydia.

"How's Florence Dombey?" asked Margery. "Mamma, can't I stay and play with Lydia a while?"

"We'll stay a few minutes," said Elviry, loosing her furs and settling back in her chair. "It's a real small place, Lizzie, but you can do so little work now, I s'pose it's just as well."

Lydia had produced a pasteboard shoe box of paper dolls which she gave to Margery. She cuddled Florence Dombey in her arms and gave one ear to Margery's question as to the names and personalities of the paper dolls, the other to Elviry's comments.

"It ain't so small," sniffed Lizzie. "It's bigger'n anything you ever lived in, Elviry, till Dave sold enough lumber he stole from the Government to start a bank."

Elviry was not to be drawn into a quarrel. "You always was a jealous body, Lizzie. That old mahogany belonged to both Amos and his wife's folks, I've heard. Why don't you get rid of it and buy more of this here new Mission stuff that's coming in? Though I suppose you'd better wait till Lydia's old enough to take more interest in keeping the house clean. Butter's awful high this winter. How much does your grocery bill average, Lizzie?"

"None of your business," replied Lizzie.

"I don't think Imogen is as good looking as Marion. I'd rather have Marion marry Prince Rupert, then these can be their children," Margery murmured on.

"Land, Lizzie, don't be so cross," said Elviry. "I suppose you've heard the talk about John Levine? He's getting in with that half breed crowd up on the reservation that the Indian agent's such friends with. They say Levine's land hungry enough to marry a squaw. He's so dark, I wouldn't be surprised if he had Indian blood himself. Land knows nothing would surprise me about him. They say he's just naturally crooked."

Lydia and Florence Dombey suddenly stood in front of Elviry.

"Don't you say such things about Mr. Levine," said Lydia slowly, cheeks bright, eyes as blue as Florence Dombey's.

"Well!" exclaimed Elviry, beginning to pull her furs up, "I don't seem to be able to please you two with my conversation, so I'll be going. Margery, get up off that dirty floor. I never cared much about Amos' wife, she was too proud, but at least she was clean. She'd turn over in her grave if she knew what this house looked like. Come, Margery, the horse will be cold, standing so long."

Lizzie opened her mouth to speak but Lydia shook her head, and the two stood in silence, watching the departure of the visitors. When the door had closed Lizzie burst forth in an angry tirade, but Lydia only half listened. She looked slowly around the living-room, then walked into the dining-room and thence into the kitchen. She opened the pantry door and stared at the dust and disorder, the remnants of food, the half washed dishes. Suddenly she thought of the shining and orderly kitchen in the High School basement. Supposing the cooking teacher should come out to supper, sometime! Lydia had asked her to come.

She came slowly back into the living-room. Old Lizzie was replenishing the stove, still muttering to herself. Lydia observed for the first time that her apron was dirty. Thinking it over, she could not recall ever having seen Lizzie with a clean apron. A deep sense of shame suddenly enveloped Lydia.

"Oh, I wish some one had taught me," she groaned. "I wish mother had lived. Everybody has to go and die on me! I suppose Lizzie and Dad'll be next. Adam helps to keep the house dirty. There's dog hair everywhere."

"Don't you get worked up over Elviry Marshall, child," said Lizzie.

"I hate her," exclaimed Lydia, "but what she said about the house is true. Anyhow, I've learned how to clean pantry shelves, so here goes."

She tied one of Lizzie's aprons round her neck, pushed a chair into the pantry and began her unsavory task. It was dusk when she finished and led Lizzie out to observe the shiny, sweet smelling orderliness of the place.

"Land, it does make a difference! If the rheumatiz didn't take all the ambition out of me, I'd keep it that way for you," said the old lady.

"I'll do it, every Saturday. Gosh, I'm tired!" groaned Lydia, throwing herself on the living-room couch. "Lizzie, give me some of your mutton tallow to rub on my hands. The cooking teacher says it's fine for hands."

Lydia lay in the twilight, watching the coals glow in the base burner, while the aroma of the baked beans and brown bread Lizzie was tending in the kitchen floated in to her. Adam lay on the floor by the stove, where he could keep one drowsy eye on her every motion. She was thinking of her mother and of little Patience. She could think of them now without beginning to tremble. She tried to picture every detail of her mother's face. They had no picture of her nor of the baby, and Lydia was afraid she would forget. She wondered if they were together, if they knew how hard she was trying to obey her mother's injunction to "make something" of herself. "Be a lady!" "Never be coarse." There was nobody to show her things, she thought. How could she ever learn to be a lady? "If I believed in praying any more, I'd pray about lots of things," she thought, sadly. "But either there isn't any God, or else He don't believe in prayer, Himself. Gee, supper smells good. I'm awful hungry. I wonder why Mrs. Marshall hates me so. I suppose because I'm such a common kid and she still thinks I almost drowned Margery. And I don't believe a word she says about Mr. Levine, either. Hateful old beast! If I believed in prayer, you bet I'd tell God a few things about her."

The highly satisfactory Thanksgiving feast was eaten and praised. The dishes were washed and set away in the immaculate pantry, and Amos and John Levine were smoking by the fire.

"Seems to me this room looks all slicked up," said Levine.

Amos nodded. "Lydia's coming along. Says the cooking school teacher told her to sprinkle wet tea leaves over the carpet before sweeping to keep down the dust. Place was like a cyclone this morning for an hour, but the result pays. She's growing like her mother."

"She's only a child, and small for her age, at that," said John. "It's a shame for her to work so hard."

"I know it," answered Amos, "but what can I do? On a dollar and a half a day—I swan—"

There was a rap on the door. Lizzie admitted Dave Marshall and Margery.

"Out for a tramp as a digester," explained Dave. "Came to call on my friend Lydia. I ain't seen her for ages."

He and Levine nodded to each other. Amos shook hands and Dave kissed Lydia, catching a dark scowl on Levine's face as he did so.

"Let's play paper dolls," said Margery, as soon as she had pulled off her coat.

"You play 'em," replied Lydia, "I'm awful tired."

"Why should a baby like you be tired?" inquired Marshall, pulling her to his side as he seated himself in Amos' arm chair.

"If you'd tasted our dinner," said Amos, "you'd know why she and Lizzie should be half dead."

"I wish I could 'a' tasted it," replied Marshall. "Have a smoke, friends?"

Amos took a cigar but Levine refused.

"Come, John, come," said the stout banker, banteringly. "This is a legal holiday and you and I at least agree on Lydia. Let's stop war for the day, eh?"

Levine's sallow face hardened, then he caught Lydia's blue gaze on him as she stood beside Marshall. It was such a transparent, trusting gaze, so full of affection, so obviously appealing to him to "be nice," that in spite of himself he grinned and took a cigar.

Amos settled back with a sigh of satisfaction. He enjoyed company and had had no one but John since his wife's death.

"Looks as if the country'd go Republican next fall," he said by way of starting a conversation.

"I don't see why," returned Marshall, who was a Democrat.

"Folks are sick of Democratic graft," said Levine.

"And Republicans think it's their turn, eh?" inquired Marshall. "Well, maybe it is, maybe it is!"

Amos laughed genially. "Satisfied with your share, Dave?"

"Got my eye on just one more little mite. Just one little mite, then I'm through," chuckled Marshall.

"Then you good Republicans can get your feet into the trough."

"Co-ee! Lydia!" came a call from the lake shore.

Lydia ran to the kitchen door. Charlie Jackson and Kent were skating up to the bank.

"Come out for a while," cried Kent.

"I can't. I've got company. Come on up and get warm," returned Lydia.

The two boys slipped off their skates and came up to the cottage. Kent needed no introduction, and Lydia made short work of Charlie by saying to the assemblage at large, "This is Charlie Jackson. Come on up by the stove, boys."

The boys established themselves on the couch back of the baseburner.

"Hello, Marg," said Kent. "What you doing?"

"Paper dolls," returned Margery from her corner, without looking up. Charlie Jackson stared at the beautiful little black head bent over the bright colored bits of paper with interest.

Amos took up the interrupted conversation. "If we could get a Republican Congress, that block o' pine and black loam twenty miles north would be given to its rightful owners."

"Meaning the full bloods, I suppose," said Levine with a short laugh.

"Yes—full blooded whites," returned Amos.

Charlie Jackson suddenly threw back his head and rose.

"I'm a full blood Indian," he said, quietly. The three men looked at him as if they saw him for the first time.

"Well, what of it?" asked Marshall, shortly.

"This of it," said Charlie, tensely, "that you whites with your Constitution and your Declaration of Independence are a lot of liars and thieves."

Marshall turned purple, but John Levine spoke quickly. "Easy there, my boy! You're talking of things you don't understand."

"Oh, but he does," interrupted Lydia eagerly. "'Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.' We had it in school. It must mean Indians too."

John Levine laughed. "There you have it. And Charlie is right, we are liars and thieves, but we have to be. Might is right in this world."

"Speak for yourself, Levine," cried Marshall.

"Levine!" exploded Charlie. "Are you Levine? You're the man then that my sister—" his voice rose to a shout. "I'll beat the face off of you right now."

And he made a sudden spring for the astonished Levine.



CHAPTER VII

THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE

"Nature counts no day as wasted."—The Murmuring Pine.

Amos and Kent caught Charlie by either arm as his hands clutched for Levine's throat. Marshall did not stir out of his chair. During the remainder of the episode his face wore a complacent expression that, though Lydia did not consciously observe it at the time, returned to her in after years with peculiar significance.

"Here! Here! This won't do, my young Indian!" cried Amos.

"Let me get at him!" panted Charlie.

Lydia moved away from Lizzie and Margery. The three had automatically jumped to grab Adam's collar for Adam always assisted in a fight, human or otherwise. She ran over to the Indian.

"Charlie," she pleaded, looking up into his face, "you mustn't hurt Mr. Levine. He's my best friend. And it is not polite to come to call at my house and make a row, this way."

"That's right," commented Marshall. "Do your fighting outdoors."

John had not stirred from his chair. He looked up at the Indian and said slowly and insolently, "Get out of here! You know what I can do to you, don't you? Well, get out before I do it!"

Charlie returned John's look of contempt with one of concentrated hatred. Then he turned to Kent.

"Come on, Kent," he growled and followed by his friend, he marched out of the kitchen door.

"Whew!" said Amos, "talk about civilizing Indians!"

Lydia was trembling violently. "What made him act so—— Did you hurt his sister, Mr. Levine?"

"Didn't even know he had a sister," returned John, coolly relighting his cigar.

Marshall rose and stretched his fat body. "Well, you serve up too much excitement for me, Amos. I'll be getting along. Come, Margery."

"Wait and we'll all have some coffee," said Lizzie. "Land, I'm all shook up."

"Pshaw! 'twan't anything. Kent should have had more sense than to bring him in here," said Levine.

"Why, he's usually perfectly lovely," protested Lydia. "Goes to parties with the girls and everything."

"I wouldn't go to a party with a dirty Indian," said Margery, her nose up in the air.

"What do you know about parties, chicken?" asked Marshall, buttoning her coat for her.

"Mama says I can go next year when I enter High School," replied Margery.

"First boy, white or Indian, that comes to call on you before you're eighteen, I'll turn the hose on," said Dave, winking at the men.

Amos and John laughed and Dave made his exit in high good humor.

When the door had closed Amos said, "Any real trouble with the boy, John?"

"Shucks, no!" returned Levine. "Forget it!"

And forget it they did while the November dusk drew to a close and the red eyes of the stove blinked a warmer and warmer glow. About eight o'clock, after a light supper, Levine started back for town. He had not been gone five minutes when a shot cracked through the breathless night air.

Amos started for the door but Lizzie grasped his arm. "You stay right here, Amos, and take care of the house."

"What do you s'pose it was?" whispered Lydia. "I wish Mr. Levine was here. He's sheriff."

"That's what I'm afraid of—that something's happened, to him—between his being sheriff and his other interests. I'll get my lantern."

"Wait! I'll have to fill it for you," said Lydia.

So it was that while Amos fumed and Lydia sought vainly for a new wick, footsteps sounded on the porch, the door opened and Billy Norton and his father supported John Levine into the living-room. Levine's overcoat showed a patch of red on the right breast.

"For God's sake! Here, put him on the couch," gasped Amos.

"Billy, take Levine's bicycle and get the doctor here," said Pa Norton.

"Hot water and clean cloth, Lydia," said Amos. "Let's get his clothes off, Norton."

"Don't touch me except to cut open my clothes and pack the wound with ice in a pad of rags," said John weakly. Then he closed his eyes and did not speak again till the doctor came.

Lydia trembling violently could scarcely carry the crushed ice from Lizzie to her father. No one spoke until the gentle oozing of the blood yielded to the freezing process. Then Amos said in a low voice to Pa Norton,

"What happened?"

"Can't say. Billy and I were coming home from town when we heard the shot ahead of us. It took us a minute or two to come up to Levine. He was standing dazed like, said the shot had come from the lake shore way and that's all he knew about it."

The beat of horses' hoofs on the frozen ground broke the silence that followed. In a moment Dr. Fulton ran into the room. Lydia seized Florence Dombey and hurried to the kitchen, nor did she leave her station in the furthest corner until the door closed softly after the doctor. Amos came out into the kitchen and got a drink at the water pail.

"Doc got the bullet," said Amos. "Grazed the top of the lungs and came to the surface near the backbone. Lord, that was a narrow escape!"

"Will he—will he die?" whispered Lydia.

"Of course not," answered Amos, with a quick glance at the blanched little face. "He's got to have good nursing and he can't be moved. Lizzie's as good a nurse as any one could want. Doctor'll be back at midnight and stay the rest of the night."

"Who did it, Daddy?"

Amos shook his head. "It might have been Charlie Jackson or it might have been a dozen others. A sheriff's liable to have plenty of enemies. Billy started a bunch hunting."

Lydia shivered.

"Go to bed, child," said Amos. "We're going to be busy in this house for a while."

"I want to see him first, please, Daddy."

"Just a peek then, don't make a noise."

Already the living room had a sick room aspect. The light was lowered and the table was littered with bandages and bottles. Lydia crept up to the couch and stood looking down at the gaunt, quiet figure.

John opened his eyes and smiled faintly. "Making you lots of trouble, young Lydia."

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Lydia. "Just get well, we don't mind the trouble."

"I've got to get well, so's you and I can travel," whispered Levine. "Good night, dear."

Lydia swallowed a sob. "Good night," she said.

At first, Amos planned to have Lydia stay out of school to help, but Levine grew so feverishly anxious when he heard of this that the idea was quickly given up and Ma Norton and a neighbor farther up the road arranged to spend the days turn about, helping Lizzie.

As soon as the shooting was known, there was a deluge of offers of help. All the organizations to which Levine belonged as well as his numerous acquaintances were prodigal in their offers of every kind of assistance.

But John fretfully refused. He would have no nurse but Lizzie, share no roof but Amos'. "You're the only folks I got," he told Amos again and again.

The shooting was a seven days' wonder, but no clue was found as to the identity of the would-be assassin. Charlie Jackson had spent the evening with Kent. As the monotony of Levine's convalescence came on, gossip and conjecture lost interest in him. John himself would not speak of the shooting.

It was after Christmas before John was able to sit up in Amos' arm chair and once more take a serious interest in the world about him. Lydia, coming home from school, would find Adam howling with joy at the gate and John, pale and weak but fully dressed, watching for her from his arm chair by the window. The two had many long talks, in the early winter dusk before Lydia started her preparations for supper. One of these particularly, the child never forgot.

"Everybody acted queer about Charlie Jackson, at first," said Lydia, "but now you're getting well, they're all just as crazy about him as ever."

"He'll kill some one in a football scrimmage yet," was John's comment.

"No, the boys say he never loses his temper. The rest of them do. I wish girls played football. I bet I'd make a good quarterback."

John laughed weakly but delightedly. "You must weigh fully a hundred pounds! Why, honey, they'd trample a hundred pounds to death!"

"They would not!" Lydia's voice was indignant. "And just feel my muscles. I get 'em from swimming."

John ran his hand over the proffered shoulders and arm. "My goodness," he said in astonishment. "Those muscles are like tiny steel springs. Well, what else would you like to be besides quarterback, Lydia?"

"When I was a little girl I was crazy to be an African explorer. And I'd still like to be, only I know that's not sensible. Adam, for Pete's sake get off my feet."

Adam gave a slobbery sigh and withdrew a fraction of an inch. Levine watched Lydia in the soft glow of the lamp light. Her hair was still the dusty yellow of babyhood but it was long enough now to hang in soft curls in her neck after she had tied it back with a ribbon. She was still wearing the sailor suits, and her face was still thin and childish for all she was a sophomore.

"I don't suppose you could explore," said Levine, meditatively.

"Oh, I could, if I had the money to outfit with, but I'll tell you what I really would like best of all." Lydia hitched her chair closer to Levine and glanced toward the kitchen where Lizzie was knitting and warming her feet in the oven. "I'd like to own an orphan asylum. And I'd get the money to run it with from a gold mine. I would find a mine in New Mexico. I know I could if I could just get out there."

"Seems to me all your plans need money," suggested John.

"Yes, that's the trouble with them," admitted Lydia, with a sigh. "And I'll always be poor—I'm that kind."

"What are you really going to do with yourself, Lydia, pipe dreams aside?"

"Well, first I'm going to get an education, clear up through the University. 'Get an education if you have to scrub the streets to do it,' was what Mother always said. 'You can be a lady and be poor,' she said, 'but you can't be a lady and use poor English.' And then I'm going to be as good a housekeeper as Mrs. Marshall and I'm going to dress as well as Olga Reinhardt, and have as pretty hands as Miss Towne. And I'm never going to move out of the home I make. Maybe I'll get married. I suppose I'll have to 'cause I want at least six children, and some one's got to support them. And I'll want to travel a good deal."

"Travel takes money," John reminded her.

"Not always. There was The Man Without a Country, but I wouldn't want to have what he had. Seems to me it was a little thing he said after all. Mr. Levine, why did he feel so terrible about the poem?"

"What poem?" asked Levine.

Lydia cleared her throat.

"'Breathes there a man with soul so dead Who never to himself hath said This is my own, my native land?'

—and you know the rest."

John Levine looked at Lydia strangely. There was a moment's pause, then she said, "But I don't understand just what it all means."

"Lots of us don't," commented John, briefly. "But if I had a son I'd beat understanding of it into him with a hickory club."

Lydia's jaw dropped. "But—but wouldn't you beat it into your daughter?"

"What's the use of trying to teach patriotism to anything female?" There was a contemptuous note in Levine's voice that touched Lydia's temper.

"Well, there's plenty of use, I'd have you know!" she cried. "Why, I was more interested in Civil Government last year than any of the boys except Charlie Jackson."

Levine laughed, then said soberly, "All right, Lydia, I'd be glad to see what you can do for your country. When you get that orphan asylum, put over the door, 'Ducit Amor Patriae.'"

Lydia looked at him clearly. "You just wait and see."

She went soberly toward the kitchen for her apron, and Levine looked after her with an expression at once wistful and gentle. Lydia looked up "Ducit Amor Patriae" in a phrase book the next day. She liked the sound of it.

By the middle of January, Levine was sufficiently recovered to leave. The Saturday before he left occurred another conversation between him and Lydia that cemented still further the quaint friendship of the two.

It snowed heavily all day. Lydia had put in the morning as usual cleaning the house. This was a very methodical and thorough process now, and when it was finished the cottage shone with cleanliness. In the afternoon, she dug a path to the gate, played a game of tag in the snow with Adam, then, rosy and tired, established herself in Amos' arm chair with a book. Lizzie was taking a long nap. The dear old soul had been exhausted by the nursing. Levine lay on the couch and finally asked Lydia to read aloud to him. She was deep in "The Old Curiosity Shop" and was glad to share it with her friend.

During the remainder of the afternoon John watched the snowflakes or Lydia's sensitive little red face and listened to the immortal story.

Suddenly he was astonished to hear Lydia's voice tremble. She was reading of little Nell's last sickness. "She was dead. Dear, patient, noble Nell was dead. No sleep so beautiful and calm. She seemed a creature fresh from the hand of God. Not one who had lived and suffered death."

Lydia suddenly broke off, bowed her yellow head on the book and broke into deep, long drawn sobs that were more like a woman's than a child's.

John rose as quickly as he could. "My dearest!" he exclaimed. "What's the matter?" He pulled her from the arm chair, seated himself, then drew her to his knees.

"I can't bear it!" sobbed Lydia. "I can't. Seems sometimes if I couldn't have little Patience again I'd die! That's the way she looked in her coffin, you remember? 'F-fresh from the hand of God—not one who h-had lived and s-suffered death.' O my little, little sister!"

John took "The Old Curiosity Shop" from the trembling fingers and flung it upon the couch. Then he gathered Lydia in his arms and hushed her against his heart.

"Sweetheart! Sweetheart! Why, I didn't realize you still felt so! Think how happy Patience must be up there with God and her mother! You wouldn't wish her back!"

"If I believed that I could stand it—but there isn't any God!"

Levine gasped. "Lydia! Hush now! Stop crying and tell me about it."

He rocked slowly back and forth, patting her back and crooning to her until the sobs stopped.

"There!" he said. "And what makes you think there's no God, dear?"

"If there was a God, He'd answer prayers. Or He'd give some sign." Lydia lifted a tear-stained face from John's shoulder. "He's never paid any attention to me," she said tensely. "I've tried every way to make Him hear. Sometimes in the dusk, I've taken Adam and we've gone deep into the woods and I've sat and thought about Him till—till there was nothing else in the world but my thought of Him. And I never got a sign. And I've floated on my back in the lake looking up into the sky trying to make myself believe He was there—and I couldn't. All I knew was that Mother and Patience were dead and in coffins in the ground."

Levine's sallow face was set with pain. "Why, child, this isn't right. You're too young for such thoughts! Lydia, do you read the Bible?"

She nodded. "I've tried that too—but Jesus might have believed everything He said was true, yet there mightn't have been a word of truth in it. Do you believe in God?"

John's hold on the thin hands tightened. He stared long and thoughtfully at the snowflakes sifting endlessly past the window.

"Lydia," he said, at last. "I'll admit that my faith in the hereafter and in an All-seeing God has been considerably shaken as I've grown older. But I'll admit too, that I've refused to give the matter much thought. I tell you what I'll do. Let's you and I start on our first travel trip, right now! Let's start looking for God, together. He's there all right, my child. But you and I don't seem to be able to use the ordinary paths to get to Him. So we'll hack out our own trail, eh? And you'll tell me what your progress is—and where you get lost—and I'll tell you. It may take us years, but we'll get there, by heck! Eh, young Lydia?"

Lydia looked into the deep black eyes long and earnestly. And as she looked there stole into her heart a sense of companionship, of protection, of complete understanding, that spread like a warm glow over her tense nerves. It was a sense that every child should grow up with, yet that Lydia had not known since her mother's death.

"Oh!" she cried, "I feel happier already. Of course we'll find Him. I'll begin my hunt to-morrow."

John smoothed her tumbled hair gently. "We're great friends, aren't we, Lydia! I've an idea you'll always believe in me no matter what folks say, eh?"

"You bet!" replied Lydia solemnly.

John Levine went back to his duties as sheriff and Lydia and Amos and Lizzie missed him for a long time. But gradually life fell back into the old routine and spring, then summer, were on them almost before they realized winter was gone.

Lydia did well at school, though she still was an isolated little figure among her schoolmates. The cooking teacher added sewing to the course, after Christmas, and Lydia took up "over and over stitch" at the point where her gentle mother had left off five years before. She progressed so famously that by the time school closed she had learned how to use a shirtwaist pattern and how to fit a simple skirt. With her plans for a summer of dress-making she looked with considerable equanimity on the pretty spring wardrobes of her schoolmates.

They saw less than ever of Levine when summer came, for he was beginning his campaign for Congressman. He came out occasionally on Sunday and then he and Lydia would manage a little stroll in the woods or along the lake shore when they would talk over their progress in the Spiritual Traveling they had undertaken in January. Lydia had decided to give the churches a chance and was deliberately attending one Sunday School after another, studying each one with a child's simple sincerity.

One source of relief to Lydia during the summer was that Mrs. Marshall and Margery spent two months in the East. Lydia had faithfully kept in touch with Margery ever since her promise had been given to Dave Marshall. But she did not like the banker's daughter—nor her mother. So again as far as playmates were concerned Lydia spent a solitary summer.

Yet she was not lonely. Never before had the lake seemed so beautiful to her. Sitting on the little pier with Adam while her father worked in his garden, she watched the sunset across the water, night after night. There was nothing that seemed to bring her nearer to a sense of God than this. Night after night the miracle, always the same, always different. The sun slipped down behind the distant hills, the clouds turned purple in the Western hill tops, fading toward the zenith to an orange that turned to azure as she watched. The lake beneath painted the picture again, with an added shimmer, a more mysterious glow. Little fish flashed like flecks of gold from the water, dropping back in a shower of amethyst. Belated dragon flies darted home. And the young girl watching, listening, waiting, felt her spirit expand to a demand greater than she could answer.

Amos was keenly interested in Levine's campaign. His attitude toward politics was curiously detached, when one considered that he was saturated with information—both as to state and national politics. He was vicious in his criticism of the Democrats, ardent in his support of the Republicans, yet it never seemed to occur to him that it was his political duty to do anything more than talk. He seemed to feel that his ancestors in helping to launch the government had forever relieved him from any duty more onerous than that of casting a vote.

He did, however, take Lydia one September evening just before school opened to hear John make a speech in the Square. Lydia up to this time had given little heed to the campaign, but she was delighted with the unwonted adventure of being away from home in the evening.

It was a soft, moonlit night. The old Square, filled with giant elms, was dotted with arc lights that threw an undulating light on the gray mass of the Capitol building. When Amos and Lydia arrived the Square was full of a laughing, chattering crowd. Well dressed men and women from the University and the lake shore, workingmen, smoking black pipes, pushing baby carriages, while their wives in Sunday best hung on their arms. Young boys and girls of Lydia's age chewed gum and giggled. Older boys and girls kept to the shadows of the elms and whispered. On the wooden platform extended from the granite steps of the Capitol, a band dispensed dance music and patriotic airs, breaking into "America" as Levine made his way to the front of the platform.