His tone was oratorical, and Lydia was impressed. She forgot that Billy smelled of the barnyard.

"Well," she said, "we'd all be proud of you if you were president, I can tell you."

"Would you be!" Billy's voice was pleased. "Then, Lydia, will you wait for me?"

"Wait for you?"

"Yes, till I make a name to bring to you."

Lydia flushed angrily. "Look here, Billy Norton, you don't have to be silly, after all the years we've known each other. I'm only fifteen, just remember that, and I don't propose to wait for any man. I'd as soon think of waiting for—for Adam, as for you, anyhow."

Billy rose with dignity, and without a word strode down the path to the gate and thence up the road. Lydia stared after him indignantly. "That old farmer!" she said to Adam, who wriggled and slobbered, sympathetically.

She was still indignant when John Levine arrived and found her toasting herself and the waffles for supper, indiscriminately. Perhaps it was this sense of indignation that made her less patient than usual with what she was growing to consider the foibles of the male sex. At any rate, she precipitated her carefully planned conversation with Levine, when the four of them were seated on the back steps, after supper, fighting mosquitoes, and watching the exquisite orange of the afterglow change to lavender.

The others were listening to Lydia's account of her investigating tour with Charlie.

"I shouldn't say it was the best idea in the world for you to be wandering through the woods with that young Indian," was Levine's comment when Lydia had finished.

"I don't see how you can speak so," cried Lydia, passionately, "when this minute you're taking his pine wood."

"Lydia!" said Amos, sharply.

"Let her alone, Amos," Levine spoke quietly. "What are you talking about, Lydia?"

For a moment, Lydia sat looking at her friend, uncertain how much or how little to say. She had idealized him so long, had clung so long to her faith in his perfection, that a deep feeling of indignation toward him for not living up to her belief in him drove her to saying what she never had dreamed she could have said to John Levine.

"The Indians are people, just like us," she cried, "and you're treating them as if they were beasts. You're robbing them and letting them starve! Oh, I saw them! Charlie showed the poor things to me—all sore eyes, and coughing and eating dirt. And you're making money out of them! Maybe the very money you paid our note with was made out of a starved squaw. Oh, I can't stand it to think it of you!"

Lydia paused with a half sob and for a moment only the gentle ripple of the waves on the shore and the crickets were to be heard Levine, elbow on knee, chin in hand, looked through the dusk at the shadowy sweetness of Lydia's face, his own face calm and thoughtful.

"You're so good and kind to me," Lydia began again, "how can you be so hard on the Indians? Are you stealing Charlie's logs? Are you, Mr. Levine?"

"I bought his pine," replied Levine, quietly.

"He doesn't believe it. He thinks you're stealing. And he's so afraid of you. He says if he makes a fuss, you'll shoot him. Why does he feel that way, Mr. Levine?"

Lydia's thin hands were shaking, but she stood before the Congressman like a small accusing conscience, unafraid, not easily to be stilled.

"Lydia! What're you saying!" exclaimed Amos.

"Keep out, Amos," said Levine. "We've got to clear this up. I've been expecting it, for some time. Lydia, years ago before the Government began to support the Indians, they were a fine, upstanding race. The whites could have learned a lot from them. They were brave, and honorable, and moral, and in a primitive way, thrifty. Well, then the sentimentalists among the whites devised the reservation system and the allowance system. And the Indians have gone to the devil, just as whites would under like circumstances. Any human being has to earn what he eats or he degenerates. You can put that down as generally true, can't you, Amos?"

"You certainly can," agreed Amos.

"Now, the only way to save those Indians up there is to kick them out. The strong ones will live and be assimilated into our civilization. The weak ones will die, just like weak whites do."

"But how about Charlie's pines?" insisted Lydia.

Something like a note of amusement at the young girl's persistence was in John's voice, but he answered gravely enough.

"Yes, I've bought his pines and I'll get them out, next winter. There's no denying we want the Indians' land. But there's no denying that throwing the Indian off the reservation is the best thing for the Indian."

"But what makes Charlie think you're stealing them? And he says that when the pines go, the tribe will die."

"I paid for the pine," insisted Levine. "An Indian has no idea of buying and selling. It's a cruel incident, this breaking up of the reservation, but it's like cutting off a leg to save the patient's life. Sentiment is wasted."

"That's the great trouble with America, these days," said Amos, his pipe bowl glowing in the summer darkness. "All these foreigners coming in here filled the country with gush. What's become of the New Englanders in this town? Well, they founded the University, named the streets, planted the elms and built the Capitol. Since then they've been snowed under by the Germans and the Norwegians, a lot of beer drinkers and fish eaters. Nobody calls a spade a spade, these days. They rant and spout socialism. The old blood's gone. The old, stern, puritanical crowd can't be found in America to-day."

Lydia was giving little heed to her father. Amos was given to fireside oratory. She was turning over in her mind the scene in the woods between John and the half breeds. That then was a part of the process of removing the patient's leg! The end justified the means.

She heaved a great sigh of relief. "Well, then, I don't have to worry about that any more," she said. "Only, I don't dare to think about those starving old squaws, or the baby that froze to death."

"That's right," agreed Levine, comfortably. "Don't think about them."

Old Lizzie snored gently, gave a sudden sigh and a jerk. "Land! I must have dozed off for a minute."

Lydia laughed. "It was nip and tuck between you and Adam, Lizzie. Let's get in away from the mosquitoes—I'm so glad I had this talk with you, Mr. Levine."

"Lydia should have been a boy," said Amos; "she likes politics."

"I'd rather be a girl than anything in the world," protested Lydia, and the two men laughed. If there was still a doubt in the back of Lydia's mind regarding the reservation, for a time, at least, she succeeded in quieting it. She dreaded meeting Charlie and was relieved to hear that Dr. Fulton had taken him East with him for a couple of weeks to attend a health convention.

One of the not unimportant results of the camping trip was that Lydia rediscovered the pine by the gate. It was the same pine against which she had beaten her little fists, the night of Patience's death. She had often climbed into its lower branches, getting well gummed with fragrant pitch in the process. But after her return from the reservation, the tall tree had a new significance to her.

She liked to sit on the steps and stare at it, dreaming and wondering. Who had left it, when all the rest of the pines about it had been cleared off? How did it feel, left alone among the alien oaks and with white people living their curious lives about it? Did it mourn, in its endless murmuring, for the Indians—the Indians of other days and not the poor decadents who shambled up and down the road? For the Indians and the pines were now unalterably associated in Lydia's mind. The life of one depended on that of the other. Strange thoughts and perhaps not altogether cheerful and wholesome thoughts for a girl of Lydia's age.

So it was probably well that Margery about this time began to show Lydia a certain Margery-esque type of attention. In her heart, in spite of her mother's teachings, Margery had always shared her father's admiration for Lydia. In her childhood it had been a grudging, jealous admiration that seemed like actual dislike. But as Margery developed as a social favorite and Lydia remained about the same quiet little dowd, the jealousy of the banker's daughter gave way to liking.

Therefore several times a week, Margery appeared on her bicycle, her embroidery bag dangling from the handle bars. The two girls would then establish themselves on cushions by the water, and sew and chatter. Lizzie, from the kitchen or from the bedroom where she was resting, could catch the unceasing sound of voices, broken at regular intervals by giggles.

"Lydia's reached the giggling age," she would say to herself. "Well, thank the Lord she's got some one to giggle with, even if Margery is a silly coot. There they go again! What are they laughing at?"

Hysterical shrieks from the lawn, with the two girls rolling helplessly about on the cushions! Overhearing the conversation would not have enlightened old Lizzie, for the girls' talk was mostly reminiscent of the camp experiences or of their recollections of Kent's little boyhood, of Charlie's prowess at school, or of Gustus' "sportiness" and his fascinating deviltry. Lydia was enjoying the inalienable right of every girl of fifteen to giggle, and talk about the boys, the two seemingly having no causative relation, yet always existing together.

Lizzie had not realized how quiet and mature Lydia had been since little Patience's death until now. She would mix some lemonade and invite the girls into the house to drink it, just for the mere pleasure of joining in the laughter. She never got the remotest inkling of why the two would double up with joy when one or the other got the hiccoughs in the midst of a sentence. But she would lean against the sideboard and laugh with them, the tears running down her old cheeks.

It was no uncommon occurrence during this summer for Amos to come on the two, giggling helplessly on a log by the roadside. Lydia would have been walking a little way with Margery to come back with her father, when their mirth overcame them. Amos had no patience with this new phase of Lydia's development.

"For heaven's sake," he said to John Levine, one Sunday afternoon, when hysterical shrieks drifted up from the pier, "do you suppose I'd better speak to Doc Fulton or shut her up on bread and water?"

"Pshaw, let her alone. It's the giggles! She's just being normal," said John, laughing softly in sympathy as the shrieks grew weak and maudlin.

The two did have lucid intervals during the summer, however. During one of these, Lydia said, "I wish we had hard wood floors like yours."

"What kind are yours?" inquired Margery.

"Just pine, and kind of mean, splintery pine, too."

"Upstairs at Olga's all the floors were that way," said Margery, "and they had a man come and sandpaper 'em and put kind of putty stuff in the cracks and oil and wax 'em and they look fine."

"Gee!" said Lydia, thoughtfully. "That is, I don't mean 'Gee,' I mean whatever polite word Miss Towne would use for 'Gee.'"

The girls giggled, then Lydia said, "I'll do it! And I'll cut our old living-room carpet up into two or three rugs. Lizzie'll have to squeeze enough out of the grocery money for fringe. I'd rather have fringe than a fall coat."

Amos, coming home a night or so later found the living-room floor bare and Lydia hard at work with a bit of glass and sand paper, scraping at the slivers.

"Ain't it awful?" asked Lizzie from the dining-room. "She would do it."

Lydia's knees and back had given out and she was lying on her stomach and one elbow, scraping away without looking up.

"Lizzie's complained all day," she said. "She doesn't realize how our house looks like 'poverty and destruction' compared with other folks. I'm going to get some style into it, if I have to tear it down. Oh, Daddy, don't you get sick of being poor?"

"Yes," said Amos, shortly, "and I think you're a silly girl to wear yourself out on this kind of thing."

Lydia sat up and looked at him. She was growing fast and was thinner than ever, this summer. "If mother was alive," she said, "she'd know exactly how I feel."

Suddenly there came to Amos' memory a weak and tender voice, with contralto notes in it like Lydia's, "Lydia's like me, Amos. You'll never have trouble understanding her, if you'll remember that."

"Lydia," he said, abruptly, "make the house over if you want to, my dear," and he marched out to the kitchen to wash and take off his overalls.

It took Lydia several days to complete her task. When it was done the cracks were still prominent and the oily finish was spotted. But in Lydia's eyes it was a work of art and she cut the old carpet into three parts with enthusiasm. She sewed the fringe on the rugs, on the front porch. Sitting so, she could see Margery when she appeared far down the road, could view the beauty of the Nortons' wide fields, and could hear the quiet sighing of the pine by the gate. On the afternoon on which she finished the last of the rugs, Charlie Jackson and not Margery appeared. Lydia's heart sank a little as he turned in the gate, though in his greeting he seemed his usual genial self.

He admired the rugs and the gleam of the shining floor through the doorway. Then without preamble, he asked, "Did you talk to Levine, Lydia?"

"Yes," she said. "He—he just doesn't see it any way but his, Charlie!"

The young Indian's face fell. "I certainly thought you could influence him, Lydia. Did you really try?"

"Of course I tried," she exclaimed, indignantly. "He insists that the only way to save you Indians is to make you work for a living."

"He's doing it all for our good, huh?" sneered Charlie.

"He doesn't pretend. He says he wants the land. He's paying for it though."

"Paying for it!" cried the Indian. "How's he paying, do you know?"

"No, and I don't want to know! I'm tired of hearing things against Mr. Levine."

"I don't care if you are," said Charlie, grimly. "If you're going to keep on being his friend, you've got to be it with your eyes open. And you might as well decide right now whether you're going to take him or me for your friend. You can't have us both."

"I wouldn't give up Mr. Levine for any one on earth." Lydia's voice shook with her earnestness. "And I don't see why I have to be dragged into this business. I've nothing to do with it."

"You have too! You're white and it's every white's business to judge in this. You'll be taking some of the profits of the reservation if it's thrown open, yourself."

"I will not!" cried Lydia. "I wouldn't want an inch of that land." Then she caught her breath. Something within her said, "Wouldn't, eh—not the vast acres of cathedral pines, you thought of as yours, at camp?" She flushed and repeated vehemently, "Not an inch!"

Charlie smiled cynically. "Listen, Lydia, I'll tell you how Levine pays for his Indian lands."



CHAPTER XII

THE HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR

"Where the pine forest is destroyed, pines never come again."—The Murmuring Pine.

Lydia sighed helplessly and began to stitch again on the fringe, thrusting her needle in and out viciously.

"Years ago," began Charlie, grimly, "my father foresaw what the whites were trying to do. None of the other full bloods believed him. He had nothing to do with half-breeds."

"I don't see why you always speak so of the mixed bloods," interrupted Lydia. "Their white blood ought to improve them."

"It ought, yes,—but it doesn't. And the reason is that only the rottenest kind of a white man'll make a squaw a mother. And only the low harpies in places like Last Chance will let an Indian father a child."

Lydia flushed but compressed her lips and let Charlie speak on. She knew that it was useless to try to stem the tide of protest that was rising to his lips.

"Father was the chief of the tribe and he called council after council until at last they all decided he'd better go to Washington and see if he could get help from the Indian Commissioner. Even then John Levine had a following of half-breeds. He told the yellow curs to kidnap my father and he'd see if he could make him more reasonable. So the half-breeds laid in ambush the day father started for Washington. Father put up an awful fight and they killed him!"

"Oh, Charlie!" cried Lydia, dropping her sewing. "Oh, Charlie!"

"Yes," said the Indian, tensely, "and though Levine wasn't there he was just as much my father's murderer as if he'd fired the shot. Of course, nothing was ever done by the authorities. It was hushed up as an Indian brawl. But my sister, she was twenty then, she found out about Levine and she came in and set fire to his house one night, thinking she'd burn him to death. Instead of that, she just scared his old hired man who was drunk. Levine was away from home. But he's a devil. He found out it was my sister and he told her the only way she could keep from being jailed was to sell him all our pines—for a hundred dollars. So she did, but she shot at him that Thanksgiving night when he'd been at your house."

"Oh, Charlie!" whispered Lydia, horror in her blue eyes and her parted lips. She looked at him in utter dismay. No longer was he the debonair favorite of the High School. In his somber eyes, his thin cold lips, his tense shoulders, the young girl saw the savage. She looked from Charlie to the familiar garden, to Adam, scratching fleas, and beyond to the quiet herds in the Norton meadows. Surely Charlie's tale of killings had no place in this orderly life. Then her glance fell upon the pine beside the gate. It murmured softly. Again Lydia saw the cloistered depths of the reservation pines and again there stirred within her that vague lust for ownership. And she knew that Charlie's tale was true.

She moistened her dry lips. "But what can I do, Charlie! I'm only a girl."

"I'll tell you what you can do. You can throw down your murderer friend and side with me. You can get every one you know to side with me. And, Lydia, never tell Levine, or any one else, what you know about him. It wouldn't be safe!"

He leaned toward her as he spoke and Lydia shivered. "I won't," she whispered. Then she said aloud in sudden resentment, "But I'm not going to throw Mr. Levine down without his having a chance to explain. Who are you to think you've got a right to ask me?"

Charlie caught her slender wrist in a firm grasp. "I'm a human being fighting for justice—no—fighting for existence. That's who I am."

"Oh, I don't want to know about it!" cried Lydia. "I don't want to think about it! I'm just a girl. I want to be happy just a little while before I grow up. I've had too much unhappiness."

"Yes, you have had," agreed Charlie, grimly, "and that's why you will think about it in spite of yourself. You understand how I feel because you've suffered. When are you going to throw Levine down?"

Lydia's face whitened. "Never!" she said.

"What! When you know he's a murderer?"

"He never intended to kill your father. Anyhow, I can't help what he's done. He's like my own father and brother and mother all in one to me."

The two young people sat looking into each other's eyes. Suddenly Charlie threw Lydia's hand from him, and like Billy Norton, he strode down the path and out of the gate without a word. Lydia was trembling violently but she picked up her sewing and forced herself to finish the rugs and spread them on the living-room floor. They looked very well, she thought. Later on, they showed a vicious tendency to turn up, to wrinkle and scuffle easily, threatening the life and limb of the heavy treading Lizzie and of Amos a dozen times a day. But the evening after Charlie's visit she was too distrait to notice the complaints of her elders.

Levine did not appear at the cottage for several days. During that time Lydia tried to put Charlie's story out of her mind. With housework and swimming and giggling with Margery, she managed to do this during the day, but at night she dreamed of it and woke, and spoke to Adam.

When John did come out she avoided talking to him and he caught her several times looking at him with a sad and puzzled expression. When they started on their usual Sunday walk, Amos went back to the house for his cane and Levine said, abruptly, "Out with it, young Lydia!"

"I promised I wouldn't," she said.

"Been hearing more stories about my wickedness?" asked John.

Lydia nodded, miserably.

"My dear," Levine said quietly, "this is a man's game. I'm playing a rough-and-tumble, catch-as-catch-can fight. In it, the weak must fail and maybe die. But out of it a great good will come to this community. As long as the Indians are here to exploit, this community will be demoralized. I'm using every means fair or foul to carry my purpose. Can't you let it go at that?"

Lydia set her teeth. "Yes, I can and I will," she said, as her father came up with his cane.

And though this was more easily said than done and the thought of murdered chiefs and starved babies troubled her occasionally, she did not really worry over it all as much as she might have were she not entering her senior year in the High School.

If life holds any position more important, any business more soul satisfying than that of being a High School senior, few people are so fortunate as to have discerned it. Being a college senior is a highly edifying and imposing business, but the far greater advantages lie with the High School senior. He is four years younger. He has lost no illusions. He has developed no sense of values. He is not conscious of the world outside his vision. But in spite of a smug conviction of superiority, the college senior has heard life knocking at the door of his young illusions. He has moments of wistful uncertainty. No, it is the High School senior who is life's darling.

Lydia was not altogether an easy person to live with this year although both Lizzie and Amos realized that never had she been so altogether sweet and lovable as now. She objected to Lizzie's table manners. She was hurt because Amos would eat in his shirt-sleeves, and would sit in his stocking feet at night, ignoring the slippers she crocheted him. She stored in the attic the several fine engravings in gilt frames that her father and mother had brought with them from New England. In their place she hung passepartouted Gibson pictures clipped from magazines. And she gave up reading tales of travel and adventure, gave up Dickens and Thackeray and Mark Twain and took to E. P. Roe and other writers of a sticky and lovelorn nature.

In spite of the camping trip, Lydia saw little of her campmates. Charlie did not reenter school in the fall. Olga and Gustus were devoted to each other and, to Lydia's surprise, Kent took Margery to several parties.

"I thought you liked Gustus best," she said to Margery one Saturday afternoon late in the fall. Lydia was calling on Margery and the two were making fudge.

"Oh, that was last year! Gustus is too sickly for me. I'm crazy about Kent. He's so big and strong and bossy!"

A little pang shot through Lydia's heart. But she was saved a reply by Elviry, who as usual was within earshot.

"Kent Moulton doesn't amount to anything. His father's got nothing but a salary. Gustus'll have the brewery."

"Well, who wants to marry a brewery," sniffed Margery. "If you think I'm going to have any old bossy, beery German like Gustus'll be, you're mistaken. Kent comes of fine Puritan stock."

"Your ancestors don't pay the bills," said Elviry, sharply. "If your father has that extra money he's expecting at Christmas time, you'll just go East to boarding-school, Margery."

"I don't want to go," protested Margery. "I love High School."

"Makes no difference. You have common tastes, just like your father. I want you should have refined tastes in your friends particularly."

And Dave must have received his extra money, for after the Christmas holidays, Margery tearfully departed for the Eastern finishing school. The night after her departure, Kent made his first call on Lydia in many months. The two withdrew to the kitchen to make candy and there Lydia's surprise and pleasure gave way to suspicion. Kent seemed to want to talk for the most part about Margery!

"Hasn't she grown to be a beauty," he said, beating the fudge briskly.

"She always was beautiful," replied Lydia, who was cracking walnuts. "Didn't we use to hate her though! Well, she was the whiniest little snip!"

"Oh, that was her mother's fault! The only good thing about this boarding-school deal is that it gets her away from Elviry Marshall. Put more nuts in here, Lyd. You like her now, don't you?"

"Yes, I do," replied Lydia, honestly, "though she's an awful silly. She never reads anything, and she flunked all her Thanksgiving examinations."

"Anybody as pretty as Margery doesn't need to be brilliant," said Kent.

"And she spoons, and you don't think much of girls that spoon." Lydia's cheeks were a deeper pink than usual.

"Shucks, don't be catty, Lydia!" growled Kent.

Lydia suddenly chuckled, though tears were very near the surface. "Well, when I'm an old maid here in the cottage, you and Margery can come out and call in your automobile."

"Who's talking about marrying or you being an old maid?" asked Kent, disgustedly. "Gee, you girls make me sick!"

Lydia's jaw dropped. Then she gave a laugh that ended abruptly. "Heavens, how clothes do count in life," she sighed. "Come on in and give Dad and Lizzie some fudge, Kent."

Kent called several times during the winter, but he never asked Lydia to go to a party nor did any of the other boy friends she saw daily in school—boys with whom she chummed over lessons, who told her their secrets, who treated her as a mental equal, yet never asked to call, or slipped boxes of candy into her desk or asked her into a drugstore for a sundae or a hot chocolate.

Nobody resented this state of affairs more than old Lizzie. After Kent's third or fourth call, she said to Lydia, closing the door behind him, "Yes, Kent'll come out here and see you, but I notice he don't take you anywhere. If you had fine party clothes and lived on Lake Shore Avenue, he'd be bowing and scraping fast enough."

Lydia tossed her head. "I don't care about going to parties."

"You do, too," insisted the old lady. "You're eating your heart out. I know. I was young once."

Amos looked up from his paper. "Lydia's too young to go if they did ask her. But why don't they ask?"

"It's because I'm too poor and I live so far out and I don't spoon," answered Lydia. "I don't care, I tell you." And just to prove that she didn't care, Lydia bowed her face in her hands and began to cry.

A look of real pain crossed Amos' face. He got up hastily and went to Lydia's side.

"Why, my little girl, I thought you were perfectly happy this year. And your clothes look nice to me." He smoothed Lydia's bright hair with his work-scarred hand. "I tell you, I'll borrow some money, by heck, and get you some clothes!"

Lydia raised a startled face. "No! No! I'd rather go in rags than borrow money. We're almost out of debt now and we'll stay out. Don't borrow, Daddy," her voice rising hysterically. "Don't borrow!" Adam began to howl.

"All right, dearie, all right!" said Amos.

"I'm an old fool to have said anything," groaned Lizzie. "What does it matter when she's the best scholar in her class and everybody, teachers and boys and girls alike, loves her."

Lydia wiped her eyes and hugged her father, then Adam and then Lizzie.

"I've got John Levine, anyhow," she said.

"You certainly have, hand and foot," said Amos.

The matter was not mentioned again directly. But the little scene rankled with Amos. A week or so later he said at supper, "Lydia, I'm thinking seriously of moving."

"Moving! Where? Why?" exclaimed Lydia.

"Well, I can borrow enough money, I find, to add to the rent we're paying, to rent the old stone house next to Miss Towne's. My idea is to move there just till you finish college! Then we'll go out on a farm. But it'll give you your chance, Lydia."

"Land!" murmured Lizzie.

Lydia hesitated. To move into the house next the Townes would be to arrive, to enter the inner circle, to cease to be a dowd. But—she looked about the familiar rooms.

"Daddy," she said, "would you really want to leave this cottage?"

"I'd just as soon," replied Amos. "Most places are alike to me since your mother's death. I could stand doing without the garden, if I had the farm to look forward to."

"How'd we pay the money back?" asked Lydia.

"After the Levine bill passes," said Amos, "I'll have a section of pines."

Instantly Lydia's sleeping land hunger woke and with it the memory of Charlie's tales. She sat in deep thought.

"Daddy," she said, finally, "we're not going to borrow, and we're not going to move again. I don't see why people want to keep moving all the time. I love this place, if it is only a cottage, and I'm going to stay here. I wish we could buy it and hand it down in the family so's it would be known forever as the Dudley place. Then nobody'd ever forget our name. What's the use of trying to make a splurge with borrowed money? We thought it was awful when the Barkers mortgaged their house to buy an automobile."

"All right," said Amos, reluctantly. "But remember, you've had your chance and don't feel abused about our poverty."

"I won't," replied Lydia, obediently.

And to her own surprise, she did feel less bitter about her meager, home-made clothing. She had had a chance to improve it and had resisted the temptation.

She told Ma Norton of Amos' plan, and her refusal. Ma heard her through in silence. They were sitting as usual in the kitchen of the Norton farmhouse. Lydia ran over nearly every Saturday afternoon but she seldom saw Billy. Amos had refused to allow Lydia to continue fudge selling and Ma supposed that that was why her son never spoke of Lydia or was about when she called.

"You did exactly right, Lydia," was Ma's verdict. "And you mustn't lay it all to clothes, though I've always maintained that party-going boys were just as silly about clothes as party-going girls. You're old for your age, Lydia. It takes older men to understand you. I suppose your class has begun to talk about graduation. It's March now."

"Yes," said Lydia. "We've chosen the class motto and the class color. I was chairman of the motto committee and we chose Ducit Amor Patriae—and purple and white's our color."

"For the land's sake," murmured Ma. "Why do you children always choose Latin or Greek mottoes? Hardly anybody in the audience knows what they mean. I never did get Billy's through my head."

Lydia laughed. "We just do it to be smart! But I chose this one. It's one John Levine gave me years ago. I thought it was a good one for young Americans—Love of Country leads them."

"Indeed it is. Especially with all the foreign children in the class. I'll have to tell Billy that. He's doing fine in his law but his father's broken-hearted over his giving up farming."

"I'll bet he goes back to it. He's a born farmer," said Lydia.

Late in March the valedictorian and salutatorian of the class were chosen. The custom was for the teachers to select the ten names that had stood highest for scholarship during the entire four years and to submit these to the pupils of the class, who by popular vote elected from these the valedictorian and the salutatorian.

To her joy and surprise Lydia's was one of the ten names. So were Olga's and Kent's.

"Olga and Kent will get it," Lydia told Amos and Lizzie. "I'm going to vote for them myself. All the boys are crazy about Olga and all the girls are crazy about Kent."

The day on which the election took place was cold and rainy. Amos plodding home for supper was astonished to see Lydia flying toward him through the mud a full quarter of a mile from home.

"Daddy, they elected me valedictorian! They did! They did!"

Amos dropped his dinner pail. "You don't mean it! How did it happen! I never thought of such a thing." He was as excited as Lydia.

She picked up his pail and clung to his arm as they started home.

"I don't know how it happened. They just all seemed to take it for granted. No one was surprised but me. Olga got four votes and Mamie Aldrich ten and I got sixty-six! Daddy! And Mamie wasn't cross but Olga was. Oh, isn't it wonderful!"

"Valedictorian! My little Lydia! Scholarship and popular vote! I wish your mother was here. What does Lizzie say?"

Lydia giggled. "I left Lizzie carrying on an imaginary conversation with Elviry Marshall, after she'd cried over me for half an hour. And, Daddy, nobody was surprised but me! Not the teachers or anybody!"

"Thank God, there's some democracy left in the world," said Amos. "Evidently those youngsters voted without prejudice. They can give us elders a few points. Lord, Lydia! and folks have been looking down on us because we were poor and I'm little better than a day laborer. I'll write to Levine tonight. He'll have to be here for the exercises."

"And Kent is salutatorian. He won by just two votes. I've got to begin to plan about my dress."

"Now, I'm going to buy that dress, Lydia, if I have to borrow money. You aren't going to begin any talk about earning it."

"Oh, all right," said Lydia, hastily. "You won't have to borrow. White goods is always cheap and I'll get it right away so I can put lots of hard work on it."

"What's your speech going to be about?" asked Amos, as they turned in the gate.

"I haven't had time to think about that. I'll plan it all out while I'm sewing. I must make a V neck so I can wear the dress without the collar to the Senior Ball."

Lizzie was waiting supper for them and poured the tea into the sugar bowl as she described to Amos the agonies of mind Elviry Marshall would endure on hearing the news. Ma Norton came over during the evening to exchange a setting of eggs but wouldn't sit down after Amos had forestalled Lizzie in telling of Lydia's honor. She said she couldn't wait to get home to tell Pa and Billy.

Billy did not congratulate Lydia. He passed her just as he had during all the months, with a curt little "Hello." To tell the truth Lydia was heartily ashamed of herself for her shabby reception of Billy's plea. Not that she had softened toward him! But she knew she had been unkind and she missed the desultory companionship she had had with Billy.

The preparation of the dress went on amazingly well. The speech making was less simple. As was customary, Lydia chose the class motto for her subject and sweated inordinately to find something to say. She complained bitterly to Miss Towne and Amos because during the four years at High School nothing at all was taught about love of country, or patriotism, or anything that would make the motto suggestive.

"How about your one term of Civil Government?" asked Miss Towne.

"Oh, I was a freshman then and I've forgotten it all,—except the preamble to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence."

Lydia stopped thoughtfully.

Amos answered her plaint indignantly. "Well, for heaven's sake! And you a descendant of the Puritans! Lord, what's become of the old stock! No, I won't help you at all. Think it out for yourself."

And think it out Lydia did, sitting on the front steps with her sewing and listening to the sighing of the pine by the gate.

Spring flew by like the wind, and June came. There was but one flaw in Lydia's happiness. Nobody asked her to attend the Senior Ball that was to take place on Graduation night. To be sure, it was not an invitation affair. The class was supposed to attend in a body but there was, nevertheless, the usual two-ing and only a very few of the girls who had no invitation from boys would go. Lydia, herself, would have cut off her hand rather than appear at her own Senior Ball without a young man.

She had pinned some faith to Kent, until she had heard that Margery was to be home in time for the graduating exercises. As June came on and the tenth drew near, a little forlorn sense of the unfairness of things began to obscure Lydia's pride and joy in her honor. On the ninth, the last rehearsal of the speech had been made; the dress was finished and hung resplendent in the closet; Amos himself had taken Lydia into town and bought her white slippers and stockings, taking care to inform the street-car conductor and the shoe clerk carelessly the wherefore and why of his mission.

And Lydia knew that none of her classmates was going to ask her to the ball. "They think they've done enough in giving me the valedictory," she thought. "As if I wouldn't exchange that in a minute for a sure enough invitation."

Mortified and unhappy, she avoided her mates during the last week of school, fearing the inevitable question, "Who's going to take you, Lyd?"

The tenth dawned, a lovely June day. Amos had half a day off and was up at daylight, whistling in the garden. The exercises began at ten and by half past eight, Lydia was buttoned into her pretty little organdy, Lizzie was puffing in her black alpaca and Amos was standing about in his black Sunday suit which dated back to his early married days. By nine-thirty they had reached the Methodist church and Amos and Lizzie were established in the middle of the front row of the balcony while Lydia was shivering with fright in the choir-room where the class was gathered.

Somebody began to play the organ and somebody else who looked like Miss Towne shoved Lydia toward the door and she led the long line of her mates into the front pews. The same minister who had buried little Patience, prayed and a quartette sang. A college professor spoke at length, then Kent appeared on the platform.

Good old Kent, even if he wouldn't take Lydia to parties! Kent, with his black eyes and hair, his ruddy skin and broad shoulders, was good to look on and was giving his speech easily and well. Lydia had heard it a dozen times in rehearsal but now not a word Kent said was intelligible to her. She was seeing him in a red bathing suit as he hung Florence Dombey from a yard arm of the willow. She was hearing him as he knelt in the snow with an arm about her shoulders, "I'm so doggone sorry for you, Lydia." What a dear he had been! Now it all was different. They were grown up. This day marked their growing up and Kent didn't want to take her to parties.

Kent bowed and took his seat. The quartette sang and somebody prodded Lydia smartly in the back. She made her way up to the platform and began to speak automatically.

It was a very young and girlish speech. It was delivered with tremendous sincerity. Yet it did not matter much what she said, for what counted was that Lydia's contralto voice was very young and rich, that her golden hair was like a nimbus about her head, that her lips were red and sweet, that her cheeks were vivid and that her eyes were very blue, very innocent and clear.

Amos with tight clenched fists and Lizzie with her lips a thin seam of nervous compression, were swelled with vanity and torn with fear lest she forget her lines.

But John Levine, who had dashed in late and stood unnoticed in the crowd under the gallery listened intently, while he yearned over Lydia's immature beauty like a mother.

"And so," she ended, "when we say good-by, you all must remember that we go out into the world resolved to live up to our motto. That we believe with our forefathers that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. That all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that because the New England people in the Middle West are far from the cradle of liberty where these ideas were born, living among foreigners it behooves the members of our class to carry our motto into their daily life. Love of country leads us and so farewell!"

It was a foolish, sentimental little speech with one or two real thoughts in it and John Levine smiled even while the tears filled his eyes. He told himself that no one, least of all probably Lydia herself, realized the cynical application of the class motto to Lake City conditions.

The diplomas were distributed. The great morning was over. After the congratulations and the handshaking, Lydia found herself with her father, Lizzie, Levine and Ma Norton on the way to the trolley. Lydia walked between her father and John.

"You'll come out to dinner, Mr. Levine," asked Lydia.

"No, ma'am," replied the Congressman. "I return to Washington on the 12:30 train, which gives me just time to see you to the trolley."

"Why, what's the matter?" asked Amos.

"We vote on the Levine bill, the morning I get back to Washington. I just ran out to see young Lydia graduate."

Amos groaned, "John, you're a fool!"

Levine laughed. "Lydia, am I a fool?" He looked down at the flushed face above the dainty organdy.

"No," she answered, giving him a swift look. "You're a goose and a lamb."

"So! You see you don't understand me, Amos," said John, triumphantly as he helped Lydia aboard the street-car. "Good-by, young Lydia. I'll be home in a week or so."

And so the great event ended. After dinner Amos rushed back to the factory, Lydia hung the graduation gown away in her closet and she and Adam spent the afternoon on the lake shore, where the delicate splendor and perfume of June endeavored in vain to prove to Lydia that the Senior Ball was of no consequence.

She was silent at supper, while Amos and Lizzie went over the details of the morning again. After the dishes were washed she sat on the steps in the dusk with Adam's head in her lap when a carriage rolled up to the gate. A man came swiftly up the path. As he entered the stream of lamplight from the door Lydia with a gasp recognized Billy Norton. Billy, wearing a dress suit and carrying a bouquet of flowers!

"Good evening, Lydia," he said calmly. "Will you go to the Senior Ball with me?"

Lydia was too much overcome for speech. She never before had seen a man in a dress suit! It made of Billy a man of the world. Where was the country boy she had snubbed?

"Here are some flowers I hope you'll wear," Billy went on, formally. "Would you mind hurrying? It's pretty late."

"Oh, Billy!" breathed Lydia, at last. "Aren't you an angel!"

She jumped to her feet and rushed through the house into her room, leaving Billy to explain to her father and Lizzie. In half an hour the two were seated in the carriage, an actual, party-going, city hack, and bumping gaily on the way to the Ball.

In her gratitude and delight, Lydia would have apologized to Billy for her last summer's rudeness, but Billy gave her no opportunity. He mentioned casually that he had been up on the reservation, for a week, returning only that afternoon so that he had missed her graduation exercises. They chatted quite formally until they reached Odd Fellows' Hall, where the dancing had already begun.

Lydia's first dancing party! Lydia's first man escort and he wearing a dress suit and there were only two others in the Hall! Who would attempt to describe the joy of that evening? Who would have recognized Billy, the farmer, in the cool blond person who calmly appropriated Lydia's card, taking half the dances for himself and parceling out the rest grudgingly and discriminatingly. Kent was allowed two dances. He was the least bit apologetic but Lydia in a daze of bliss was nonchalant and more or less uninterested in Kent's surprise at seeing her at a dance.

For three hours, Lydia spun through a golden haze of melody and rhythm. Into three hours she crammed all the joy, all the thrill, that she had dreamed of through her lonely girlhood. At half after eleven she was waltzing with Billy.

"We must leave now, Lydia," he said. "I promised your father I'd have you home by midnight."

"Oh, Billy! Just one more two step and one more waltz," pleaded Lydia.

"Nope," he said, smiling down into her wistful eyes. "I want to get a stand-in with your Dad because I want to take you to more parties."

"Oh, Billy! Do you!" breathed Lydia. "Well, I don't think there's any one in the world has nicer things happen to them than I do! Oh, Billy, just this waltz!"

It would have taken a harder heart than Billy's to resist this. He slipped his arm about her and they swung out on the floor to the strains of The Blue Danube, than which no lovelier waltz has ever been written.

They did not speak. Billy, holding the slender, unformed figure gently against his breast, looked down at the golden head with an expression of utter tenderness in his eyes, of deep resolve on his lips.

At the end, Lydia looked up with a wondering smile. "I didn't know any one could be so perfectly happy, Billy. I shall always remember that of you—you gave me my happiest moment."

On the way home in the bumping hack, Billy seemed to relax. "Well, did I give you a good time, Miss, or didn't I? Could Kent or Gustus have done better?"

"Oh, they!" cried Lydia indignantly. "But, Billy, I didn't know you could dance."

"I couldn't, but I've been taking lessons all winter. I'm not going to give a girl a chance twice to call me down the way you did last summer. Of course, this is just a second-hand dress suit, but I think it looks all right, don't you?"

"Billy," said Lydia, "last summer I was just a silly little girl. Now, I'm grown up. You were the swellest person at the ball to-night. You just wait till I tell your mother about it."

Billy went up the path with Lydia to the steps and held her hand a moment in silence after he said, "It's a wonderful night!"

A wonderful night, indeed! The moon hung low over the lake and the fragrance of late lilac and of linden blooms enveloped them. Youth and June-moonlight and silence! A wonderful night indeed!

"You are very sweet, Lydia," whispered the young man. He laid his cheek for a moment against her hand, then turned quickly away.

Lydia watched the carriage drive off, stood for a moment trying to impress forever on her mind the look and odor of the night, then with a tremulous sigh, she went indoors.



CHAPTER XIII

THE INDIAN CELEBRATION

"The oak, the maple, the birch, I love them all, but nothing is so dear to the pine as the pine."—The Murmuring Pine.

Lydia was tired the day after the party, tired and moody. After she had told Lizzie and Ma Norton all about the evening, she spent the rest of the day lying on the lake shore, with a book but not reading. Late in the afternoon she went into the house and took Florence Dombey from her accustomed seat in a corner of the living-room.

For a long time she sat with Florence Dombey in her arms, looking from the hectic china face to the scintillating turquoise of the lake and listening to the hushed whispering of the pine. Finally with Adam lumbering jealously after her, she climbed the narrow stairs into the attic.

Back under the eaves stood a packing box into which Lydia never had looked. It contained all of little Patience's belongings. Holding Florence Dombey in one arm, she lifted the lid of the box, catching her breath a little as she glimpsed the cigar box furniture and a folded little white dress. Very carefully she laid Florence Dombey beside the furniture, leaned over and kissed her china lips and closed down the lid of the box. Then of a sudden she dropped to the floor with her head against the box and sobbed disconsolately. Adam gave a howl and crowded into her lap and Lydia hugged him but wept on.

The late afternoon sun sifted through the dusty attic window on her yellow head. Somewhere near the window a robin began to trill his vesper song. Over and over he sang it until at last Lydia heard and raised her head. Suddenly she smiled.

"There, Adam," she said, "now I'm really grown up and I feel better. Let's go meet Dad."

It was three or four days later that news came that the Levine bill had passed. It was a compromise bill as John had intimated it would be to the half breeds in the woods. Only the mixed bloods could sell their lands. Nevertheless there was great rejoicing in Lake City. Plans were begun immediately for a Fourth of July celebration upon the reservation. Kent to his lasting regret missed the celebration. Immediately after school closed he had gone into Levine's office and had been sent to inspect Levine's holdings in the northern part of the State.

Levine returned the last week in June and took charge of the preparations. Amos, who never had been on the reservation, planned to go and Levine rented an automobile and invited Lydia, Amos, Billy Norton and Lizzie to accompany him.

It rained on the third of July, but the fourth dawned clear and hot. Lydia really saw the dawn for she and Lizzie had undertaken to provide the picnic lunch and supper for the party of five and they both were busy in the kitchen at sunrise. At eight o'clock the automobile was at the door.

John drove the car himself and ordered Lydia in beside him. The rest packed into the tonneau with the baskets. It seemed as if all Lake City were headed for the reservation, for Levine's automobile was one of a huge line of vehicles of every type moving north as rapidly as the muddy road and the character of the motive power would permit. As they neared the reservation, about eleven, they began to overtake parties of young men who had walked the twenty miles.

They passed the Last Chance, which was gaily hung with flags. Its yard was packed with vehicles. Its bar was running wide open. They swung on up the black road into the reservation, around a long hill, through a short bit of wood to the edge of a great meadow where John halted the car.

On all sides but one were pine woods. The one side was bordered by a little lake, motionless under the July sun. On the edge of the pines were set dozens of tents and birch-bark wick-i-ups. In the center of the meadow was a huge flagpole from which drooped the Stars and Stripes. Near by was a grandstand and a merry-go-round and everywhere were hawkers' booths.

Already the meadow was liberally dotted with sight-seers of whom there seemed to be as many Indians as whites. The mechanical piano in connection with the merry-go-round shrilled above the calls of vendors. Overhead in the brazen blue of the sky, buzzards sailed lazily watching.

"Isn't it great!" cried Lydia. "What do we do first?"

"Well," said Levine, "I'm free until three o'clock, when the speeches begin. There'll be all sorts of Indian games going until then."

"You folks go on," said Lizzie. "I'm going to sit right here. I never was so comfortable in my life. This may be my only chance to see the world from an automobile and I don't calculate to lose a minute. I can see all I want from right here."

The others laughed. "I don't blame you, Liz," said Amos. "I feel a good deal that way, myself. What's the crowd round the flagpole, John?"

"Let's go see," answered Levine.

"How did you get the Indians to come, Mr. Levine?" asked Billy.

"By offering 'em all the food they could eat. The majority of them haven't any idea what it's all about. But they're just like white folks. They like a party. Don't get crowded too close to any of them, Lydia. They're a dirty lot, poor devils."

The crowd about the flagpole proved to be watching an Indian gambling game. In another spot, a pipe of peace ceremony was taking place. The shooting galleries were crowded. Along the lake shore a yelling audience watched birch canoe races. The merry-go-round held as many squaws and papooses and stolid bucks as it did whites.

The four returned to the automobile for lunch hot and muddy but well saturated with the subtle sense of expectation and excitement that was in the air.

"This is just a celebration and nothing else, John, isn't it?" asked Amos as he bit into a sandwich.

"That's all," replied Levine. "We thought it was a good way to jolly the Indians. At the same time it gave folks a reason for coming up here and seeing what we were fighting for and, last and not least, it was the Indian Agent's chance to come gracefully over on our side."

"Did he?" asked Lydia.

"He did. He's done more of the actual work of getting the celebration going than I have."

"I wonder why?" asked Billy, suddenly.

"All there is left for him to do," said Levine. "Lydia, before the speeches begin, go up in the pines and choose your tract. I'll buy it for you."

Lydia glanced at Billy. He was thinner this summer than she had ever seen him. He was looking at her with his deep set gray eyes a little more somber, she thought, than the occasion warranted. Nevertheless she stirred uneasily.

"I don't want any Indian lands," she said. "I'd always see Charlie Jackson in them."

"The whole thing's wrong," muttered Billy.

Levine gave him a quick look, then smiled a little cynically. "You'd better go along with Lydia and take a look at the pines," he suggested. "Amos, I've already got your tract picked out. It's ten miles from here so you can't see it to-day. Come over to the speakers' stand and help me get things arranged."

"I'd like to look at the pines again, anyhow," said Lydia. "Come along, Billy."

Lydia was wearing the corduroy outing suit of the year before and was looking extremely well. Billy, in an ordinary business suit, was not the man of the world of Graduation night, yet there was a new maturity in his eyes and the set of his jaw that Lydia liked without really observing it. Old Lizzie watched the two as they climbed the slope to the woods. Billy strode along with the slack, irregular gait of the farmer. Lydia sprang over the ground with quick, easy step.

"Billy's a man grown," Lizzie said to herself, "and he's a nice fellow, but he don't tug at my old heart strings like Kent does—drat Kent, anyhow!" She settled herself as conspicuously as possible in the automobile. "If Elviry Marshall would pass now, I'd be perfectly happy," she murmured.

Billy and Lydia entered the woods in silence and followed a sun-flecked aisle until the sound of the celebration was muffled save for the shrill notes of the mechanical piano, which had but two tunes, "Under the Bamboo Tree" and the "Miserere."

"I hate to think of it all divided into farms and the pines cut down," said Lydia.

Billy leaned against one of the great tree trunks and stared thoughtfully about him.

"I'm all mixed up, Lydia," he said. "It's all wrong. I know the things Levine and the rest are doing to get this land are wrong, and yet I don't see how they can be stopped."

"Well," Lydia fanned herself with her hat, thoughtfully, "for years people have been telling me awful things Mr. Levine's done to Indians and I worried and worried over it. And finally, I decided to take Mr. Levine for the dear side he shows me and to stop thinking about the Indians."

"You can stop thinking, perhaps," said the young man, "but you can't stop this situation up here from having an influence on your life. Everybody in Lake City must be directly or indirectly affected by the reservation. Everybody, from the legislators to the grocery keepers, has been grafting on the Indians. Your own father says the thing that's kept him going for years was the hope of Indian lands. Margery Marshall's clothed with Indian money."

"And how about the influence on you, Billy?" asked Lydia with a keen look into the young fellow's rugged face.

"I'm in the process of hating myself," replied Billy, honestly. "I came up here last month to see how bad off the Indians were. And I saw the poor starving, diseased brutes and I cursed my white breed. And yet, Lyd, I saw a tract of pine up in the middle of the reservation that I'd sell my soul to own! It's on a rise of ground, with a lake on one edge, and the soil is marvelous, and it belongs to a full-blood."

There was understanding in Lydia's eyes. "Oh, the pines are wonderful," she exclaimed. "If one could only keep them, forever! And I suppose that's the way the Indians feel about them too!"

"It's all wrong," muttered Billy. "It's all wrong, and yet," more firmly, "the reservation is doomed and if we don't take some of it, Lydia, we'll not be helping the Indians—but just being foolish."

Lydia nodded. A hot breeze drifted through the woods and the pines sighed deeply.

"To have it and hold it for your children's children," exclaimed Lydia, passionately. "You and yours to live on it forever. And yet, I'd see a dead Indian baby and starving squaws behind every tree, I know I would."

"I tell you what I'm going to do," said Billy, doggedly. "I'm going to get hold of that tract. I'm not going to deceive myself that it's all anything but a rotten, thieving game we whites are playing, but I'm going to do it, anyhow."

"I'd like to myself," Lydia still had the look of understanding, "but I'm afraid to! I'd be haunted by Charlie Jackson's eyes."

"I'm going to get that tract. I'll pay for it, somehow, and I'll go on doing what I can to see that the Indians get what's left of a decent deal."

Again the two listened to the wind in the pines, then Lydia said, "We must get back for the speeches."

Billy started back, obediently.

"We're grown up, aren't we, Billy?" sighed Lydia. "We've got to decide what we're going to do and be, and I hate to think about it. I hate important decisions. Seems as though I'd been dogged by 'em all my life."

"If I had my way," cried Billy, unexpectedly, "you never should quite grow up. You'd always be the dear little yellow-haired girl that tramped her legs off to earn my miserable old school books. And that's what you always will be to me—the oldest and youngest little girl! And whether you like me or not, I'll tell you you're not going to have any worries that I can help you ward off."

They were emerging into the meadow and Lydia laughed up at him mischievously, "I've always thought I overpaid for those school books. They were fearfully used up. Oh, the speeches have begun," and Billy was hard put to it to keep close to her as she rushed toward the speakers' stand.

Levine had just finished his speech when Billy and Lydia got within hearing, and he introduced State Senator James Farwell as the chief speaker of the day. Farwell had considerable history to cover in his speech. He began with the Magna Charta and worked by elaborate stages through the French Revolution, the conquest of India, the death of Warren Hastings, the French and Indian War, the American Revolution and the Civil War to Lincoln's Gettysburg speech.

His audience, standing in the burning sun, was restless. The Indians, understanding little that was said, were motionless, but the whites drifted about, talked in undertones and applauded only when as a fitting peak to all the efforts of the ages toward freedom, Farwell placed the present freeing of the Indians from the reservation.

"The great fool!" said Billy to Lydia, as Farwell finally began to bow himself off the platform.

Levine rose and began, "Ladies and gentlemen, this ends our program. We thank—"

He was interrupted here by applause from the Indians. Looking round he saw Charlie Jackson leading forward old Chief Wolf.

"Chief Wolf wants to say a few words," cried Charlie.

"The program is closed," called Levine loudly.

There was a threat in Charlie's voice. "He is going to speak!" And there was a threat in the Indian voices that answered from the audience, "Let speak! Let speak."

Levine conferred hastily with Farwell and the Indian Agent, then the three with manifest reluctance—stood back and Charlie led the old Indian to the foot of the platform.

Old Wolf was half blind with trachoma. He was emaciated with sickness and slow starvation. Nevertheless, clad in the beaded buckskin and eagle feathers of his youth, with his hawk face held high, he was a heroic figure of a man.

He held up his right hand and began to speak in a trembling old bass, Charlie's young tenor translating sentence by sentence. With the first word, the audience became motionless and silent.

"I come from the wick-i-ups of my fathers to say one last word to the whites. I am an old, old man. The last winter was bitter hard and I may never see another July sun. I have lived too long. I have seen my race change from young men strong and daring as eagles, as thrifty and fat as brown bears, to feeble yellow wolves fit only to lap the carrion thrown them by the whites, and to lie in the sun and die.

"And I say to you whites, you have done this. You have moved us on and on, promising always that each resting place shall be ours forever. You swore by your God, in solemn council, that we could keep this reservation forever. With room for all the peoples of the world here, you could not find room for the Indian. You are a race of liars. You are a race of thieves. You have debauched our young men with your women. You have ruined our daughters with your men. You have taken our money. And now you are entering our last home with the hand of desolation. When the enemy enters the abiding place, the dweller is doomed. But I place the curse of the Indian Spirit on you and the land you are stealing. Some day it will be done to you as you have done to us. Some day—"

Levine stepped forward. "Jackson, take that Indian away," he commanded.

An angry murmur came from the Indians in the audience. A murmur that as Levine laid hold of old Wolf's arm, grew to strange calls. There was a surging movement toward the platform. Billy jumped on a box that he had found for a seat for Lydia.

"Charlie!" he roared, "Charlie! Remember there are women and children in this crowd."

"What do I care for your women and children?" shouted Charlie.

Then his glance fell on Lydia's golden head. She waved her hand to him beseechingly. Charlie hesitated for a moment, then spoke loudly in Indian to the crowd, and led old Wolf from the platform. The movement forward of the Indians ceased. The whites moved out of the crowd and for a moment there was a complete segregation of Indians and whites.

Then the mechanical piano which had stopped during the speech-making suddenly started up with a loud twang of "Under the Bamboo Tree." Two Indian boys laughed and started on a run for the merry-go-round and the crowd followed after.

Billy got down from his box with a sigh of relief. "That might have been an ugly moment," he said, "if Charlie hadn't seen you."

"The poor things! Oh, Billy, the poor, poor things!" exclaimed Lydia.

Billy nodded. "It's all wrong."

The noise of hawkers began again, but something had gone out of the celebration. The Indians stood about in groups, talking, Charlie and Chief Wolf the center always of the largest group.

Amos and John joined Billy and Lydia at the machine. "The war dancing begins at sundown," said Levine. "I told the Indian Agent 'twas a risk to let them go on, after this episode. But he laughs at me. I don't like the look of things, though."

"They aren't armed?" asked Amos.

"No, but've got those pesky bows and arrows we were having them show off with. I don't know but what I'd better get you folks home."

"Shucks," said Amos, "I wouldn't let the Indians think they could scare us. What could they do, poor sickly devils, anyhow?"

"That's right," said Billy. "There's nothing can happen. I don't think Charlie Jackson would stand for any violence."

"I don't know about that," Levine spoke thoughtfully. "He's left Doc Fulton and is living on the reservation again. They always revert."

"Listen! Listen!" cried Lydia,

There was a red glow behind the clouds low in the west. From the foot of the flagpole came a peculiar beat of drum. A white can beat a drum to carry one through a Gettysburg. An Indian can beat a drum to carry one's soul back to the sacrifice of blood upon a stony altar. This drum beat "magicked" Lydia and Billy. It was more than a tocsin, more than a dance rhythm, more than the spring call. They hurried to the roped-off circle round the flagpole, followed by John and Amos.

An Indian in beaded buckskin squatted by the pole, beating a drum. Above him the flag stirred lazily. The west was crimson. The scent of sweet grass was heavy. There was a breathless interval while the drum seemed to urge Lydia's soul from her body.

Then there came the cry again followed by a wordless chant. Into the ring, in all the multicolored glory of beads and paint, swung a dozen moccasined braves. They moved in a step impossible to describe,—a step grave, rhythmic, lilting, now slow, three beats to a step, now swift, three steps to a beat. Old chiefs, half blind with trachoma, scarred with scrofula and decrepit with starvation; young bucks, fresh and still strong, danced side by side, turned by the alchemy of the drum into like things, young and vivid as dawn.

At intervals, at the bidding of the braves, squaws arose and moved sedately into the circle. In their dark dresses they moved about the outer edge of the circle with a side step that scarcely ruffled their skirts. The west lost its glow. Fires flashed here and there in the meadow. In the flickering, changing lights the dance went on and on. The flag fitfully revealed itself above the melting, gliding, opalescent group about the pole, that by degrees was growing larger as was the constant rim of somber squaws, with their dumb faces Sphinx-like in the half light.

Lydia shivered with excitement. Billy pulled her arm through his.

"I don't like this," he muttered.

"What's the matter?" exclaimed Lydia. "Do you think there's going to be trouble?"

"I don't know. It's just something in the air. I think we'd better find the folks and get you and Lizzie out of this."

"I don't believe they mean any harm," said Lydia. "Lots of the whites started home before sunset, anyhow."

"I wish you had," replied Billy. "Gee, here it comes."

The chant suddenly changed to a yell. The drum beat quickened, and the great circle of dancing Indians broke and charged the crowd of whites. A number of them drew revolvers and began firing them into the air. Others drew taut the great bows they carried. The whites plunged backward precipitately.

Billy thrust Lydia behind him. "Don't move, Lyd," he cried, pushing aside a threatening buck as he did so.

"Kill 'em whites!" shrieked the squaws.

"Run 'em whites off our reservation!" shouted half a dozen young bucks.

Lydia was trembling but cool. "Good for them! Oh, Billy, good for them!" she exclaimed.

He did not reply. His great body circled about her, with shoulder and elbow buffeting off the surging crowd. Thus far the whites had taken the proceedings as a joke. Then a white woman screamed,—

"Run! It's a massacre!"

"Massacre" is a horrifying word to use to whites in an Indian country. Men and women both took up the cry,—

"It's a massacre! Run!"

And the great crowd bolted.

Like pursuing wolves, the Indians followed, beating the laggards with their bows, shouting exultantly. Billy caught Lydia round the waist and held her in front of him as well as he could, and for a few moments the rush of the mob carried them on.

Then Lydia heard Billy's voice in her ear. "If this isn't stopped, it will be a massacre. We've got to find Charles Jackson."

"We may be killed trying to find him!" Lydia cried.

"We've got to make a try for it, anyhow," replied Billy. "Brace your shoulders back against my chest. I'll try to stop."

They succeeded in holding themselves steadily for a moment against the mob and in that moment, Billy caught a screaming squaw by the arm.

"Susie, where's Charlie Jackson?"

She jerked her thumb back toward the flag pole and twisted away.

"All right! Now we'll make for the pole, Lydia, get behind me and put your arms round my waist. Hang on, for heaven's sake."

Lydia did hang on for a few moments. But the flight was now developing into a free for all fight. And before she knew just how it happened, Lydia had fallen and feet surged over her.

She buried her face in her arms. It seemed an age to her before Billy had snatched her to her feet. In reality she was not down for more than two minutes. Billy swung her against his chest with one arm and swung out with his other, shouting at Indians and whites alike.

"You damned beasts! You dirty damned beasts."

Lydia, bruised and shaken, clung to him breathlessly, then cried, "Go ahead, Billy!"

He glanced down at her and saw a streak of blood on her forehead. His face worked and he began to sob and curse like a madman.

"They've hurt you, the hellhounds! I'll kill somebody for this."

Kicking, striking with his free arm, oaths rolling from his lips, he burst through the crowd and rushed Lydia to the free space about the flagpole where Charlie Jackson stood coolly watching the proceedings.

Billy shook his fist under the Indian's nose.

"Get down there and call the pack off or I'll brain you."

Jackson shrugged his shoulders, calmly. "Let 'em have their fun. It's their last blowout. I hope they do kill Levine and Marshall."

Lydia pulled herself free of Billy. Her voice was trembling, but she had not lost her head.

"Call them off, Charlie. It'll just mean trouble in the end for all of you if you don't."

Charlie looked at Lydia closely and his voice changed as he said, "You got hurt, Lydia? I'm sorry."

"Sorry! You damned brute!" raved Billy. "I tell you, call off this row!"

The two young men glared at each other. Afterglow and firelight revealed a ferocity in Billy's face and a cool hatred in Charlie's that made Lydia gasp. The shouting of the mob, the beating of the drum was receding toward the road. The flag snapped in the night wind.

Billy put his face closer to Charlie's. The muscles of his jaw knotted and his hands clenched and unclenched.

"Call it off!" he growled.

Charlie returned Billy's stare for a long moment. Then sullenly, slowly, he turned and threw out across the night a long, shrill cry. He gave it again and again. At each repetition the noise of the mob grew less, and shortly panting, feverish-eyed bucks began to struggle into the light around the pole.

Then, without a word, Billy led Lydia away. The Indians passing them shook their bows at them but they were unmolested.

"Can you walk, Lydia? Do you think you're badly hurt?" asked Billy.

"I'm not hurt except for this cut on my head. And I guess I'm scared and bruised from being stepped on. That's all."

"All! To think of me not scratched and you hurt! Your father ought to horsewhip me!"

"You saved me from being trampled to death!" cried Lydia, indignantly. "Oh there's the auto."

There it was, indeed, with old Lizzie standing in the tonneau, wringing her hands, and Amos and Levine, dust covered and disheveled, guarding the car with clubs.

They all shouted with relief when they saw the two. Lydia by now had wiped the blood from her face.

"Billy," cried Levine, "could you run the car and the two women down the road while Amos and I help the Agent get order here? The worst seems to be over, for some reason."

"Billy got Charlie Jackson to call the Indians in," said Lydia.

"Good work!" exclaimed Amos. "Are you both all right?"

"Yes," answered Lydia. "Go on! Billy'll take care of us."

"I'll wait for you at the willows, a mile below Last Chance," said Billy.

"Land," said Lizzie, as the car swung through the hurrying whites, to the road. "About one picnic a lifetime like this, would do me!"

Billy was an indifferent chauffeur but he reached the willows without mishap.

"Now," he said, "come out in front of the lamps, Lydia, till I see what happened to you."

"For heaven's sake, did Lydia get hurt?" screamed Lizzie.

"Don't fuss about me," said Lydia crossly, not offering to follow the other two out of the car.

Billy turned, lifted her down bodily and led her around to the lamps, while he told Lizzie what had happened.

The cut on the scalp was slight. Billy washed it out with water from the brook back of the willows and Lizzie produced a clean pocket handkerchief with which to bind it. Then they went back to the car and ate their belated supper. After a time, Lizzie, who had the back seat to herself, began to snore comfortably.

Little by little, the stars were blotted out by a thin film of clouds. Sitting under the willows with the murmur of the brook and the fragrance of marsh grass enveloping them, the two young people did not talk much.

"Billy, were you scared?" asked Lydia.

"I don't know. I only know I went crazy when I saw you were hurt. God, Lydia—I couldn't stand that!"

"Billy," whispered Lydia, "you're so good to me and I was so horrid to you once."

Billy felt her fingers on his knee and instantly the thin little hand was enveloped in his warm fist. "Do you take it all back, Lydia?"

"Well, the horrid part of it, I do," she hedged.

"That's all right," returned the young man. "I'm willing to fight for the rest of it. Don't try to pull your hand away, because I intend to hold it till the folks come. You can't help yourself, so you have no responsibility in the matter."

So for an hour longer they sat, watching the summer night and waiting. And sometimes it seemed to Lydia that they were a pioneer man and woman sitting in their prairie schooner watching for the Indians. And sometimes it seemed to her that they were the last white man and woman, that civilization had died and the hordes were coming down upon them.

Finally two dim figures approached. "All right, Lydia?" asked Amos.

"Oh, yes! Yes!" she cried. "Are either of you hurt?"

"No," replied Levine, "but we stayed till I'd got my half-breeds distributed about to watch that none of the full bloods got out of the meadow."

"Was any one hurt?" asked Billy.

"Oh, two or three broken heads among both Indians and whites. We got hold of Charlie Jackson about eleven and locked him up, then we felt secure."

"You aren't going to hurt Charlie!" cried Lydia.

"No, but we'll shut him up for a week or so," said Amos. "Move over, Lizzie."

"Goodness," exclaimed Lizzie, "I must have dozed off for a minute!"

In the laughter that followed, Levine started the car homeward.

During the trip, the story was told of Lydia's mishap, Billy and Lydia interpolating each other in the telling. Amos shook hands with Billy silently when they had finished and Levine turned round from the wheel to say,

"I'll not forget this night's work, Bill."

They reached home at daylight. The Celebration made table talk and newspaper space for several days. No real attempt was made to punish the Indians. For once, the whites, moved by a sense of tardy and inadequate justice, withheld their hands.

Kent never ceased to mourn that he had missed the affair. He confided the fact to Lydia one Sunday that he had told Levine of their eavesdropping on him in the woods.

"What did he say?" asked Lydia, flushing.

"Gave me this nice fat job," replied Kent.

Lydia stared, then she sighed. "Well, I don't understand men at all!"

And Kent laughed.

Lydia saw a good deal of Billy during the summer. He never spoke of the accident to her at the Celebration, except to inquire about her bruises which troubled her for a week or so. Lydia wondered if he was ashamed of his wild flame of anger and his tears. She herself never thought of the episode without a thrill, as if she had been close for once to the primal impulses of life.

Margery Marshall and Elviry went to Atlantic City and Newport this summer. John Levine was sure to take supper at the cottage once or twice a week, but he was very busy with his political work and with the enormous sales of mixed-breed lands to the whites.

It was just before college opened that Amos announced that he was going to buy the one hundred and twenty acres John had set aside for him.

"How are you going to pay for it?" Lydia asked.

"Don't you worry, I'll tend to that," replied Amos.

Levine was taking supper with them. "Better tell her all about it, Amos," he said. "You know Lydia is our partner."

"Well, she'll just worry," warned Amos. "John's going to hold it for me, till I can get the pine cut off. That'll pay for the land."

"How much did you pay for it, Mr. Levine?" asked Lydia.

Levine grinned. "I forget!"

Lydia's gaze was still the round, pellucid gaze of her childhood. She sat now with her chin cupped in her palm, her blue eyes on Levine. To the surprise of both the men, however, she said nothing.

After the supper dishes were washed, and Amos was attending to the chickens, Lydia came slowly out to the front steps where Levine was sitting. He reached up and catching her hand pulled her down beside him on the topmost step. She leaned her head against his arm and they sat in silence, Lydia with her eyes on the dim outline of the pine by the gate.

"Lydia," said John, finally, "how does the Great Search go on? We haven't reported for a long time."

"I don't think I make much headway," replied Lydia. "The older I grow, the less I understand men and I've always felt as if, if there was a God, He was a man."

"You mean male, rather than female," agreed John.

"Lydia, dear, I wish you did have faith."

"But do you believe, yourself?" urged Lydia.

"Yes, I know that the soul can't die," said the man, quietly. "And the thing that makes me surest is the feeling I have for you, I know that I'll have another chance."

"What do you mean?" asked Lydia wonderingly.

"That, you'll never know," he replied.

"Well, I know that you're a dear," said the young girl, unexpectedly, "no matter how you get your Indian lands. And I love you to death."

She patted his cheek caressingly, and John Levine smiled sadly to himself in the darkness.



CHAPTER XIV

THE HARVARD INSTRUCTOR

"The saddest things that I have seen are the burned pine woods and the diseased Indians."—The Murmuring Pine.

The University campus was a huge square of green, elm dotted, that was bordered on one edge for a quarter of a mile by the lake. The other three sides were enclosed by the college buildings, great Gothic piles of gray stone, ivy grown, with swallow haunted eaves. One entered the campus through wide archways, that framed from the street ravishing views of lake and elm, with leisurely figures of seniors in cap and gown in the foreground.

College life was not much unlike High School life for Lydia. She of course missed the dormitory living which is what makes University existence unique. The cottage was nearly three miles from the campus. Lydia took a street-car every morning, leaving the house with her father. She was very timid at first: suffered agony when called on to recite: reached all her classes as early as possible and sat in a far corner to escape notice. But gradually, among the six thousand students she began to lose her self-consciousness and to feel that, after all, she was only attending a larger High School.

It was curious, it seemed to her, in how short a time the real High School dropped out of her life. Miss Towne and the cooking teacher who had had so much to do with her adolescent development, became more or less dreamlike. And though Lydia did try to call on Miss Towne at the High School, her days were very full and little by little she slipped away entirely from the old environment.

Except for flying visits home, John Levine spent the year at Washington. He was returned to Congress practically automatically, at the end of his term. Kent throve mightily as a real estate man. He dashed about in a little "one lung" car with all the importance of nineteen in business for the first time. He continued to call on Lydia at irregular intervals in order to boast, she thought, of his real estate acumen and of his correspondence with Margery and Olga, both of whom were now at boarding-school.

Lydia was taking a general course in college. In a vague way, she was planning to become a teacher and partly because she had no aptitude for foreign languages, and partly because of the deep impression Miss Towne's little lecture on slang had made on her, she decided to teach English. She therefore took not only the required course in Freshman Composition, but an elective in Shakespeare, and was herded with fifty others into the classroom of a young instructor fresh from Harvard. He was a frail looking young man, smooth shaven and thin, with large, light brown eyes behind gold rimmed eyeglasses.

Lydia was deeply impressed from the very first by the young man's culture. He could quote Latin and Greek quite as freely as he could French and German and his ease in quoting the latter seemed as great as in quoting Palgrave's Lyrics, which Lydia was sure he could quote from cover to cover.

If his manner was a trifle impatient and condescending, this only served to enhance his impressiveness. And he knew his Shakespeare. Lydia entered under his guidance that ever new and ever old world of beauty that only the born Shakespeare lover discovers.

The Christmas recess had come and gone before Lydia became vaguely conscious that young Professor Willis called on her always to recite, whether he did on any other girl in the class or not. She did not know that from the first day she had entered his class the young professor had been conscious of the yellow head in the furthest corner of the classroom. It was a nobly shaped head bound round with curly yellow braids above a slender face, red cheeked yet delicate. He was conscious too of the home-made suit and the cheap shirtwaists, with the pathetic attempt at variety through different colored neckties. Little by little he recognized that the bashful young person had a mental background not shared by her mates, and he wondered about her.

It was early in January that he made an attempt to satisfy his curiosity. The snowfall had been light so far and heavy winds had blown the lake clear of drifts. Lydia often brought her skates to class with her and if the wind were favorable skated home after her last recitation.

She had just fastened on her skates one day when a rather breathless voice behind her said,

"Going for a skate, Miss Dudley?" and Professor Willis, skates over his shoulder, bore down on her.

Lydia blushed vividly—"I—I often skate home. I live three miles down the shore."

"Rather thought I'd have a try myself, if you don't mind."

"Heavens!" thought Lydia. "I hope he won't come clear home with me? The house looks awful!"

Willis fastened on his skates and stood up. "Which way?" he asked.

Lydia nodded homeward and started off silently, the Harvard man close beside her.

"You enjoy your Shakespeare work, Miss Dudley?" he asked.

"Oh, yes!" cried Lydia. "That most of anything. Don't you love to teach it?"

"Er—in some ways! I will admit that the co-educational end of it is very trying to an Eastern college man."

This was such a surprising view to Lydia that she forgot to be bashful. "Don't you like girls, Professor Willis?" she asked.

"Not in a boys' classroom—that is—at first the situation brought cold sweat to my face. But now, I carry on the work to a great extent for you. You are the only person with a background, don't you know."

Lydia didn't know. The Harvard man's voice, however, was entirely impersonal, so she ventured to explore.

"What do you mean by background?"

"If you wouldn't skate so outrageously fast," he panted, "I could tell you with more—more aplomb."

"But," explained Lydia, "I have to skate fast. There's always so much to be done and old Lizzie isn't well."

She looked at the Shakespeare professor innocently. He looked at his watch.

"Dear me!" he said, "I must be back in the classroom in half an hour. Supposing we continue this conversation to-morrow, in your own home, Miss Dudley? May I call to-morrow night?"

"Why yes," replied Lydia, in utter embarrassment again, "if you really want to! It's a dreadful trip,—to the end of the car line and half a mile along the road to a white cottage after that."

"That's nothing," said the Harvard man, gravely. "Till to-morrow night then," and lifting his cap, he skated back, leaving Lydia in a state of mind difficult to define.

She told Lizzie and her father that evening. Amos looked over his paper with a slight scowl. "You're too young to have a college professor calling."

"Well," cried Lydia, "you don't seem to realize how wonderful it is that he wants to take this awful trip out here, just to see me. And don't let it worry you, Daddy! He'll never want to come but once." She looked around the living-room disgustedly.

Amos started to speak, looked at Lizzie, who shook her head, and subsided. The older Lydia grew, the more helpless he felt in guiding her. It seemed to him though that Patience would be pleased to have a professor calling on her daughter, and he let the matter go at that.

The next day was Saturday, and Lydia started an attack on the living-room immediately after breakfast. She re-oiled the floors. She took down the curtains, washed and ironed them and put them up again. She blacked the base burner and gave the howling Adam a bath. The old mahogany worried her, even after she had polished it and re-arranged it until the worst of the scratches were obscured.

Her father's old wooden armchair, a solid mahogany that had belonged to his great-grandfather, she decided to varnish. She gave it two heavy coats and set it close to the kitchen stove to dry. By this time she was tired out. She lay in the dusk on the old couch watching the red eyes of the base burner, when Billy came in.

"Just stopped on my way home to see if you'd go skating to-night," he said. "Tired out? What've you been doing?"

Lydia enumerated the day's activities ending with, "Professor Willis is coming to call this evening."

Billy gave a low whistle. "Of course, I knew they'd begin to take notice sooner or later. But I don't see why you wanted to wear yourself out for a sissy like him."

"He's not a sissy. He's a gentleman," said Lydia, calmly. She was still curled up on the couch and Billy could just distinguish her bright hair in the red glow from the stove.

Billy was silent for a moment, then he said, "It's a shame you have to work so hard. I think of you so often when I see other girls in their pretty clothes, gadding about! Doggone it! and you're worth any ten of them. If I had my way—"

He paused and for a moment only the familiar booming of the ice disturbed the silence.

"I don't mind the work so much as I do going without the pretty clothes," said Lydia. "I suppose you'll think I'm awful silly," she suddenly sat up in her earnestness, "but when I get to thinking about how I'm growing up and that dresses never can mean to me when I'm old what they do now—oh, I can't explain to a man! It's like Omar Khayyam—

"'Yet ah, that Spring should vanish with the rose That youth's sweet scented manuscript should close—'

and my youth's going to close without the sweet scent of the rose."

Billy made one great stride over to the couch and sitting down beside Lydia he took her thin, work hardened little hands in his. "Lydia, no! You don't see yourself right! All the dresses in the world couldn't make you sweeter or more fragrant to a fellow's heart than you are now. The only importance to the clothes is that you love them so. Don't you see?"

Lydia laughed uncertainly. "I see that you're a dear old blarney, Billy. And I know one thing I have got that not one girl in a thousand has and that is the friendship of some of the best men in the world. In lots of ways, I'm very lucky. Honestly, I am! Trot on home, Billy. I've got to get supper. And I don't have to work so hard, remember that. Half my work is in trying to fix up the house."

Billy rose reluctantly. "I'm leaving you some marshmallows," he said. "I hope if you offer Willis one, it'll choke him, or," as he opened the door, "maybe he'll break his leg or his neck on the way out," and he shut the door firmly behind him.

Amos submitted with some grumbling to being relegated to the dining-room with Lizzie for the evening. He complained somewhat bitterly, however, over the condition of his armchair which had refused to dry and was in a state of stickiness that defied description.

Old Lizzie, who was almost as flushed and bright-eyed over the expected caller as Lydia, finally squelched Amos with the remark, "For the land's sake, Amos, you talk like an old man instead of a man still forty who ought to remember his own courting days!"

Willis arrived, shortly after eight. If the trip had been somewhat strenuous, he did not mention the fact. He shook hands with Amos, who, always eager to meet new people, would have lingered. But Lizzie called to him and he reluctantly withdrew. Lydia established her guest with his back to the dining-room door and the evening began.

The Harvard man was frankly curious. This was his first experience west of New York and he was trying to classify his impressions. The beauty of Lake City had intrigued him at first, he told Lydia, into believing that he was merely in a transplanted New England town. "And you know there are plenty of New Englanders on the faculty and many of the people of Lake Shore Avenue are second and third generation New Englanders. But the townspeople as a whole!" He stopped with a groan.

"What's the matter with them?" Lydia asked, a trifle belligerently. She was sitting on the couch, chin cupped in her hand, watching her caller so intently that she was forgetting to be bashful.

"Oh, you know they're so exactly like my classes in Shakespeare—raw-minded, no background, and plenty of them are of New England descent! I don't understand it. It's New England without its ancient soul, your Middle West."

"I don't know what you mean by background," said Lydia.

"But, Miss Dudley, you have it! Something, your reading or your environment has given you a mental referendum, as it were. You get more out of your Shakespeare than most of your mates because you understand so many of his references. You must have been a wide reader or your father and mother taught you well."

"I—you've got the wrong impression about me," Lydia protested. "I've read always and mostly good things, thanks to Mr. Levine, but so have many other people in Lake City."

Professor Willis looked at Lydia thoughtfully. "Levine? I thought he was a cheap scamp."

Lydia flushed. "He's my best friend and a finely read man. He's kept me supplied with books."

"Finely read, on the one hand," exclaimed Willis, "and on the other robbing Indians. How do you account for it?"

Lydia did not stir. She continued with her crystal gaze on this wise man from the East, struggling to get his viewpoint. There flashed into her mind the thought that perhaps, when she knew him better, he could help her on the Indian question.

"I can't account for it," she said. "I wish I could. Except for a French Canadian great-grandfather, Mr. Levine's a New Englander too."

"New Englander! Pshaw! Outside of Lake Shore Avenue and the college there are no New Englanders here. They are hollow mockeries, unless," he stared at Lydia through his gold-rimmed glass, "unless you are a reversion to type, yourself."

Lizzie spoke from the dining-room. "The chocolate's all ready, Lydia."

"Oh, I forgot," exclaimed Lydia, flying out of the room and returning with a tray of chocolate and cake. "The cold walk must have made you hungry."

Willis drew up to the table, and over his cup of chocolate remarked, "Ah—pardon me if I comment on the wonderful pieces of mahogany you have."

Lydia set down her cup. "Why, I hate it!" she cried.

"Hate it! It's priceless! Family pieces? I thought so! What delicious cake! How kind of your mother! I'd like to meet her, if I may."

"I made the cake, Professor Willis. My—my mother is not living."

The Harvard man's stilted manner left him. He set down his cup hastily. "Oh, my dear!" he exclaimed. "I was tactless! Forgive me!" Again he looked about the room and back at Lydia's face above the meager dress fashioned the year before from a cheap remnant. Could a mother's death, he wondered, have put the look into her eyes and lips he had often surprised there. "I suppose," he said finally, "that one might explain you, eventually, if one had the privilege of knowing you long enough, I—"

Adam chose this moment to yelp at the dining-room door which was barely ajar.

"Adam, be quiet!" roared Amos. "Liz, did you see my carpet slippers anywhere?" he added in a lower voice.

"I brought you a book," said Willis. "Browning's Dramatic Lyrics."

"I'd like to read them," Lydia spoke eagerly, with one ear on the dining-room.

Amos yawned loudly. "Did you wind the clock, Lizzie? No? Well, I will!" Another loud yawn and Amos was heard to begin on the mechanism of the huge old wall clock which wound with a sound like an old-fashioned chain pump. Lydia set her teeth in misery.

"Yes, you must add Browning to your background," said the Harvard man, appearing undisturbed by the sounds in the next room. "Browning is difficult at times but—" He was interrupted by a great clattering in the dining-room.

"Lizzie!" roared Amos. "Come here and pull this chair off of me. The next time Lydia varnishes anything—"

There was the sound of Lizzie pounding across the floor. The dining-room door was banged and after that the murmur of Lizzie's voice and subdued roars from Amos. Lydia looked at Willis in an agony of embarrassment.