Ma Norton looked at Lydia searchingly. "I didn't know you had anything to do with Olga or with Margery either, now."
"Goodness!" exclaimed Lydia, "this is Charlie's, party! None of 'em would go on my invitation. I—I don't quite see why, but I don't have chums like the rest."
"I wouldn't let it worry me," said Ma. "You've never had time to lally-gag. That's the secret of it."
Lydia turned this over in her mind thoughtfully for a moment and the older woman, looking up from her sewing caught on the young face the look of sadness that should not have been there.
"It would be nice for you to have the camping trip, dear," said Ma. "You've had so little to do with children your own age. I suppose you're worrying over the money end?"
Lydia nodded. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Every spring you get some one in to help you clean house. If you'll do it in Easter vacation, this year, and let me help, why, that would be a couple of dollars, wouldn't it?"
Ma Norton looked at the slender little figure and thought of the heavy carpet beating, the shoving of furniture, the cleaning of mattresses that the stout old colored man hustled through for her every spring. And she thought of the winter's butter and egg money (nearly forty dollars it amounted to already) that she was saving for new parlor curtains. Then she recalled the little figure that had nightly trudged two miles delivering milk rather than take Billy's school books as a gift. And Ma Norton smiled a little ruefully as she said,
"All right, you can help me instead of old Job and I'll pay you five dollars."
"Five dollars for what?" asked Billy. He had come in the side door, unheeded.
His mother explained the situation. Billy listened attentively, warming his hands at the stove.