"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."