"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.