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.