"It won't break her heart," said Lydia. "Women's hearts don't break over that sort of thing."
"Lydia!" called Amos from the doorway, "aren't you going to give me any supper to-night?"
"Lord, it's two hours past milking time!" groaned Billy, and he started on a dog-trot for home.
CHAPTER XVI
DUCIT AMOR PATRIAE
"The same soil that nourishes the Indian and the white, nourishes me.
Yet they do not know that thus we are blood brothers."—The Murmuring
Pine.
It was the last week in August when John Levine was summoned before the commission. Lydia and Amos were summoned with him.
Lydia was frightened, Amos was irritable and sullen by turns after the summons finally came. They were due at the hearing at nine o'clock and arrived a little late. Amos had refused to be hurried.
The room in which the hearing was held was big and cool, with a heavily carpeted floor and walls lined with black walnut bookcases. There were two long tables at one end of the room behind one of which sat the three commissioners. At the other table were the official stenographers and Charlie Jackson. Before the tables were chairs and here were John Levine and Kent, Pa Norton, and Billy, old Susie and a younger squaw, with several bucks.
Lydia and her father dropped into empty seats and Lydia gave a little sigh of relief when Levine caught her eye across the room and smiled at her. She looked at the commissioners curiously. They were talking in undertones to one another and she thought that they all looked tired and harassed. She knew them fairly well from the many newspaper pictures she had seen of them. The fat gentleman, with penetrating blue eyes and a clean-shaven face, was Senator Smith of Texas. The roly-poly man, with black eyes and a grizzled beard, was Senator Elway of Maine, and the tall, smooth-shaven man with red hair was Senator James of New York.