"If I take Brown's offer for the cottage, it would leave us enough to get a team and I bet I could hire a tractor to get to the cleared portion of it, this Fall. A hundred acres are clear, you know. I might as well quit the factory now, eh, Lydia?"
With a laugh that had a sob in it, Lydia kissed her father and whirled out the door. Billy was coming in at the gate. She flew down to seize his hand and turn him toward the road.
"Let's walk! I've such quantities to tell you!"
Billy turned obediently, but paused in the shadow of the pine. "Lydia, I can't tell you what it means to me. No matter what bigger things may seem to happen to me, nothing can equal the things I've felt and dreamed to-day."
Then he put his arms about Lydia and kissed her, and she put her arms about his neck and laid her head against his shoulder. They stood thus motionless while the pine whispered above them. And in the intensity of that embrace all the griefs of Lydia's life were hallowed and made purposeful.
"Lydia," said Billy, "I want to tell Mother and Dad. Will you come over home with me, now?"
"Yes," replied Lydia, "and then we must tell my father and Lizzie. Oh, Billy, I forgot," as they started down the road, "I've decided to homestead that land."
"But—why, Lydia dear, you're going to be a lawyer's wife. For heaven's sake, let that beastly land go."
"No, I'm going to be a pioneer's wife!"
There was a little pause, then Billy laughed uncertainly. "Well, I'm not going to talk about it to-night. I'm in a frame of mind to-night where I'd promise you to be an Indian chief if you ask it. Mother and Dad are in the kitchen."