Lizzie was mending. Amos was sitting in his arm chair, with a bit of paper on which he was figuring. Lydia flew across the room and dropped on her knees beside him.
"Oh, Daddy dear, look at me! Billy's here and he's always going to be here. Tell us you're glad."
Amos looked up with a jerk. First at Billy standing stalwart and grave by the table, his deep eyes as steady as the hand he held out to Lizzie. Then at his daughter, with her transformed face.
"But," protested Amos, "I thought it was to be Kent."
"Oh, it couldn't have been Kent," exclaimed Lydia. "We never would have understood each other. Kent was for Margery."
A frown gathered on Amos' face. He did not really want Lydia to marry any one. All that had reconciled him to the thought of Kent had been Kent's relation to the Indian lands. And now, he discovered that he didn't want to give his daughter to any one. He threw a jealous arm about her.
"No, you can't have her, Billy," he said. "Nobody shall have her.
She's too good for the best man living."
"Yes, she is," agreed Billy. "But that isn't the point. The point is that Lydia actually wants me. I don't understand it myself, but she does and I know I can make her happy."
"I can make her happy myself," said Amos, gruffly.
"But you haven't," retorted Billy. "Look at the way you've acted about this land matter. And God knows, she deserves to be happy at any cost. Good heavens, when I think of her, it seems to me that nothing could be too much for her. I think of her trudging those miles in her patched old clothes to buy her school books—what a thin, big-eyed kiddie she was. Why, even as a cub, I used to appreciate her. And then when she stood up before the hearing, the bravest man among us, and when she got sick trying to earn those silly Prom clothes—— My God, Amos, if Lydia wants me, or the moon, or a town lot in South Africa, it's up to you to give it to her."