Kent led the way to the window-seat. "You're a good old sport, Lyd," he said. "Charlie'll look out for you. I gotta get back to Olga."
he returned to make peace with the pink organdy. She was very lovely and Kent was having his first flirtation. Yet before he went to sleep that night the last picture that floated before his eyes was of a thin little figure with worn mittens clasped over patched knees and a ravished child's face looking into his.
Charlie Jackson sat out two whole dances with Lydia. Their talk was of Adam and of fishing. Lydia longed to talk about Indians with him but didn't dare. Promptly at ten, Amos appeared at the front door.
Lydia's first party was over. Amos and old Lizzie were charmed with
Lydia's description of it and were sure she had had a wonderful time.
But Lydia felt that the dress had made of the party a hideous failure.
She knew now that she was marked among her mates as a poverty stricken
little dowd whom popular boys like Kent and Charlie pitied.
And yet because life is as kind to us as we have the intelligence to let it be, it was out of the party that grew slowly a new resolve of Lydia's—to have some day as pretty hands and as well shod feet as Olga and Hilda and Cissy, to learn how to make her dresses so that even the composing of an organdy might not be beyond her.
They saw less of John Levine during the late winter and early spring. He was running for sheriff on the Republican ticket. He was elected early in April by a comfortable majority and invited Amos and Lydia to a fine Sunday dinner in celebration at the best hotel in town. Kent's father in April was promoted from a minor position in the office of the plow factory to the secretaryship of the company. The family immediately moved to a better house over on the lake shore and it seemed to Lydia that Kent moved too, out of her life.
She missed him less than might have been expected. Her life was so different from that of any of the children that she knew, that growing into adolescence with the old bond of play disappearing, she fell back more and more on resources within herself. This did not prevent her going faithfully once a month to call on Margery Marshall. And these visits were rather pleasant than otherwise. Margery was going through the paper doll fever. Lydia always brought Florence Dombey with her and the two girls carried on an elaborate game of make-believe, the intricacies of which were entirely too much for Elviry Marshall, sitting within earshot.
Elviry Marshall had two consuming passions in life—Margery and gossip.
The questions she asked always irritated Lydia vaguely.
"What wages is your Pa getting now, Lydia?"
"Just the same, Mrs. Marshall."