E-text prepared by Al Haines

LYDIA OF THE PINES

by

HONORÉ WILLSIE

Author of

"The Heart of the Desert," "Still Jim," etc.

With Frontispiece in Colors by Eric Papse

[Transcriber's note: frontispiece missing from book.]

A. L. Burt Company
Publishers———New York
Published by arrangement with Frederick A. Stokes Company

1917

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I THE TOY BALLOON II THE HEROIC DAY III THE COTTAGE IV THE RAVISHED NEST V ADAM VI THE COOKING CLASS VII THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE VIII THE NOTE IX THE ELECTION X THE CAMP XI LYDIA GIGGLES XII THE HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR XIII THE INDIAN CELEBRATION XIV THE HARVARD INSTRUCTOR XV THE INVESTIGATION BEGINS XVI DUCIT AMOR PATRIAE XVII THE MILITARY HOP XVIII THE END OF A GREAT SEARCH XIX CAP AND GOWN XX THE YOUNGEST SCHOLAR

LYDIA OF THE PINES

CHAPTER I

THE TOY BALLOON

"I am the last of my kind. This is the very peak of loneliness."—The
Murmuring Pine.

There is a State in the North Mississippi Valley unexcelled for its quiet beauty. To the casual traveler there may be a certain monotony in the unending miles of rolling green hills, stretching on and on into distant, pale skies. But the native of the State knows that the monotony is only seeming.

He knows that the green hills shelter in their gentle valleys many placid lakes. Some of them are shallow and bordered with wild rice. Some are couched deep in the hollow of curving bluffs. Some are carefully secreted in virgin pine woods. From the train these pines are little suspected. Fire and the ax have long since destroyed any trace of their growth along the railway.

Yet if the traveler but knew, those distant purple shadows against the sky-line are primeval pine woods, strange to find in a State so highly cultivated, so dotted with thriving towns.

In summer the whole great State is a wonderland of color. Wide wheat lands of a delicate yellowish green sweep mile on mile till brought to pause by the black green of the woods. Mighty acres of corn land, blue-green, march on the heels of the wheat. Great pastures riotous with early goldenrod are thick dotted with milk herds. White farmhouses with red barns and little towns with gray roofs and green shaded streets dot the State like flower beds.

An old State, as we measure things out of New England, settled by New Englanders during the first great emigration after the War of 1812. Its capital, Lake City, lays claim to almost a century of existence. Lying among the hills in the northern part of the State, it contains both the state capitol and the state university. Of its thirty thousand inhabitants, five thousand are students and another five thousand are state legislators and state employees.

The town is one of quiet loveliness. It lies in the curving shore of one of the most beautiful of the little inland lakes. The university campus lies at the northern end of the curve. The dome of the capitol rises from the trees at the southern end. Between, deep lawns stretch to the water's edge with fine old houses capping the gentle slope of the shore. Inland lies the business section of the town, with the less pretentious of the dwellings. The whole city is dotted with great elms and maples, planted three quarters of a century ago.

A quiet town, Lake City, with an atmosphere that might well belong to
New England,—beauty, culture, leisure, are its hallmarks.

Fifteen years ago half a mile inland from the lake was an empty block that once had been a farm pasture. Three fine old oaks stood with tops together in the center of the block. The grass was still firm and green and thick in the ancient pasture except for narrow trails worn by children's feet. To the initiated each trail told its own story. There was a hollow square that formed the baseball diamond. There was a straight, short cut that led to the little cress-grown spring. There were the parallel lines for "Come-Come Pull Away," and there were numerous bald spots, the center of little radiating trails where, in the fall, each group of children had its complicated roasting oven in which potatoes and "weenies" were cooked.

On one August afternoon the pasture seemed deserted. It was circus day and the children of the surrounding blocks had all by one method or another won admission to the big tent on the hill east of the town.

Yet not quite all the children. For under one of the oak trees was a baby carriage in which a little girl of two lay fast asleep. And far above her, perched lightly but firmly in a swaying fork of the oak, was a long-legged little girl of twelve. She sat where she could peer easily down on her small sleeping sister, yet high enough to be completely hidden from casual view. She was a thin youngster, with short curling hair of a dusty yellow. The curly hair did not hide the fine square head, a noble head for so small a girl, set well on the little square shoulders. Her eyes were blue and black lashed, her nose nondescript, her mouth large, her chin square and her little jaw line long and pronounced. She wore a soiled sailor suit of blue galatea. Caught in the crotch of two opposite branches was a doll almost as large as the sleeping child below. It was a queer old-fashioned doll, with a huge china head, that displayed brilliant black hair and eyes as blue as those of her little mistress. The doll wore a clumsily made sailor suit of blue calico, which evidently had been washed recently, but not ironed. It is necessary to meet the doll properly, for she was an intimate and important member of the little girl's family. Her name was Florence Dombey.

A battered red book lay in Florence Dombey's lap. It was called, "With Clive in India." It was written by G. A. Henty and told of the marvelous and hair-breadth adventures of an English lad in an Indian campaign.

Florence Dombey's attention, however, was not on the book. It was riveted, hectically, on her mistress, who with her tongue caught between her lips was deftly whittling a cigar box cover into doll furniture, of a scale so tiny that even had Florence Dombey had a doll of her own, it could not have hoped to use the furniture.

It was very quiet in the oak tree. The little furniture-maker spoke softly to Florence Dombey occasionally, but otherwise crickets and locusts made the only sounds on the summer air.

Suddenly she closed the knife sharply. "Darn it! I've cut myself again," she said. She dropped the knife down the neck of her blouse and began to suck her finger. "Here, let me have Henty, Florence Dombey. Don't try to pig it, all the time. You know I don't get hardly any time to read."

The furniture and the remains of the cigar-box cover followed the knife into her blouse and she opened the book. But before she had begun to read there was a sleepy little call from below.

"Yes, baby!" called the child. "Here's Lydia, up in the tree! Watch me, dearie! See me come down. Here comes Florence Dombey first."

With some difficulty the book followed the knife and the furniture into the blouse. Florence Dombey, being hastily inverted, showed a length of light martin cord wrapped about her cotton legs.

"Here she comes, baby! Catch now for Lydia."

The baby below, a tiny plump replica of Lydia, sat up with a gurgle of delight and held up her arms as Florence Dombey, dangling unhappily, upside down, on the end of the marlin cord, was lowered carefully into the perambulator.

"And here I come. Watch me, baby!"

With a swing light and agile as a young monkey, Lydia let herself down, landing with a spring of which an acrobat might have boasted, beside the perambulator.

"There, sweetness!"—kissing the baby—"first we'll fix Florence
Dombey, then we'll start for home."

"Florence, home wiv baby."

"Yes, it's getting near supper time." Lydia tucked the still hectically staring doll in beside her small sister, turned the perambulator around and ran it along one of the little paths to the sidewalk. She hoisted it to the sidewalk with some puffing and several "darn its," then started toward the block of houses, north of the pasture.

At the crossing she met a small girl of her own age, who carried a toy balloon, and a popcorn ball.

"Hello, Lydia!" she cried. "It was a perfectly lovely circus!"

"Was it?" said Lydia, with an indifferent voice that something in her blue eyes denied. "Well, I had to take care of little Patience!"

"Huh!" shrilled the little girl, "old Lizzie would have done that! I think your father's mean not to give you the money."

Lydia's red cheeks went still redder. "My father's got plenty of money," she began fiercely. Here the baby interrupted.

"Baby love pritty—Baby love—" she held out two beseeching dimpled hands toward the red balloon.

"Patience, you can't have it," cried Lydia. "It—it'll make your tummy ache. I'll buy you one when you're older."

The black-eyed child, holding the red balloon, suddenly kissed little Patience, who was the pet of all the children in the neighborhood, and put the string of her balloon into the dimpled hand. "I had the circus—you can have the balloon," she said.

Lydia jerked the string away and held it out to the owner.

"We're no cheerity charities, Margery," she said. "I'll get Patience a balloon."

"You're an awful liar and a cruel beast, Lydia!" cried Margery. She snatched the string and tied it about the baby's wrist. "You know you can't buy her one and you know she'll cry herself sick for one, now she's seen mine, and I guess I love her as much as you do."

Lydia looked from the cherub in the perambulator, crowing ecstatically over the red bubble that tugged at her wrist, to the defiant Margery.

"I'll let her have it, Margery," she said reluctantly. "I'll make you a doll's high chair."

"All right," said Margery, nonchalantly. "Face tag! So long!"

Lydia ran the perambulator along the board walk. The street was macadamized and bordered with thrifty maple trees. Back of the maple trees were frame houses, of cheap and stupid construction. Before one of these Lydia paused. It was a dingy brown house, of the type known as "story and a half." There was a dormer window at the top and a bow window in the ground floor and a tiny entry porch at the front.

Lydia opened the gate in the picket fence and tugged the perambulator through and up to the porch.

"There, baby mine, shall Lydia take you in for your supper?"

"Supper," cooed little Patience, lifting her arms.

Lydia lifted her to the porch with surprising ease. The little two year old should have been no light weight for the little mother of twelve. She stood on the porch, watching Lydia arrange Florence Dombey in her place in the perambulator. Her resemblance to Lydia was marked. The same dusty gold hair though lighter, the square little shoulders, and fine set of the head. The red balloon tugging at her wrist, her soiled little white dress blowing in the summer breeze, she finally grew impatient of Lydia's attentions to Florence Dombey.

"Baby eat now," she cried with a stamp of her small foot.

Lydia laughed. She ran up the steps, took the baby's hand and led her through the entry into a square little room, evidently the parlor of the home. It was dusty and disorderly. The center-table of fine old mahogany was littered with pipes and newspapers. A patent rocker was doing duty as a clothes rack for hats and coats. A mahogany desk was almost indistinguishable under a clutter of doll's furniture. The sunset glow pouring through the window disclosed rolls of dust on the faded red Brussels carpet.

Lydia disgorged the contents of her blouse upon the desk, then followed little Patience into the next room. This was larger than the first and was evidently the dining-room and sitting-room. A huge old mahogany table and sideboard, ill kept and dusty, filled the bow window end of the room. Opposite the sideboard was a couch, draped with a red and green chenille spread. The floor was covered with oil cloth.

A short, stout old woman was setting the table. She had iron gray hair. Her face was a broad wreath of wrinkles, surrounding bespectacled black eyes and a thin mouth that never quite concealed a very white and handsome set of false teeth.

"See! Liz! See!" cried little Patience, pattering up to the old woman with the tugging balloon.

"Ain't that grand!" said Lizzie. "Where'd you git the money, Lydia?
Baby's milk's in the tin cup on the kitchen table. Your father's home.
You'd better fry the steak. He complains so about it when I do it."

Lydia left the baby clinging to Lizzie's skirts and went on into the kitchen. Her father was washing his hands at the sink.

"Hello, Dad!" she said. The child had a peculiar thread of richness in her voice when she spoke to little Patience and it was apparent again as she greeted the man at the sink. He turned toward her.

"Well, young woman, it's about time you got home," he said. "Baby all right?"

Lydia nodded and turned toward the litter of dishes and paper parcels on the kitchen table. Amos Dudley at this time was about forty years old,—a thin man of medium weight, his brown hair already gray at the temples. Lydia evidently got from him the blue of her eyes and the white of her teeth. He began to peel off a pair of brown overalls.

"What's for supper?" he asked.

"Round steak," said Lydia.

"For heaven's sake, don't let Liz touch it."

"I won't," said the child, piling up dishes deftly. "I'm going to give baby her cup of milk, and then I'll fix it in my patent way."

Amos nodded. "You're a natural cook, like your mother." He paused, one leg of his overalls off, disclosing his shiny black trousers. Lydia carried the cup of milk toward the dining-room. From where he sat he could see her kneel before little Patience, and hold the cup, while the baby drank thirstily. Little motes of the sunset light danced on the two curly golden heads. He looked from the children toward the dusty kitchen table.

"What a hell of a mess Liz does keep going," he muttered. "Patience would break her heart, if she knew. Oh! Patience, Patience!—"

Lydia came back with the empty cup. "Now for the steak," she exclaimed. "Gosh, what a fire—"

She attacked the greasy stove with enthusiasm and in a short time a savory smell of steak filled the house. Amos went into the dining-room and sat in a rocking chair with little Patience and the balloon in his lap. Old Lizzie hummed as she finished setting the table and Lydia whistled as she seasoned the potatoes Lizzie had set to frying.

"Where'd she get the balloon?" asked Amos as Lydia brought in the platter of meat.

"Margery gave it to her," answered the child. "Supper's ready."

"Got it at the circus, I suppose. I wish I could 'a' let you go,
Lydia, but at a dollar and a half a day, I swan I—"

"I didn't want to go," returned Lydia, sitting the baby in her high chair. "I'm getting too big for circuses."

"Too big for a circus!" Her father looked at her with understanding eyes. "I guess heaven is paved with lies like yours, Lydia. John Levine will be over to-night. Get some of the mess dug out of the parlor, will you, Lizzie?"

"Sure," said Lizzie, good-naturedly. Lydia sat opposite her father and poured tea. The ancient maid of all work sat beside Patience and dispensed the currant sauce and the cake.

The baby was half asleep before the meal was ended. "She didn't finish her nap this afternoon," said Lydia. "I'll take her up to bed now and finish my cake afterward."

She tugged the baby out of the high chair that was becoming too close a fit and toiled with her up the narrow stairs that led from the entry.

The little sisters slept together in a slant-ceilinged bedroom. Here again was dust and disorder, the floor covered with clothing and toys, the bed unmade, the old fashioned mahogany bureau piled high with books, brushes, and soiled teacups that had held the baby's milk.

There was still light enough to see by. Lydia stood Patience on the bed and got her into her nightdress after gently persuading the baby to let her fasten the balloon to the foot of the bed. Then she carried her to the little rocker by the window and with a look that was the very essence of motherhood began to rock the two year old to sleep. Presently there floated down to Amos, smoking his pipe on the front step, Lydia's childish, throaty contralto:

"I've reached the land of corn and wine
With all its riches surely mine,
I've reached that beauteous shining shore,
My heaven, my home, for ever more."

A little pause, during which crickets shrilled, then, in a softer voice:

"Blow him again to me
While my little one, while my pretty one sleeps."

Another pause—and still more softly:

"Wreathe me no gaudy chaplet;
Make it from simple flowers
Plucked from the lowly valley
After the summer showers."

The coolness of the August wind touched Amos' face, "Oh! Patience,
Patience—" he murmured.

Lydia sat for a moment or two with the sleeping baby in her arms, looking down on her with a curious gentle intentness. Then she rose carefully, and as carefully deposited little Patience on the bed. This done, she untied the balloon and carried it out with her to the little landing. There was a window here into which the August moon was beginning to shine. Lydia sat down with the balloon and felt of it carefully.

"Aren't balloons the most wonderful things, almost as wonderful as bubbles," she murmured. "I love the smell of them. Think what they can do, how they can float, better than birds! How you want to squeeze them but you don't dast! I'd rather have gone to the circus than to heaven."

In a moment she heard steps and greetings and her father leading his friend into the house. Then she slipped down the stairs and into the night. A dozen times she ran up and down the yard, the balloon like a fettered bird tugging at her wrist.

"I love it as much as little Patience does," she murmured. "Oh, I wish it was mine."

Finally, she ran out of the gate and up the street to the one fine house of which the street boasted. She stole up to the door and fastened the string of the balloon to the door bell, gave the bell a jerk and fled.

As she ran down the street, a boy, leaning against the gate-post next her own, cried, "What's the rush, Lydia?"

"Oh, hello, Kent! Did you like the circus?"

"The best ever! You should have taken that ticket I wanted you to.
Didn't cost me anything but carrying water to the elephants."

"I can't take anything I don't pay for. I promised mother. You know how it is, Kent."

"I guess your mother fixed it so you'd miss lots of good times, all right—— Now, don't fly off the handle—look, I got a trick. I've rubbed my baseball with match heads, so's I can play catch at night. Try it?"

"Gosh, isn't that wonderful!" exclaimed Lydia. The boy, who was a little taller than Lydia, led the way to the open space between his home and Lydia's. Then he spun Lydia a brisk ball.

"It's like a shooting star," she cried, spinning back a quick overhand shot, "but it makes your hands smell like anything."

"Lydia," called her father from the bow window, "it's time to come in."

"All right!" Then aside to Kent, "I'll wait till he calls me twice more, Kent. Keep them coming."

"Lydia!"

"Yes, Dad. Not so hard, Kent. Don't throw curves, just because I can't."

"Lydia! I shan't call again."

"Coming, Dad! Good night, Kent. Face tag!"

"Face tag yourself, smarty. Maybe I'll be over, to-morrow, if I ain't got anything better to do."

Lydia sauntered slowly up to the kitchen steps. "Well, I haven't anything pleasant at all to look forward to now," she thought. "The circus parade is over and I've returned the balloon. Gee, yes, there is too! I didn't eat my cake yet!"

She turned up the lamp in the kitchen and foraged in the cake box, bringing out the cake Lizzie had saved for her. With this in her hand she entered the dining-room. An extraordinarily long, thin man was stretched out in one arm chair, Amos in the other.

"You ought to sit in the parlor, Dad," said Lydia, reproachfully.

"It's too stuffy," said Amos.

"Oh, hello, young Lydia!" said the tall man. "Come here and let me look at you."

Levine drew the child to his knee. She looked with a clear affectionate gaze on his thin smooth-shaven face, and into his tired black eyes.

"Why do you always say 'young' Lydia?" asked the child.

"That's what I want to know, too," agreed Amos.

"Because, by heck! she's so young to be such an old lady." He smoothed the short curly hair with a gesture that was indescribably gentle. "I tell you what, young Lydia, if you were ten years older and I were ten years younger—"

Lydia leaned against his knee and took a large bite of cake. "You'd take me traveling, wouldn't you, Mr. Levine?" she said, comfortably.

"You bet I would, and you should have your heart's desire, whatever that might be. If any one deserves it you do, young Lydia."

Amos nodded and Lydia looked at them both with a sort of puzzled content as she munched her cake.

"I brought a newly illustrated copy of 'Tom Sawyer' for you to see, Lydia," said Levine. "Keep it as long as you want to. It's over on the couch there."

Lydia threw herself headlong on the book and the two men returned to the conversation she had interrupted.

"My loan from Marshall comes due in January," said Amos. "My lord,
I've got to do something."

"What made you get so much?" asked Levine.

"A thousand dollars? I told you at the time, I sorta lumped all my outstanding debts with the doctor's bill and funeral expenses and borrowed enough to cover."

"He's a skin, Marshall is. Why does he live on this street except to save money?"

Lydia looked up from "Tom Sawyer." There were two little lines of worry between her eyes and the little sick sense in the pit of her stomach that always came when she heard money matters discussed. Her earliest recollection was of her mother frantically striving to devise some method of meeting their latest loan.

"I'd like to get enough ahead to buy a little farm. All my folks were farmers back in New Hampshire and I was a fool ever to have quit it. It looked like a mechanic could eat a farmer up, though, when I was a young fellow. Now a little farm looks good enough to me. But on a dollar and a half a day, I swan—" Amos sighed.

"Land's high around here," said Levine. "I understand Marshall sold Eagle Farm for a hundred dollars an acre. Takes a sharp farmer to make interest on a hundred an acre. Lord—when you think of the land on the reservation twenty miles from here, just yelling for men to farm it and nothing but a bunch of dirty Indians to take advantage of it."

"Look here, John," said Amos with sudden energy. "It's time that bunch of Indians moved on and gave white men a chance. I wouldn't say a word if they farmed the land, but such a lazy, lousy outfit!"

"There are more than you feel that way, Amos," replied Levine. "But it would take an Act of Congress to do anything."

"Well, why not an Act of Congress, then? What's that bunch we sent down to Washington doing?"

"Poor brutes of Indians," said John Levine, refilling his pipe. "I get ugly about the reservation, yet I realize they've got first right to the land."

"The man that can make best use of the land's got first right to it," insisted Amos. "That's what my ancestors believed two hundred and fifty years ago when they settled in New Hampshire and put loopholes under the eaves of their houses. Our farmhouse had loopholes like that. Snow used to sift in through 'em on my bed when I was a kid."

Lydia, lying on her stomach on the couch, turning the leaves of "Tom
Sawyer," looked up with sudden interest.

"Daddy, let's go back there to live. I'd love to live in a house with loopholes."

The two men laughed. "You should have been a boy, Lydia," said Amos.

"A boy," sniffed Levine, "and who'd have mothered little Patience if she'd been a boy?"

"That's right—yet, look at that litter on the desk in the parlor."

Both the men smiled while Lydia blushed.

"What are you going to do with that doll furniture, Lydia?" asked John
Levine.

"I'm going to make a doll house for little Patience, for Christmas."
Lydia gave an uncomfortable wriggle. "Don't talk about me so much."

"You're working a long way ahead," commented Amos. "That was your mother's trait. I wish I'd had it. Though how I could look ahead on a dollar and a half a day—Lydia, it's bedtime."

Lydia rose reluctantly, her book under her arm.

"Don't read upstairs, child," Amos went on; "go to bed and to sleep, directly."

Lydia looked around for a safe place for the book and finally climbed up on a chair and laid it on the top shelf of the sideboard. Then she came back to her father's side and lifted her face for her good night kiss.

"Good night, my child," said Amos.

"How about me," asked Levine. "Haven't you one to spare for a lonely bachelor?"

He pulled Lydia to him and kissed her gently on the cheek. "If you were ten years older and I were ten years younger—"

"Then we'd travel," said the child, with a happy giggle as she ran out of the room.

There was silence for a moment, then John Levine said, "Too bad old
Lizzie is such a slob."

"I know it," replied Amos, "but she gets no wages, just stayed on after nursing my wife. I can't afford to pay for decent help. And after all, she does the rough work, and she's honest and fond of the children."

"Still Lydia ought to have a better chance. I wish you'd let me—" he hesitated.

"Let you what?" asked Amos.

"Nothing. She'd better work out things her own way. She'll be getting to notice things around the house as she grows older."

"It is the devil's own mess here," admitted Amos. "I'm going to move next month. This place has got on my nerves."

"No, Daddy, no!" exclaimed Lydia.

Both men started as the little girl appeared in the kitchen door. "I came down to put Florence Dombey to bed," she explained. "Oh, Daddy, don't let's move again! Why, we've only been here two years."

"I've got to get into a place where I can have a garden," insisted Amos. "If we go further out of town we can get more land for less rent."

"Oh, I don't want to move," wailed Lydia. "Seems to me we've always been moving. Last time you said 'twas because you couldn't bear to stay in the house where mother died. I don't see what excuse you've got this time."

"Lydia, go to bed!" cried Amos.

Lydia retreated hastily into the kitchen and in a moment they heard her footsteps on the back stairs.

"It's a good idea to have a garden," said John Levine. "I tell you, take that cottage of mine out near the lake. I'll let you have it for what you pay for this. It'll be empty the first of September."

"I'll go you," said Amos. "It's as pretty a place as I know of."

Again silence fell. Then Amos said, "John, why don't you go to Congress? Not to-day, or to-morrow, but maybe four or five years from now."

Levine looked at Amos curiously. The two men were about the same age. Levine's brown face had a foreign look about it, the gift of a Canadian French grandfather. Amos was typically Yankee, with the slightly aquiline nose, the high forehead and the thin hair, usually associated with portraits of Daniel Webster.

"Nice question for one poor man to put to another," said Levine, with a short laugh.

"No reason you should always be poor," replied Amos. "There's rich land lying twenty miles north of here, owned by nothing but Indians."

Levine scratched his head.

"You could run for sheriff," said Amos, "as a starter. You're an Elk."

"By heck!" exploded John Levine. "I'll try for it. No reason why a real estate man shouldn't go into politics as well as some of the shyster lawyers you and I know, huh, Amos?"

Upstairs, Lydia stood in a path of moonlight pulling off her clothes slowly and stifling her sobs for the sake of the little figure in the bed. Having jerked herself into her nightdress, she knelt by the bedside.

"O God," she prayed in a whisper, "don't let there be any more deaths in our family and help me to bring little Patience up right." This was her regular formula. To-night she added a plea and a threat. "And O God, don't let us move again. Seems though I can't stand being jerked around so much. If you do, God, I don't know what I'll say to you—Amen."

Softly as a shadow she crept in beside her baby sister and the moonlight slowly edged across the room and rested for a long time on the two curly heads, motionless in childhood's slumber.

CHAPTER II

THE HEROIC DAY

"Where the roots strike deepest, the fruitage is best."—The Murmuring
Pine.

Little Patience had forgotten the red balloon, overnight. Lydia had known that she would. Nevertheless, with the feeling that something was owing to the baby, she decided to turn this Saturday into an extra season of delight for her little charge.

"Do you care, Dad," asked Lydia, at breakfast, "if baby and I have lunch over at the lake shore?"

"Not if you're careful," answered Amos. "By the way," he added, "that cottage of John Levine's is right on the shore." He spoke with studied carelessness. Lydia had a passion for the water.

She stared at him now, with the curiously pellucid gaze that belongs to some blue eyed children and Amos had a vague sense of discomfort, as if somehow, he were not playing the game quite fairly. He dug into his coat pocket and brought up a handful of tobacco from which he disinterred two pennies.

"Here," he said, "one for each of you. Don't be late for supper, chickens."

He kissed the two children, picked up his dinner pail and was off. Lydia, her red cheeks redder than usual, smiled at Lizzie, as she dropped the pennies into the pocket of her blouse and stuffed a gray and frowsy little handkerchief on top of them.

"Isn't he the best old Daddy!" she exclaimed.

"Sure," said Lizzie absentmindedly, as she poured out her third cup of coffee. "Lydia, that dress of yours is real dirty. You get into something else and I'll wash it out to-day."

"I haven't got much of anything else to get into, have I,
Lizzie?—except my Sunday dress."

"You are dreadful short of clothes, child, what with the way you grow and the way you climb trees. I'm trying to save enough out of the grocery money to get you a couple more of them galatea dresses for when school opens, but land—your poor mother was such a hand with the needle, you used to look a perfect picture. There," warned by the sudden droop of Lydia's mouth, "I tell you, you'll be in and out of the water all day, anyhow. Both of you get into the bathing suits your Aunt Emily sent you. They're wool and it's going to be a dreadful hot day."

"Jefful hot day," said little Patience, gulping the last of her oatmeal.

"All right," answered Lydia, soberly. "Wouldn't you think Aunt Emily would have had more sense than to send all those grown up clothes? Who did she think's going to make 'em over, now?"

"I don't know, child. The poor thing is dead now, anyhow. Folks is always thoughtless about charity. Why I wasn't taught to sew, I don't know. Anyhow, the bathing suits she got special for you two."

"You bet your life, I'm going to learn how to sew," said Lydia, rising to untie the baby's bib. "I'm practising on Florence Dombey. Mother had taught me straight seams and had just begun me on over and over, when—"

"Over and over," repeated the baby, softly.

Lizzie put out a plump, toil-scarred hand and drew Lydia to her. "There, dearie! Think about other things. What shall poor old Liz fix you for lunch?"

The child rubbed her bright cheek against the old woman's faded one. "You are a solid comfort to me, Lizzie," she said with a sigh. Then after a moment she exclaimed, eagerly, "Oh! Lizzie, do you think we could have a deviled egg? Is it too expensive?"

"You shall have a deviled egg if I have to steal it. But maybe you might dust up the parlor a bit while I get things ready."

Lydia established little Patience on the dining-room floor with a linen picture book, brought in a broom and dustpan from the kitchen and began furiously to sweep the parlor. When the dust cleared somewhat she emerged with the dustpan heaped with sweepings and the corners of the room still untouched. She hung the coats and hats in the entry and rubbed off the top of the table with her winter Tam o' Shanter, from which the moths flew as she worked. She gazed thoughtfully at the litter on the desk and decided against touching it. Then with a sense of duty well done, she lifted little Patience and carried her up into the little bedroom.

The bathing suits were pretty blue woolen things, and when the two presented themselves to Lizzie in the kitchen the old woman exclaimed, "Well, if ever I seen two fairies!"

"A thin one and a fat one," chuckled Lydia. "Push the baby carriage down over the steps for me, Lizzie, and I'll prepare for our long, hard voyage."

Patience was established in her perambulator with her linen picture book. Florence Dombey was settled at her feet, with "Men of Iron." The bits of cigar box and the knife packed in a pasteboard box were tied to one edge of the carriage. Patience's milk, packed in a tin pail of ice, was laid on top of "Men of Iron." The paper bag of lunch dangled from the handle-bar and Lydia announced the preparations complete.

The way to the lake shore led under the maple trees for several blocks. Then the board walk turned abruptly to cross a marsh, high-grown now with ripening cat-tails. Having safely crossed the marsh, the walk ended in a grass-grown path. Lydia trundled the heavy perambulator with some difficulty along the path. The August sun was hot.

"'A life on the ocean wave—'"

she panted. "You are getting fat, baby!

'A home on the rolling deep.
Where the scattered waters rave
And the winds their revels keep.'

Darn it, I wish I had a bicycle!"

"Ahoy there! Hard aport with your helm, mate!" came a shout from behind her. A boy in a bright red bathing suit jumped off a bicycle.

"Hello, Kent!" said Lydia.

"Hello, yourself!" returned Kent. "Wait and I'll hitch to the front axle."

He untied a stout cord from his handle-bars and proceeded to fasten it from his saddle post to the perambulator. Lydia watched him with a glowing face. She was devoted to Kent, although they quarreled a great deal. He was a handsome boy, two years Lydia's senior; not tall for his years, but already broad and sturdy, with crinkly black hair and clear, black-lashed brown eyes. His face was round and ruddy under its summer tan. His lips were full and strong—an aggressive, jolly boy, with a quick temper and a generous heart. He and Lydia had been friends since kindergarten days.

"I'm going to stay in the Willows all day," said Lydia. "Don't go too fast, Kent."

"Dit-up! Dit-up, horsy!" screamed little Patience.

"Toot! Toot! Express for the Willows!" shouted Kent, mounting his wheel, and the procession was off, the perambulator bounding madly after the bicycle, while Patience shouted with delight and Lydia clung desperately to the handle-bars.

The path, after a few moments, shifted to the lake shore. The water there lapped quietly on a sandy beach, deep shaded by willows. Kent dismounted.

"Discharge your cargo!" he cried.

"Don't be so bossy," said Lydia. "This is my party."

"All right, then I won't play with you."

"Nobody asked you to, smarty. I was going to give you my deviled egg for lunch."

"Gosh," said Kent, "did you bring your lunch? Say, I guess I'll go home and get mother to give me some. But let's play pirates, first."

"All right! I choose to be chief first," agreed Lydia.

"And I'm the cannibal and baby's the stolen princess," said Kent.

The three children plunged into the game which is the common property of childhood. For a time, bloody captures, savage orgies, escape, pursuit, looting of great ships and burial of treasure, transformed the quiet shore to a theater of high crime. At last, as the August noon waxed high, and the hostage princess fell fast asleep in her perambulator cave, the cannibal, who had shifted to captured duke, bowed before the pirate.

"Sir," he said in a deep voice, "I have bethought myself of still further treasure which if you will allow me to go after in my trusty boat, I will get and bring to you—if you will allow me to say farewell at that time to my wife and babes."

"Ha!" returned the pirate. "How do I know you'll come back?"

The duke folded his arms. "You have my word of honor which never has, and never will, be broken."

"Go, duke—but return ere sundown." The pirate made a magnificent gesture toward the bicycle, "and, say Kent, bring plenty to fill yourself up, for I'm awful hungry and I'll need all we've got."

As Kent shot out of sight, Lydia turned to arrange the mosquito bar over little Patience, then she stood looking out over the lake. The morning wind had died and the water lay as motionless and perfect a blue as the sky above. Faint and far down the curving shore the white dome of the Capitol building rose above soft billows of green tree tops. Up the shore, woods crowned the gentle slopes of the hills. Across the lake lay a dim green shore-line of fields. Lydia gave a deep sigh. The beauty of the lake shore always stirred in her a wordless ecstasy. She waded slowly to her waist into the water, then turned gently on her back and floated with her eyes on the sky. Its depth of color was no deeper nor more crystal clear than the depths of her own blue gaze. The tender brooding wonder of the lake was a part and parcel of her own little face, so tiny in the wide expanse of water.

After some moments of drifting, she turned on her side and began to swim along the shore. She swam with a power and a precision of stroke that a man twice her size would have envied. But it must be noted that she did not get out of eye and ear shot of the perambulator beneath the willows; and she had not been swimming long before a curious agitation of the mosquito netting brought her ashore.

She wrung the water from her short skirt and was giving little Patience her bread and milk, when Kent returned with a paper bag.

"Ma was cross at me for pestering her, but I managed to get some sandwiches and doughnuts. Come on, let's begin. Gee, there's a squaw!"

Coming toward the three children seated in the sand by the perambulator was a thin bent old woman, leaning on a stick.

"Dirty old beggar," said Kent, beginning to devour his sandwiches.

"Isn't she awful!" exclaimed Lydia. Begging Indians were no novelty to Lake City children, but this one was so old and thin that Lydia was horrified. Toothless, her black hair streaked with gray, her calico dress unspeakably dirty, her hands like birds' claws clasping her stick, the squaw stopped in front of the children.

"Eat!" she said, pointing to her mouth, while her sunken black eyes were fixed on Kent's sandwiches.

Little Patience looked up and began to whimper with fear.

"Get out, you old rip!" said Kent.

"Eat! Eat!" insisted the squaw, a certain ferocity in her manner.

"Did you walk clear in from the reservation?" asked Lydia.

The squaw nodded, and held out her scrawny hand for the children's inspection. "No eats, all time no eats! You give eats—poor old woman."

"Oh, Kent, she's half starved! Let's give her some of our lunch," exclaimed Lydia.

"Not on your life," returned Kent. "Dirty, lazy lot! Why don't they work?"

"If we'd go halves, we'd have enough," insisted Lydia.

"You told me you'd only enough for yourself. Get out of here, you old she-devil."

The squaw did not so much as glance at Kent. Her eyes were fastened on Lydia, with the look of a hungry, expectant dog. Lydia ran her fingers through her damp curls, and sighed. Then she gave little Patience her share of the bread and butter and a cooky. She laid the precious deviled egg in its twist of paper on top of the remainder of the bread and cookies and handed them to the Indian.

"You can't have any of mine, if you give yours up!" warned Kent.

"I don't want any, pig!" returned Lydia.

The old squaw received the food with trembling fingers and broke into sobs, that tore at her old throat painfully. She said something to Lydia in Indian, and then to the children's surprise, she bundled the food up in her skirt and started as rapidly as possible back in the direction whence she had come.

"She's taking it back to some one," said Kent.

"Poor thing," said Lydia.

"Poor thing!" sniffed Kent. "It would be a good thing if they were all dead. My father says so."

"Well, I guess your father don't know everything," snapped Lydia.

"Evyfing," said Patience, who had finished her lunch and was digging in the sand.

Kent paused in the beginning of his attack on his last sandwich to look Lydia over. She was as thin as a half-grown chicken in her wet bathing suit. Her damp curls, clinging to her head and her eyes a little heavy with heat and weariness after her morning of play, made her look scarcely older than Patience. Kent wouldn't confess, even to himself, how fond he was of Lydia.

"Here," he said gruffly. "I can't eat this sandwich. Mother made me too many. And here's a doughnut."

"Thanks, Kent," said Lydia meekly. "What do you want to play, after lunch?"

"Robinson Crusoe," replied Kent promptly. "You'll have to be
Friday."

As recipient of his bounty, Lydia recognized Kent's advantage and conceded the point without protest.

She held Patience's abbreviated bathing suit skirt with one hand.
"Where are you heading for, baby?" she asked.

"Mardy! Mardy!" screamed Patience, tugging at her leash.

"Oh, rats, it's Margery Marshall. Look at the duds on her. She makes me sick," groaned Kent.

"She's crazy about little Patience," answered Lydia, "so I put up with a lot from her."

She loosed her hold on Patience. The baby trundled along the sand to meet the little girl in an immaculate white sailor suit, who approached pushing a doll buggy large enough to hold Patience. She ran to meet the baby and kissed her, then allowed her to help push the doll carriage.

"Mardy tum! Mardy tum!" chanted Patience.

Margery's black hair was in a long braid, tied with a wide white ribbon. Margery's hands were clean and so were her white stockings and shoes. She brought the doll's carriage to pause before Lydia and Kent and gazed at them appraisingly out of bright black eyes—beautiful eyes, large and heavily lashed. Kent's face was dirty and sweat streaked. His red bathing suit was gray with sand and green with grass stain. On his head he wore his favorite headgear, a disreputable white cotton cap with the words "Goldenrod Flour Mills" across the front.

"Well," he said belligerently, to Margery, "do you see anything green?"

Margery shrugged her shoulders. "Watcha playing?"

"Nothing! Want to play it?" replied Lydia.

"Thanks," answered Margery. "I'll watch you two while I sit with the baby. Isn't she just ducky in that bathing suit?"

Lydia melted visibly and showed a flash of white teeth. "You bet! How's Gwendolyn?" nodding toward the great bisque doll seated in the wonderful doll carriage. "I wish I had a doll like that."

"She isn't in it with Florence Dombey," said Kent. "Florence is some old sport, she is. Guess I'd better cut her down."

It was remarkable that while on most occasions Lydia was the tenderest of mothers to Florence Dombey, she was, when the fever of "play and pretend" was on her, capable of the most astonishing cruelties. During the game of pirates, Florence Dombey had been hung from a willow branch, in lieu of a yardarm, and had remained dangling there in the wind, forgotten by her mother.

Kent placed her in Patience's carriage. "I'll tell you what I'll do," he said. "I'll go up the shore and get Smith's flat boat. We'll anchor it out from the shore, and that'll be the wreck. We'll swim out to her and bring stuff in. And up under the bank there we'll build the cave and the barricade."

"Gee," exclaimed Lydia, "that's the best we've thought of yet. I'll be collecting stuff to put in the wreck."

All during the golden August afternoon the game waxed joyfully. For a long time, Margery sat aloof, playing with the baby. But when the excavating of the cave began, she succumbed, and began to grovel in the sand with the other two. She was allowed to come in as Friday's father, and baby Patience, panting at her work of scratching the sand with a crooked stick, was entered as the Parrot. Constant small avalanches of sand and soil from the bank powdered the children's hair and clothes with gray-black dust.

"Gosh, this is too much like work," groaned Kent, at last. "I'll tell you, let's play the finding of Friday's father."

"I don't want to be tied up in a boat," protested, Margery, at once.

"Mardy not in boat," chorused little Patience, toddling to the water's edge and throwing in a handful of sand.

"Isn't she a love!" sighed Margery.

"Huh, you girls make me sick," snorted Kent. "We won't tie you in the boat. We'll bring the boat in and get you, then we'll anchor it out where it is now, and—and—I'll go get Smith's rowboat, and Friday and I'll come out and rescue you."

Margery hesitated. "Aw, come on!" urged Kent. "Don't be such a 'fraid cat. That's why us kids don't like you, you're such a silly, dressed-up doll."

The banker's daughter flushed. Though she loved the pretty clothes and though the sense of superiority to other children, carefully cultivated by her mother, was the very breath of her nostrils, she had never been quite so happy as this afternoon when grubbing on an equality with these three inferior children.

"I'm not afraid at all and I'm just as dirty as Lydia is. Go ahead with your old boat."

They tethered Patience with Kent's cord to one of the willow trees and Margery was paddled out several boat lengths from the shore and the great stone that served for anchor was dropped over. Kent took a clean dive overboard, swam ashore and disappeared along the willow path. Little Patience set up a wail.

"Baby turn too. Baby turn, too," she wept.

"I'll go stay with her till Kent comes," said Lydia, diving into the water as casually as if she were rising from a chair.

"I won't stay in this awful boat alone!" shrieked Margery.

Lydia swam steadily to the shore, then turned. Margery was standing up in the boat.

"Sit down! Sit down!" cried Lydia.

Margery, beside herself with fear, tossed her arms, "I won't stay in this old—"

There was a great splash and a choking cry as Margery's black braid disappeared beneath the water.

"And she can't swim," gasped Lydia. "Kent!" she screamed, and made a flying leap into the water. Her slender, childish arms seemed suddenly steel. Her thin little legs took a racing stroke like tiny propellers. Margery came up on the far side of the boat and uttered another choking cry before she went down again. Lydia dived, caught the long black braid and brought the frenzied little face to the surface. Margery immediately threw an arm around Lydia's neck, and Lydia hit her in the face with a clenched small fist and all the strength she could muster.

"Let go, or I'll let you drown. Turn over on your back. There isn't a thing to be afraid of."

Margery, with a sob, obeyed and Lydia towed her the short distance to the boat. "There, catch hold," she said.

Both the children clung to the gunwale, Margery choking and sobbing.

"I can't lift you into the boat," panted Lydia. "But quit your crying.
You're safe. There's Kent."

The whole episode had taken but a few minutes. Kent had heard the call and some note of need in it registered, after a moment, in his mind. He ran back and leaped into the water.

He clambered into the flat boat and reaching over pulled Margery bodily over the gunwale. The child, sick and hysterical, huddled into the bottom of the boat.