Lydia of the Pines | Page 7

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