Lydia of the Pines | Page 9

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