Lydia of the Pines | Page 7

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