Lydia of the Pines | Page 9

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