Lydia of the Pines. Honoré Morrow

in the market." He looked at the nails hammered in without a crack or bruise in the wood, then laughed again.

      "Get your and the baby's hats, Lydia. We stopped to take you for a ride."

      Lydia's eyes danced, then she shook her head. "I can't! The bread's in baking and I'm watching it."

      "Where's Lizzie?"

      "She went in town to do the marketing! Darn it! Don't I have awful luck?"

      Lydia sighed and looked from baby Patience and Margery, walking up and down the path, to Mrs. Marshall, holding the reins.

      "Well, anyhow," she said, with sudden cheerfulness, "Mrs. Marshall'll be glad I'm not coming, and some day, maybe you'll take me when she isn't with you."

      Dave started to protest, then the polite lie faded on his lips. Lydia turned her pellucid gaze to his with such a look of mature understanding, that he ended by nodding as if she had indeed been grown up, and rising, said, "Perhaps you're right. Good-by, my dear. Come, Margery."

      Lydia stood with the baby clinging to her skirts. There were tears in her eyes. Sometimes she looked on the world that other children lived in, with the wonder and longing of a little beggar snub-nosed against the window of a French pastry shop.

      John Levine came home with Amos that night to supper. Amos felt safe about an unexpected guest on Saturday nights for there was always a pot of baked beans, at the baking of which Lizzie was a master hand, and there were always biscuits. Lydia was expert at making these. She had taken of late to practising with her mother's old cook book and Amos felt as if he were getting a new lease of gastronomic life.

      "Well," said Levine, after supper was finished, the baby was asleep and Lydia was established with a copy of "The Water Babies" he had brought her, "I had an interesting trip, this week."

      Amos tossed the bag of tobacco to Levine. "Where?"

      "I put in most of the week on horseback up on the reservation. Amos, the pine land up in there is something to dream of. Why, there's nothing like it left in the Mississippi Valley, nor hasn't been for twenty years. Have you ever been up there?"

      Amos shook his head. "I've just never had time. It's a God-awful trip. No railroad, twenty-mile drive—"

      Levine nodded. "The Indians are in awful bad shape up there. Agent's in it for what he can get, I guess. Don't know as I blame him. The sooner the Indians are gone the better it'll be for us and all concerned."

      "What's the matter with 'em?" asked Lydia.

      "Consumption—some kind of eye disease—starvation—"

      The child shivered and her eyes widened.

      "You'd better go on with the 'Water Babies,'" said John. "Has Tom fallen into the river yet?"

      "No, he's just seen himself in the mirror," answered Lydia, burying her nose in the delectable tale again.

      "It's a wonderful story," said Levine, his black eyes reminiscent.

      "'Clear and cool, clear and cool,

       By laughing shallow and dreaming pool;

      * * * * * *

      Undefiled, for the undefiled;

       Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child.'

      It has some unforgettable verse in it. Well, as I was saying, Amos, that timber isn't going to stay up there and rot—because, I'm going to get it out of there!"

      "How?" asked Amos.

      "Act of Congress, maybe. Maybe a railroad will get a permit to go through, eh? There are several ways. We'll die rich, yet, Amos."

      Amos pulled at his pipe and shook his head. "You will but I won't. It isn't in our blood."

      "Shucks, Amos. Where's your nerve?"

      Amos looked at Levine silently for a moment. Then he said huskily,

      "My nerve is gone with Patience. And if she isn't in heaven, there isn't one, that's all."

      Lydia looked up from her story with a quick flash of tragedy in her eyes.

      "Well," said John, smiling at her gently, "if you don't want to be rich, Amos, Lydia does. I'll give her the cottage here, the first fifty thousand I make off of Indian pine lands."

      "I swan," exclaimed Amos, "if you do that, I'll buy a cow and a pig and some chickens and I can pretty near make a living right here."

      "You're foolish, Amos. This isn't New England. This is the West. All you've got to do is to keep your nerve, and any one with sense can make a killing. Opportunity screams at you."

      "I guess she's always on my deaf side," said Amos.

      "When I grow up," said Lydia, suddenly, "I'm going to buy a ship and sail to Africa and explore the jungles."

      "I'll go with you, Lydia,", exclaimed Levine, "hanged if I don't sell my Indian lands for real money, and go right along with you."

      "Mr. Marshall says 'like Hell you'll get some Indian lands,'" mused the child.

      Both men exclaimed together, "What!"

      Lydia was confused but repeated her conversation with Marshall.

      "So that's the way the wind blows," said Levine.

      "You don't think for a minute there's a banker in town without one hand on the reservation," said Amos. "Lydia, you're old enough now not to repeat conversations you hear at home. Don't you ever tell anybody the things you hear me and Mr. Levine talk over. Understand?" sharply.

      "Yes, Daddy," murmured Lydia, flushing painfully.

      "You don't have to jaw the child that way, Amos." Levine's voice was impatient. "Just explain things to her. Why do you want to humiliate her?"

      Amos gave a short laugh. "Takes a bachelor to bring up kids. Run along to bed, Lydia."

      "Lydia's not a kid. She's a grown-up lady in disguise," said Levine, catching her hand as she passed and drawing her to him. "Good night, young Lydia! If you were ten years older and I were ten years younger—"

      Lydia smiled through tear-dimmed eyes. "We'd travel!" she said.

      Cold weather set in early this year. Before Thanksgiving the lake was ice-locked for the winter. The garden was flinty, and on Thanksgiving Day, three inches of snow fell. The family rose in the dark. Amos, with his dinner pail, left the house an hour before Lydia and the sun was just flushing the brown tree tops when she waved good-by to little Patience, whose lovely little face against the window was the last thing she saw in the morning, the first thing she saw watching for her return in the dusk of the early winter evening.

      Amos, always a little moody and a little restless, since the children's mother had gone to her last sleep, grew more so as the end of the year approached. It was perhaps a week before Christmas on a Sunday afternoon that he called Lydia to him. Patience was having her nap and Lizzie had gone to call on Mrs. Norton.

      Lydia, who was re-reading "The Water Babies," put it down reluctantly and came to her father's side. Her heart thumped heavily. Her father's depressed voice meant just one thing—money trouble.

      He was very gentle. He put his hand on the dusty yellow of her hair. He was very careful of the children's hair. Like many New England farm lads he was a jack of all trades. He clipped Lydia's hair every month himself.

      "Your hair will be thick enough in another year, so's I won't have to cut it any more, Lydia. It's coming along thick as felt. Wouldn't think it was once thin, now."

      Lydia eyed her father's care-lined face uneasily. Amos still hesitated.

      "Where'd you get that dress, my dear?" he asked.

      "Lizzie and I made it of that one of mother's," answered the child. "It isn't made so awful good, but I like to wear it, because it was hers."

      "Yes,