Lydia of the Pines. Honoré Morrow

what I want to know, too," agreed Amos.

      "Because, by heck! she's so young to be such an old lady." He smoothed the short curly hair with a gesture that was indescribably gentle. "I tell you what, young Lydia, if you were ten years older and I were ten years younger—"

      Lydia leaned against his knee and took a large bite of cake. "You'd take me traveling, wouldn't you, Mr. Levine?" she said, comfortably.

      "You bet I would, and you should have your heart's desire, whatever that might be. If any one deserves it you do, young Lydia."

      Amos nodded and Lydia looked at them both with a sort of puzzled content as she munched her cake.

      "I brought a newly illustrated copy of 'Tom Sawyer' for you to see, Lydia," said Levine. "Keep it as long as you want to. It's over on the couch there."

      Lydia threw herself headlong on the book and the two men returned to the conversation she had interrupted.

      "My loan from Marshall comes due in January," said Amos. "My lord,

       I've got to do something."

      "What made you get so much?" asked Levine.

      "A thousand dollars? I told you at the time, I sorta lumped all my outstanding debts with the doctor's bill and funeral expenses and borrowed enough to cover."

      "He's a skin, Marshall is. Why does he live on this street except to save money?"

      Lydia looked up from "Tom Sawyer." There were two little lines of worry between her eyes and the little sick sense in the pit of her stomach that always came when she heard money matters discussed. Her earliest recollection was of her mother frantically striving to devise some method of meeting their latest loan.

      "I'd like to get enough ahead to buy a little farm. All my folks were farmers back in New Hampshire and I was a fool ever to have quit it. It looked like a mechanic could eat a farmer up, though, when I was a young fellow. Now a little farm looks good enough to me. But on a dollar and a half a day, I swan—" Amos sighed.

      "Land's high around here," said Levine. "I understand Marshall sold Eagle Farm for a hundred dollars an acre. Takes a sharp farmer to make interest on a hundred an acre. Lord—when you think of the land on the reservation twenty miles from here, just yelling for men to farm it and nothing but a bunch of dirty Indians to take advantage of it."

      "Look here, John," said Amos with sudden energy. "It's time that bunch of Indians moved on and gave white men a chance. I wouldn't say a word if they farmed the land, but such a lazy, lousy outfit!"

      "There are more than you feel that way, Amos," replied Levine. "But it would take an Act of Congress to do anything."

      "Well, why not an Act of Congress, then? What's that bunch we sent down to Washington doing?"

      "Poor brutes of Indians," said John Levine, refilling his pipe. "I get ugly about the reservation, yet I realize they've got first right to the land."

      "The man that can make best use of the land's got first right to it," insisted Amos. "That's what my ancestors believed two hundred and fifty years ago when they settled in New Hampshire and put loopholes under the eaves of their houses. Our farmhouse had loopholes like that. Snow used to sift in through 'em on my bed when I was a kid."

      Lydia, lying on her stomach on the couch, turning the leaves of "Tom

       Sawyer," looked up with sudden interest.

      "Daddy, let's go back there to live. I'd love to live in a house with loopholes."

      The two men laughed. "You should have been a boy, Lydia," said Amos.

      "A boy," sniffed Levine, "and who'd have mothered little Patience if she'd been a boy?"

      "That's right—yet, look at that litter on the desk in the parlor."

      Both the men smiled while Lydia blushed.

      "What are you going to do with that doll furniture, Lydia?" asked John

       Levine.

      "I'm going to make a doll house for little Patience, for Christmas."

       Lydia gave an uncomfortable wriggle. "Don't talk about me so much."

      "You're working a long way ahead," commented Amos. "That was your mother's trait. I wish I'd had it. Though how I could look ahead on a dollar and a half a day—Lydia, it's bedtime."

      Lydia rose reluctantly, her book under her arm.

      "Don't read upstairs, child," Amos went on; "go to bed and to sleep, directly."

      Lydia looked around for a safe place for the book and finally climbed up on a chair and laid it on the top shelf of the sideboard. Then she came back to her father's side and lifted her face for her good night kiss.

      "Good night, my child," said Amos.

      "How about me," asked Levine. "Haven't you one to spare for a lonely bachelor?"

      He pulled Lydia to him and kissed her gently on the cheek. "If you were ten years older and I were ten years younger—"

      "Then we'd travel," said the child, with a happy giggle as she ran out of the room.

      There was silence for a moment, then John Levine said, "Too bad old

       Lizzie is such a slob."

      "I know it," replied Amos, "but she gets no wages, just stayed on after nursing my wife. I can't afford to pay for decent help. And after all, she does the rough work, and she's honest and fond of the children."

      "Still Lydia ought to have a better chance. I wish you'd let me—" he hesitated.

      "Let you what?" asked Amos.

      "Nothing. She'd better work out things her own way. She'll be getting to notice things around the house as she grows older."

      "It is the devil's own mess here," admitted Amos. "I'm going to move next month. This place has got on my nerves."

      "No, Daddy, no!" exclaimed Lydia.

      Both men started as the little girl appeared in the kitchen door. "I came down to put Florence Dombey to bed," she explained. "Oh, Daddy, don't let's move again! Why, we've only been here two years."

      "I've got to get into a place where I can have a garden," insisted Amos. "If we go further out of town we can get more land for less rent."

      "Oh, I don't want to move," wailed Lydia. "Seems to me we've always been moving. Last time you said 'twas because you couldn't bear to stay in the house where mother died. I don't see what excuse you've got this time."

      "Lydia, go to bed!" cried Amos.

      Lydia retreated hastily into the kitchen and in 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."