Lydia of the Pines Part 19

Lydia greatly preferred weeding the garden to cleaning the house.

Indeed the contrast between the fine garden, the well kept patch of lawn and the disorderly house was startling. Amos grumbled and complained but Lydia was in the hobble-de-hoy stage--she didn't care and she had no one teach her.

One afternoon in August, clad in her bathing suit, now much too small for her, she was working in the garden, when a voice behind her grunted,

"Eat!"

Lydia jumped and turned. The old squaw of two years before stood begging. She was as pitifully thin as ever. As she stared at the ugly old Indian, Lydia's throat tightened. She seemed to feel baby Patience's fingers clinging to hers in fear.

"Want some vegetables?" she asked, motioning toward the garden.

The squaw nodded eagerly and held up the dirty ap.r.o.n she was wearing.

Lydia began slowly to fill it, talking as she worked.

"Where do you live?" she asked.

The Indian jerked her gray head toward the north. "Big Woods."'

"But that's twenty miles. It must take you a long time to walk it.

Poor thing!"

The squaw shrugged her shoulders. Lydia stared at the toothless, trembling old mouth, hideous with wrinkles, then at the gnarled and shaking old hands.

"Haven't you any one to take care of you?"

"All sick--boy sick--man sick--girl sick. All time sick, all time nothing to eat."

"But won't some other Indian make you a garden, a little one?"

Again the squaw shrugged her shoulders. Her ap.r.o.n was full now. She produced a string from inside her waist and tying the ap.r.o.n up bag-like, she slung it over her shoulder. Then she gave Lydia a keen glance.

"Friend," she said, briefly, and turning, she tottered painfully out of the gate.

Followed by Adam, Lydia walked thoughtfully out upon the little pier Amos had built. They had no boat, but Lydia fished and dived from the pier. It was hard to understand how the Indians with all their rich pine land could be so poor. She resolved to ask her father and Levine about it and turned a somersault into the water. She swam about until tired, then turned over on her back to rest. Lying so a shadow drifted across her face and she raised her head. A gray birch bark canoe floated silently beside her. In it, in a gray bathing suit, sat Charlie Jackson.

"Goodness!" exclaimed Lydia. "How in the world you do it so quietly, I don't see."

"I saw something that looked like a wet yellow pup in the water, and stole up on it," grinned Charlie.

"Come on in. It's as warm as suds."

Charlie shot his canoe to the pier and in a moment, was floating beside Lydia. She took a deep breath, let herself sink and a moment or two later came up several yards beyond him. He did not miss her for a moment, then he started for her with a shout. A game of tag followed ending in a wild race to the pier which they reached neck and neck.

Adam wept and s...o...b..red with joy over their return.

"You certainly are a little sunfish in the water," panted Charlie, as they sat with feet dangling off the pier.

"Ought to be, I'm in it enough," returned Lydia. "Charlie, there's a poor old squaw came here to-day. What's the matter with the Indians?

Why don't they work?"

Charlie turned to look at the white child, uneasily. The two made a wonderful contrast. Charlie was big and bronze and deep chested, with regular features although they were a little heavy. Lydia, growing fast, was thinner than ever but cheeks and eyes were bright.

Charlie's mouth twisted in a sneer. "Why don't they work? Why don't the whites give 'em a chance? Dirty thieves, prowling round like timber wolves. Ask Dave Marshall. Ask that gumshoeing crook of a Levine. Don't ask me."

"Levine's not a crook," shouted Lydia. "He's my friend."

The sneer left Charlie's face and he laughed. "Your friend is he, little sunfish!"

"Yes," said Lydia, furiously. "He gave me Adam," hugging the dog's ugly, faithful head. He immediately tried to sit in her wet lap. "And he's done as much for me as my own father."

"If he's your friend," said the Indian gently, "I won't speak against him to you again."

Lydia instantly was mollified. Charlie was so old and so young! He was so different from Kent that staring into his deep black eyes, Lydia suddenly felt his alien race.

"I must go in and dress," she said. "It's time to get supper."

Charlie nodded and untied his canoe. After he was seated with paddle lifted, he glanced up at her mischievously.

"You're a very nice little girl," he said; "I shall come again. You may call me Uncle Charlie."

Lydia put out her tongue at him. "Good-by, Uncle!" she called and raced up the bank to the house.

"Daddy," she said that night at supper, "why should Mr. Marshall and Charlie Jackson both say Mr. Levine is a crook?"

Amos ate a piece of bread meditatively before replying. "Any man that goes into politics in this country leaves his reputation behind him.

You and I'll never have a better friend than John Levine."

Lydia nodded. She was only a child after all and still retained implicit faith in the opinion of those she loved. She went back to school that fall full of interest and importance. She was a soph.o.m.ore now and very proud of the fact that she knew the ropes. Her arrangement with Billy held for his second year books. With much pinching of the grocery money, Lizzie had achieved two new galatea sailor suits and so while she felt infinitely inferior to the elaborately gowned young misses of her grade, Lydia was not unhappy.

There was a new course of study offered the pupils this year. It was called the Cookery Course and was elective, not required. Lydia turned her small nose up at it. She was a good cook, without study, she told herself. But Miss Towne thought differently. She called Lydia into her room one day, early in the term. "Lydia, why don't you take the Cooking Course?"

"I can cook, Miss Towne. I do all our cooking and Daddy says I'm fine at it."

"I know, my dear, but there are other things connected with the Course that you need."

"What things?" asked Lydia, a trine obstinately.

"That's what I want you to find out for yourself. Come, Lydia, take my word for it. It's only two hours a week and no outside study required.

If after a term of it, you still think it's useless, why drop it."

So behold Lydia entered in the Cooking Course which was not popular.

The mothers of the majority of the girls did not, they said, send their daughters to school to be taught kitchen service. But by the efforts of Miss Towne and one or two other teachers, a dozen children ranging in age from fourteen to eighteen, with Lydia as the infant of the cla.s.s, were enticed into the bright model kitchen in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

It was not long after this that Lydia said to her father, one evening,

"Daddy, I've got to have twenty-five cents."

Amos looked up from his newspaper. "What for, Lydia? A quarter's a good deal of money. Takes me pretty near two hours to earn it."

"I know it," answered Lydia, wincing, "but I've got to buy a nail file.

You ought to see my hands compared with the other girls. And you ought to see dirty finger nails under the microscope. The cooking school teacher showed us before we made bread, today."