Lydia of the Pines Part 36

"I don't see why."

"Because, after I finish High School, I'm going to tell him I know, to make him let me in on the deal. Look here, Lyd, don't tell him I was with you, anyhow."

"Oh, all right," replied Lydia, crossly. "For goodness' sake, don't let's talk about it any more. I don't see why men always have to be plotting! I'm going back to camp and help pack."

The driver arrived with the carryall at nine o'clock the next morning, and at mid-afternoon, Lydia was dropped at the gate, where Adam took possession of her. It was earlier than she had been expected, and Lizzie had not returned from her Sat.u.r.day marketing. Lydia lugged her suitcase up the path, glad to be at home, yet murmuring to herself a little disconsolately.

"Nothing to look forward to now, but school in the fall."

The house seemed small and dingy to her, after the open splendor of the pine woods. Old Lizzie had "let things go" and the rooms were dusty and disorderly. Lydia dropped her suitcase in the kitchen.

"I've just got to train old Lizzie," she said, "so that she won't leave her old carpet slippers and her ap.r.o.n in the middle of the kitchen every time she goes out. And Dad just must quit leaving his pipe on the dining-room table. I do wish we had Mission furniture instead of this everlasting old mahogany. I just guess there's got to be some reforming in this house, this summer. If I've got to leave off slang, Dad and Lizzie can leave off a few of their bad habits."

She carried the suitcase on into her bedroom and Lizzie, coming in, hot and bundle-laden an hour later, found the living-room in immaculate order and Lydia, in an old dress, blacking the kitchen stove.

"For the land's sake, child," said Lizzie as Lydia kissed her and took her bundles from her, "how tanned you are! And you shouldn't have begun work the minute you got home."

"I had to. I couldn't stand the dirt," answered Lydia, briskly. "Is Daddy all right? You'll find your slippers where they belong, Lizzie."

The old lady, in her rusty black alpaca which she always wore to town, gave Lydia a look that was at once reproachful and timid. Lydia had shown signs lately of having reached the "bringing up the family" stage of her development and Lizzie dreaded its progress.

Amos came in the gate shortly after six. Lydia was waiting for him at the front door. He looked suddenly shabby and old to Lydia and she kissed him very tenderly. It required all the supper hour and all the remainder of the evening to tell the story of the camp and to answer Lizzie's and Amos' questions. There were several episodes Lydia did not describe; that of the half breed council in the wood, for example, nor the "spooning" with Kent.

It was ten o'clock when Amos rose with a sigh. "Well, you had a good time, little girl, and I'm glad. But I swan, I don't want you ever to go off again without me and Liz and Adam. Adam howled himself to sleep every night and I'd 'a' liked to. I'm going out to see if the chickens are all right."

"I got everything that belongs to you mended up, Lydia," said Lizzie, following into the kitchen bedroom.

Lydia looked from the gnarled old hands to the neat rolls of stockings on the bureau. She had been wishing that Lizzie was a neat maid with a white ap.r.o.n! A sense of shame overwhelmed her and she threw her arms about her kind old friend.

"Lizzie, you're a lot too good to me," she whispered.

Lydia was sitting on the front steps, the next afternoon, with a book in her lap and Adam at her feet, when Billy Norton called. He stopped for a chat in the garden with her father, before coming up to greet Lydia.

"He is awful homely. A regular old farmer," she thought, comparing him with the elegant Gustus and with Kent's careless grace.

Billy was in his shirtsleeves. His blond hair was cropped unbecomingly close. Lydia did not see that the head this disclosed was more finely shaped than either of her friends. He was grinning as he came toward Lydia, showing his white teeth.

"h.e.l.lo, Lyd! Awful glad you're back!"

He sat down on the step below her and Lydia wrinkled her nose. He carried with him the odor of hay and horses.

"How's your mother?" asked Lydia. "I'm coming over, to-morrow."

"Mother's not so very well. She works too hard at the blamed canning.

I told her I'd rather never eat it than have her get so done up."

"I'll be over to help her," said Lydia. "We had a perfectly heavenly time in camp, Billy."

"Did you?" asked her caller, indifferently. "Hay is fine this year.

Never knew such a stand of clover."

"Miss Towne was grand to us. And Kent and Charlie are the best cooks, ever."

"Great accomplishment for men," muttered Billy. "Are you going to try to sell fudge, this winter, Lyd?"

"I don't know," Lydia's tone was mournful, "Daddy hates to have me.

Now I'm growing up he seems to be getting sensitive about my earning money."

"He's right too," said Billy, with a note in his voice that irritated Lydia.

"Much you know about it! You just try to make your clothes and buy your school books on nothing. Dad's just afraid people'll know how little he earns, that's all. Men are selfish pigs."

Astonished by this outburst, Billy turned round to look up at Lydia.

She was wearing her Sunday dress of the year before, a cheap cotton that she had outgrown. The young man at her feet did not see this.

All he observed were the dusty gold of her curly head, the clear blue of her eyes and the fine set of her head on her thin little shoulders.

"You always look just right to me, Lyd," he said. "Listen, Lydia. I'm not going to be a farmer, I'm--"

"Not be a farmer!" cried Lydia. "After all you've said about it!"

"No! I'm going in for two years' law, then I'm going into politics. I tell you, Lydia, what this country needs to-day more than anything is young, clean politicians."

"You mean you're going to do like Mr. Levine?"

"G.o.d forbid!" exclaimed the young man. "I'm going to fight men like Levine. And by heck," he paused and looked at Lydia dreamily, "I'll be governor and maybe more, yet."

"But what's changed you?" persisted Lydia.

"The fight about the reservation, mostly. There's something wrong, you know, in a system of government that allows conditions like that. It's against American principles."

His tone was oratorical, and Lydia was impressed. She forgot that Billy smelled of the barnyard.

"Well," she said, "we'd all be proud of you if you were president, I can tell you."

"Would you be!" Billy's voice was pleased. "Then, Lydia, will you wait for me?"

"Wait for you?"

"Yes, till I make a name to bring to you."

Lydia flushed angrily. "Look here, Billy Norton, you don't have to be silly, after all the years we've known each other. I'm only fifteen, just remember that, and I don't propose to wait for any man. I'd as soon think of waiting for--for Adam, as for you, anyhow."

Billy rose with dignity, and without a word strode down the path to the gate and thence up the road. Lydia stared after him indignantly.

"That old _farmer_!" she said to Adam, who wriggled and s...o...b..red, sympathetically.

She was still indignant when John Levine arrived and found her toasting herself and the waffles for supper, indiscriminately. Perhaps it was this sense of indignation that made her less patient than usual with what she was growing to consider the foibles of the male s.e.x. At any rate, she precipitated her carefully planned conversation with Levine, when the four of them were seated on the back steps, after supper, fighting mosquitoes, and watching the exquisite orange of the afterglow change to lavender.

The others were listening to Lydia's account of her investigating tour with Charlie.