Lydia of the Pines Part 58

Lizzie came in at this moment with a bowl of broth. "I'll hold it for you, Lydia," said Billy. "Never mind pulling the little table up, Lizzie, she's too weak to fuss with a table."

There was a remote twinkle in Lizzie's old eyes, but she gave the bowl over to Billy, and tactfully withdrew to the kitchen, where she sat down with her feet in the oven. "Drat Kent!" she said to herself.

Billy moved over to sit on the edge of the couch, and Lydia began to sip the broth, spoonful by spoonful. "It's such fun to be weak and a little helpless and have people waiting on you," she said. "It's the first time it ever happened to me."

As she spoke she was thinking how Billy had improved. How immaculate he was and how well his blue suit fitted him. There was no barnyard odor about him now! Only a whiff of the good cigars he smoked.

"Billy," she said, "what would you say if next year I took the short course in agriculture?"

Billy almost dropped the bowl. "I'd be speechless!" he exclaimed.

"I hate to think of teaching," Lydia went on, "and I'm crazy about the country and farming and so is Dad. And there's more than that to it."

What more there was to it, she did not say then, for Ma Norton came bustling in. She made no comment on Billy's posing as a table! Ma was wise and she was almost as devoted to Lydia as Billy himself.

"It's nice to see the pink coming back in your cheeks, Lydia," she said. "I just ran over to say I was going into town to do some shopping, early in the morning, and if there was anything I could do for you--?"

"No, thank you," said Lydia. "I've begun to save up now to buy a cow!"

And Ma looked on with a puzzled smile as Lydia and Billy burst into sudden shrieks of laughter.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE END OF A GREAT SEARCH

"Abiding love! Those humans who know it, become an essential part of nature's scheme."--_The Murmuring Pine_.

Lydia returned to her college work the Monday after the Junior Prom, a little thinner, and her color not quite so bright as usual, but in a most cheerful frame of mind. She was feeling, somehow, a new sense of maturity and contentment. Even tales of the wonders of the Prom did not disturb her much. She made up her lost cla.s.sroom work, then took on an extra course in English Essayists with Professor Willis, just to satisfy her general sense of superiority to the ordinary temptations that should have disturbed a young female with fifteen idle dollars in her pocket!

Kent was devoting a good deal of attention to Lydia but this did not prevent his taking Margery about. He was, he explained to Lydia, so sorry for her!

"You don't have to explain to me," protested Lydia. "I want you to go with all the girls you like. I intend to see all I want of as many men as care to see me. I told you this was my playtime."

Kent's reply to this was a non-committal grunt.

It was late in May that he told Lydia what John Levine had finally accomplished, in his silent months of work in Washington. The morning after he told Lydia, Lake City was ringing with the news. The Indians on the reservation were to be removed bodily to a reservation in the Southwest. The reservation was then to be thrown open to white settlement.

"What will poor Charlie Jackson say?" were Lydia's first words.

Kent shrugged his shoulders. "Poor old scout! He'll have to make a new start in the West. But isn't it glorious news, Lyd! The land reverts to the Government and the Land Office opens it, just as in pioneer days. Everybody who's t.i.tle's in question now can reenter under settlement laws. Isn't Levine a wizard! Why don't you say something, Lydia?"

"I don't know what to say," said Lydia. "I'm sick at heart for the Indians. But I'm glad that the awful temptation of the pines is going to be taken away from Lake City. Though how good can come out of a wrong, I'm not sure. I don't understand Mr. Levine. Oh, dear! It's all wrong. When do the Indians go?"

"The last of June. It's funny, Lydia, that you don't have more sympathy with my work," replied Kent, gloomily.

"Oh, Kent!" cried Lydia, "I want to believe that everything you do is right but something's the matter with my mind, I seem to have to decide matters of right and wrong for myself. When will Mr. Levine come home?"

"Next month. Well, there's one consolation. You've always been crazy about Levine and you don't approve of him, either."

Lydia flushed. "Oh, I don't say that I don't approve of him. I just don't understand him. Maybe he really believes the end justifies the means."

"Huh! Isn't that just what I believe?" demanded Kent. He looked at her so happily, his boyish eyes so appealing, his square chin so belligerent, that Lydia suddenly laughed and gave his ear a tweak.

"Poor old vanity! Did he want all the ladies to adore him? Well, they do, so cheer up!"

Kent grinned. "Lyd, you're a goose and a good old pal! Hang it, I'm glad you've got brain enough to stick to your own opinions!"

On a Sunday afternoon, late in June, John Levine turned in at the gate as casually as though he had left but the day before. Lydia was inspecting the garden with her father, when she heard Adam bark and whine a welcome to some one.

"Oh, there he is, Daddy!" she cried, and she dashed down the rows of young peas, her white skirts fluttering, both hands extended.

John seized her hands and for a moment the two stood smiling and looking into each other's face. Except that he was grayer, Levine was unchanged. He broke the silence to say, "Well! Well! young Lydia, you are grown up. I don't see how you manage to look so grown up, when your face remains unchanged."

"It's my hair," said Lydia, "and my skirts."

"Of course," growled Amos, "I realize that I count only as Lydia's father. Still I think you ought to recognize me, anyhow."

The two men clasped hands. "Well, Amos?"

"It's been a long time between drinks, John."

"I know it, Amos, but my ch.o.r.e's done. Now, I'll stay home and enjoy life. Lydia, is it too hot for waffles and coffee, for supper? Lord, I've dreamed of those old days and of this meeting for nine months."

"It's not too hot for anything on earth you can ask for," returned Lydia, beginning to roll up her sleeves. "I'll go right in and start them now."

John looked after her, at the lengthened skirts, at the gold braids wrapped round her head. "She doesn't change except in size, thank G.o.d," he said.

"Oh, she gets prettier," said Amos, carelessly. "She's sort of grown up to her mouth, and the way she wears her hair shows the fine set of her head. She's improved a lot."

"She has _not_! Amos, you never did appreciate her. She couldn't be any more charming now than she was as a kiddie."

Amos put an affectionate hand on his friend's shoulder. "You always were an old fool, John. Come up and peel your coat, then take a look at the garden. There's Lizzie, dying to speak to you."

Levine looked around the living-room, complacently. "Jove, isn't it fine! Most homelike place in America. Lydia's been fixing up the old mahogany, eh?"

"Yes! One of the professors told her it was O. K., so she got a book out of the library on old furniture and now we are contented and strictly up to date. These d.a.m.ned rugs though, I can't get her to tack 'em down. They're just like so many rags on the floor! I never had a chance to tell you what she did to my mahogany arm chair, did I?"

He retailed the story of Willis' first call and John roared though he murmured, "Poor kiddie," as he did so.

"She's given me over to my sins, though, lately," Amos went on, with the faint twinkle in his eyes that Lydia had inherited. "She brought me up by hand, for a long time, hid my pipes, wanted me to manicure my nails, wouldn't let me eat in my shirt sleeves or drink my coffee out of the saucer. But her friend, Willis, likes me, as is,--so she's let me backslide without a murmur."

Amos paused and looked out at the shimmering lake. "John, I wish I had five daughters. There's nothing like 'em in the world."