Lydia of the Pines Part 63

"But I can't live that way!" wailed Lydia.

"Well, you have the cottage. He used to think he'd be perfectly happy if he owned that."

"Oh, there's a mortgage on the cottage!" exclaimed Lydia. "Poor Daddy!

He wants to pay the mortgage with the lands."

"It's tough luck! But there's nothing for you to do, Lydia, but to stick to it. Don't weaken and things will come out all right. See if they don't. And you've always got me. And if I see they're worrying you too much, I'll make trouble for 'em."

A vague, warm sense of comfort and protection was stilling Lydia's trembling. She rose and looked up into his face gratefully. "I don't see why you're so good to me," she said.

"Do you want me to tell you?" began the young man eagerly.

"No! No!" Lydia began to move hastily toward the door. "Don't come home with me, Billy. I'll just run back alone."

Billy's face in the lantern light was inscrutable. "I'll obey to-night, Lydia," he said, "but the time's coming, when I won't," and he picked up the pitchfork he had dropped.

With the sense of comfort and protection sustaining her, Lydia went homeward under the winter stars. Kent's automobile was standing before the gate and Lydia's heart sank. It was the first time in her life she ever had been sorry at the thought of seeing Kent.

He was sitting before the base burner with her father and jumped up to help her take her coat off. He greeted her soberly.

"Your father's been telling me about your discussion, Lyd," he said.

"You can't mean to stick by your decision!"

Lydia sat down wearily. "Oh, Kent, don't _you_ begin at me, too."

"But I think I ought to, Lydia," replied Kent, his voice dangerously eager. "I don't think any of your friends have a right to be quiet when you're letting a silly scruple ruin your and your father's future."

"It certainly won't ruin my future," said Lydia. "And I won't let it ruin Dad's."

"Now look here, Lydia," began Kent, "let's begin at the beginning and sift this thing out."

"But why?" groaned Lydia. "You know exactly how I feel and why I feel it. And I know how you feel. We've been debating it for years."

"Yes, but listen," persisted Kent, and once more he began his arguments on the Indian question.

Kent had a certain eloquence of speech, yet Lydia, knowing all that he would say, gave little heed to his words while she watched his glowing face.

"Don't you see?" he ended finally.

"I see how you feel, yes," replied Lydia. "But just because you can list what you call average American business deals that are crooked, you aren't justified in being crooked, are you?"

Kent threw out his hand helplessly, and for a moment there was stance in the room, then he said,

"Well, after all, there's nothing so selfish as your Puritans. Of course, every one but yourselves is wrong. And, of course, it doesn't occur to you that it might be a decent thing of you to sacrifice your own scruples to do a thing that would mean so much to your father."

Lydia looked at Kent quickly. This was a new angle. He would have followed this opening at once had not Amos spoken for the first time.

"Hold up, Kent," he said in a tired voice. "Don't heckle her any more.

After all, I'm getting on toward fifty and I guess it's too late for me to begin over, anyhow. I'll plod along as I always have."

"Oh, Daddy!" cried Lydia, "don't talk that way! You aren't a bit old.

You make me feel like a beast, between you."

"Well, we don't mean to," Amos went on, "but I guess we have been pretty hard on you."

Amos' weariness and gentleness moved Lydia as no threats could. Her eyes filled with tears and she crossed over quickly to the window and looked out on the starlit splendor of the lake. In how many, many crises of her life she had gazed on this self-same scene and found decision and comfort there!

Was she selfish? Was she putting her own desire for an easy conscience ahead of her father's happiness? Amos went into the kitchen for a drink and Kent followed her to the window and took both her hands.

"Lydia," he said, "I'm awful sorry to press you so, but you're being unfair and foolish, honestly you are. You used to let me look out for you in the old days--the old days when I used to pull little Patience's carriage with my bicycle--why can't you trust me now? Come, dearest,--and next year we'll be married and live happy ever after."

Lydia's lips quivered. All Kent's charm of manhood, all the memories of their childhood together, of his boyhood love for her and her baby sister, spoke together to win her to his desires. And after all, what could matter so much to her as her father's and Kent's happiness?

"Kent!" she cried with the breathlessness of a new idea, "if I should give in and agree to take the land, would you go up there with me and turn it into a farm?"

Kent smiled at her pityingly. "Why, Lyd, there's nothing in that! Why should we try to farm it? The money is in speculating with it. I could clear up a mint of money for you in a couple of years, if you'll give me the handling of it."

But Lydia's eyes were shining now. "Oh, but listen! You don't understand. Mr. Levine drove the Indians out, by fraud and murder.

Yes, he did, Kent. And yet, he had big dreams about it. He must have had. He was that kind of a man. And if we should go up there and turn those acres into a great farm, and--and make it stand for something big and right--perhaps that would make up for everything!"

"Lord, what a dreamer you are, Lyd," groaned Kent. "Mr. Dudley, do you hear this?"

Amos grunted. "Nothing looks good to me but this cottage. I'd have a cow and a few pigs and some bees and the whole world could go to the devil for all of me."

"Lydia," said Kent, "be sensible. Don't talk impossibilities."

"What is there impossible about it?" demanded Lydia.

"Gee, easy money on one side, and a lifetime of hard work on the other!

Yet you act as if there was a choice."

"Kent, can't you understand how I feel?" pleaded Lydia. "Have you got a blind spot in your mind where money is concerned? Are all the men in America money crazy like the men in Lake City?"

"Sure," replied Kent cheerfully. "Oh, Lydia, honey, don't be so hard!

Look at your poor old Dad! Think what it would mean to him. Don't be so doggone sanctimonious!"

Instead of looking at her father, Lydia looked at Kent, long and wistfully. How dear he was to her! What an inalienable part of her life he was! What was the use of always struggling against her heart.

Kent smiled into her face. Her lips trembled and she turned to look at Amos. He was standing by the table, filling his pipe. Suddenly Lydia realized how gray and broken he looked, how bent his shoulders were with work, and there swept over her anew an understanding of his utter loneliness since her mother's and Levine's death.

With a little inarticulate murmur, she ran across the room and threw her arms about his neck. "Oh, Daddy," she cried, "I'll do it! I'll agree to it! If only you'll promise me to be happy!"

Amos dropped his pipe. "Lydia! You don't mean it! Why, my little girl! Lord, Kent! Isn't she just all right! Make me happy! Why, Lydia, you've made a young man of me--I swan--!"

Kent was holding one hand now, Amos the other. Both looked at Lydia with radiant faces. And she could but feel an answering glow.

"We'll make this up to you, Lyd, old lady," cried Kent. "See if we don't." There was a little pause during which the ice boomed. Then,

"Well, what happens next, now you've settled me?" asked Lydia.