Lydia of the Pines Part 9

"Maybe one of my ancestors was a garbage man," suggested Lydia, sliding into her place at the table.

She allowed Lizzie to carry Patience into their bedroom after supper and Amos, smoking in the yard and planning the garden for next year, waited in vain to hear "Beulah Land" and "Wreathe me no gaudy chaplet"

float to him from the open window.

"Where's Lydia, Lizzie?" he asked as the old lady came out to empty the dish water.

"She ain't come out yet. Maybe she's fell asleep too."

The two tip-toed to the window. On the bed under the covers was little Patience, fast asleep, and beside her, on top of the covers, fully dressed, lay Lydia, an arm across her little sister, in the sleep of utter exhaustion.

"I'll just take her shoes off and cover her and leave her till morning," said Lizzie.

But Amos, gazing at his two ill-kempt little daughters, at the chaotic room, did not answer except to murmur to himself, "Oh, Patience!

Patience!"

The cottage was somewhat isolated. Amos was three quarters of a mile from his work. The schoolhouse was a mile away and the nearest trolley, which Lizzie must take to do the family shopping, was half a mile back along the dirt road.

Nevertheless, all the family felt that they had taken a distinct step upward in moving into lake sh.o.r.e property and n.o.body complained of distances. Amos began putting in his Sundays in cleaning up the bramble-grown acres he intended to turn into a garden in the spring.

He could not afford to have it plowed so he spaded it all himself, during the wonderful bright fall Sabbaths. Nor was this a hardship for Amos. Only the farm bred can realize the reminiscent joy he took in wrestling with the sod, which gave up the smell that is more deeply familiar to man than any other in the range of human experience.

A dairy farmer named Norton, up the road, gave him manure in exchange for the promise of early vegetables for his table. After his spading was done in late September, Amos, with his wheelbarrow, followed by the two children, began his trips between the dairy farm and his garden patch and he kept these up until the garden was deep with fertilizer.

There never had been a more beautiful autumn than this. There was enough rain to wet down the soil for the winter, yet the Sundays were almost always clear. Fields and woods stretched away before the cottage, crimson and green as the frosts came on. Back of the cottage, forever gleaming through the scarlet of the autumn oaks, lay the lake, where duck and teal were beginning to lodge o' nights, in the rice-fringed nooks along the sh.o.r.e.

Lydia was happier than she had been since her mother's death. She took the long tramps to and from school, lunch box and school bag slung at her back, in a sort of ecstasy. She was inherently a child of the woods and fields. Their beauty thrilled her while it tranquilized her.

Some of the weight of worry and responsibility that she had carried since her baby sister of two weeks had been turned over to her care left her.

Kent was enchanted with the new home. Football was very engrossing, yet he managed to get out for at least one visit a week. He and Lydia discovered a tiny spring in the bank above the lake and they began at once to dam it in and planned a great series of ditches and ca.n.a.ls.

The doll's furniture was finished by October and Lydia began work on the doll's house.

One Sat.u.r.day afternoon early in October she was established on the front steps with her carpentry when a surrey stopped at the gate.

Little Patience, in a red coat, rolled to her feet. She had been collecting pebbles from the gravel walk.

"Mardy!" she screamed. "Baby's Mardy!" and started down the walk to meet Margery and her father.

"Darn it," said Lydia to herself. "h.e.l.lo, Marg! How de do, Mr.

Marshall."

"Well! Well!" Dave Marshall lifted the tails of his light overcoat and sat down on the steps. "Gone into house building, eh, Lydia? Did you do it all yourself? Gee! that's not such a bad job."

Lydia had the apt.i.tude of a boy for tools. On one end of the cracker box was a V-shaped roof. There were two shelves within, making three floors, and Lydia was now hard at work with a chisel and jackknife hacking out two windows for each floor.

She stood, chisel in hand, her red coat sleeves rolled to her elbows, her curly hair wind-tossed, staring at Marshall half proudly, half defiantly.

Dave laughed delightedly. "Lydia, any time your father wants to sell you, I'm in the market." He looked at the nails hammered in without a crack or bruise in the wood, then laughed again.

"Get your and the baby's hats, Lydia. We stopped to take you for a ride."

Lydia's eyes danced, then she shook her head. "I can't! The bread's in baking and I'm watching it."

"Where's Lizzie?"

"She went in town to do the marketing! Darn it! Don't I have awful luck?"

Lydia sighed and looked from baby Patience and Margery, walking up and down the path, to Mrs. Marshall, holding the reins.

"Well, anyhow," she said, with sudden cheerfulness, "Mrs. Marshall'll be glad I'm not coming, and some day, maybe you'll take me when she isn't with you."

Dave started to protest, then the polite lie faded on his lips. Lydia turned her pellucid gaze to his with such a look of mature understanding, that he ended by nodding as if she had indeed been grown up, and rising, said, "Perhaps you're right. Good-by, my dear. Come, Margery."

Lydia stood with the baby clinging to her skirts. There were tears in her eyes. Sometimes she looked on the world that other children lived in, with the wonder and longing of a little beggar snub-nosed against the window of a French pastry shop.

John Levine came home with Amos that night to supper. Amos felt safe about an unexpected guest on Sat.u.r.day nights for there was always a pot of baked beans, at the baking of which Lizzie was a master hand, and there were always biscuits. Lydia was expert at making these. She had taken of late to practising with her mother's old cook book and Amos felt as if he were getting a new lease of gastronomic life.

"Well," said Levine, after supper was finished, the baby was asleep and Lydia was established with a copy of "The Water Babies" he had brought her, "I had an interesting trip, this week."

Amos tossed the bag of tobacco to Levine. "Where?"

"I put in most of the week on horseback up on the reservation. Amos, the pine land up in there is something to dream of. Why, there's nothing like it left in the Mississippi Valley, nor hasn't been for twenty years. Have you ever been up there?"

Amos shook his head. "I've just never had time. It's a G.o.d-awful trip. No railroad, twenty-mile drive--"

Levine nodded. "The Indians are in awful bad shape up there. Agent's in it for what he can get, I guess. Don't know as I blame him. The sooner the Indians are gone the better it'll be for us and all concerned."

"What's the matter with 'em?" asked Lydia.

"Consumption--some kind of eye disease--starvation--"

The child shivered and her eyes widened.

"You'd better go on with the 'Water Babies,'" said John. "Has Tom fallen into the river yet?"

"No, he's just seen himself in the mirror," answered Lydia, burying her nose in the delectable tale again.

"It's a wonderful story," said Levine, his black eyes reminiscent.

"'Clear and cool, clear and cool, By laughing shallow and dreaming pool;

Undefiled, for the undefiled; Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child.'

It has some unforgettable verse in it. Well, as I was saying, Amos, that timber isn't going to stay up there and rot--_because, I'm going to get it out of there_!"

"How?" asked Amos.

"Act of Congress, maybe. Maybe a railroad will get a permit to go through, eh? There are several ways. We'll die rich, yet, Amos."