An hour later, Dave Marshall heard his clerk protesting outside his door and a childish voice saying, "But please, just for a minute. He likes me. He truly does."

Then the door opened and Lydia, breathless and rosy and threadbare, came into his little private office. She closed the door and stood with her back against it, unsmiling.

"I'm in quarantine," she said, "so I won't come near you."

"Why, Lydia!" exclaimed Marshall, "where did you come from!"

"Home. Mr. Marshall, won't you fix Daddy's note if he gives you me?"

"Huh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Marshall.

"You said last fall," the child went on, her voice quavering but her eyes resolute, "that if Daddy ever wanted to sell me, you'd buy me. I think I ought to be worth a thousand dollars. I can do so much work around the house and help you train Margery! I can work hard. You ask John Levine."

Marshall's fat face was purple and then pale.

"Does your father know you're here, Lydia?" he asked.

She clasped her mittened hands in sudden agitation.

"n.o.body knows but you," she exclaimed. "Oh! you mustn't tell the man out there my name. I'm in quarantine and I'd be arrested, if the health office knew!"

"I won't tell," said Dave, gently. "Come over here by me, Lydia.

Margery is away on a visit so I'm not afraid for her."

Lydia crossed the room. Marshall took the skates from her shoulders and unfastened her coat.

"Sit down on that chair and let's talk this over. You know what a note is, do you, Lydia?"

"It's money you owe," she said, her blue eyes anxiously fixed on Marshall's face.

He nodded. "Yes. When your mother was sick, your father asked my bank here to lend him a thousand dollars for two years. Now, your father is very poor. He doesn't own anything that's worth a thousand dollars and I knew he could never pay it back. So I told him he must get some one to promise to pay that money for him if he couldn't, at the end of the two years. Understand?"

Lydia nodded.

"Well, he got John Levine. Now the two years are up and unless that thousand dollars is paid, the people whose money I take care of in the bank, will each lose some of that thousand. See?"

Lydia stared at him, struggling to take in the explanation. "I see,"

she said. "But if you'd pay a thousand dollars for me, that would fix it all up."

"Why Lydia, do you mean you would leave your father?"

"I wouldn't want to," she answered earnestly, "but Lizzie could take care of Daddy. He doesn't really need me. There isn't anybody really needs me--needs me--now--"

She swallowed a sob, then went on. "Mr. Levine just mustn't pay it.

He's awful worried. His land's fixed so's he'd never get over it. And he's the best friend we have in all the world. He just mustn't pay it.

It would kill mother, if she knew. Oh, she hated borrowing so."

Marshall chewed his cigar. "Levine," he growled, "is a long legged crook."

Lydia flew out of her chair and shook her fist in the banker's face.

"Don't you dare say that!" she cried. "He's a dear lamb, that's what he is."

Dave's fat jaw dropped. "A dear lamb, eh? Ask him some time what a land shark is--a dear lamb?"

He went on chewing his cigar and Lydia returned to her chair. Whether it was the anxious round eyes, above the scarlet cheeks, whether it was the wistful droop of the childish lips, whether it was the look that belongs to ravished motherhood and seemed grossly wrong on a child's face, whether it was some thought of his own pampered little daughter, whether it was that curious appeal Lydia always made to men, or a combination of all, that moved Marshall, he could not have told. But suddenly he burst forth.

"Good G.o.d, I've done hard things in my life, but I can't do this!

Lydia, you go home and tell your father I'll renew that note, but he's got to pay the interest and ten per cent. of the princ.i.p.al, every year till he's paid it up. Here, I'll write it down. And tell him that I'm not doing it for him or for that skunk of a Levine, but I'm doing it for you. Here, I'll write that down, _too_."

He folded the bit of paper and put it in an envelope. "Come here," he said. He pinned the note into the pocket of her blouse. "Understand, Lydia," he said in a low voice, tilting her head up so that he looked down into her eyes, "I'm buying your friendship with this. You go on living with your father and taking care of him, but I'm buying your friendship for me and Margery--for good and all." He looked out of the window with a curious air of abstraction. Then, "b.u.t.ton your coat and run along."

"I haven't thanked you," exclaimed Lydia, "I can't thank you. Oh, but thank you, Mr. Marshall--I--I--" she began to tremble violently.

"Stop!" roared Marshall. "And you tell your father to look out for your nerves. Now skip." And Lydia's trembling stopped and she skipped.

She did not tell Lizzie of her errand and that faithful soul was too glad to see her eat her dinner to think to ask her why she had skated so long. Kent came out in the afternoon and the two fished through the ice until sunset, when they came in with a string of fish sufficiently long to divide and make a meal for the Dudleys and the Moultons. At dusk, Kent departed with his fish and "Men of Iron," loaned by Lydia as a special favor, under his arm.

Old Lizzie cleaned the fish and Lydia fried them, with the daintiness and skill that seemed to have been born in her. She laid an envelope at her father's plate and when he sat down, silent and abstracted, without heeding the fish, she shook her head at Lizzie who was about to protest.

"Where'd this come from?" he asked, absentmindedly opening the envelope. Then, "For G.o.d's sake! Lydia--where? how?"

"It was like this," said Lydia. "Set the fish back to warm, while I explain, Lizzie. It was like this--" and she gave a full history of her morning's visit, to her two speechless listeners. "And I ran all the way to the lake and I skated like the wind, and I never told Lizzie a word, though I nearly busted!"

Amos looked from Lydia to Lizzie, from Lizzie to Lydia.

"Lydia--my little daughter--" he faltered.

The tears flew to Lydia's eyes and she spoke hastily, "Lizzie, show him the fish we caught!"

Amos smiled while he shook his head. "I won't forget it, Lydia. In spite of little Patience's going, you've taken ten years off me this night. What do you suppose John Levine will say?"

"He'll say," replied Lydia, taking her serving of fish, "'If you were ten years older, Lydia, and I were ten years younger,' and I'll say--'then we'd travel.'"

CHAPTER V

ADAM

"A thousand deaths have fed my roots--yet to what end?"--_The Murmuring Pine_.

The days slipped by, as days will, even though they are grief laden.

Slowly and inarticulately for the most part, Lydia struggled to adjust herself to her new loss. She went back to school, after the quarantine was lifted and the familiar routine there helped her. She was a good student and was doing well in the eighth grade. During school hours her books absorbed her, and she worried through the evenings reading or sewing, with Florence Dombey always in her lap.

Florence Dombey was a great comfort to the child. She slept at night with her black head beside Lydia's yellow one. Sometimes she slipped into the middle of the bed and fat Lizzie rolled on her and woke with a groan.