Lydia with parted lips and big, wistful eyes stood quietly beside Miss Towne.

"What you giving us," said Kent. "Red's my favorite color."

"Red's all right," Olga tossed her head, "but that dress! She ought to know better. A five cent cheese cloth would have been better'n that."

Kent was truly enamored of pretty Olga but he looked at her angrily.

"You girls make me sick," he grunted and started dodging among the dancers, across the room to Lydia's side. Olga stood pouting.

"What's the matter?" asked Charlie Jackson.

"Oh, I just said Lydia's dress was a fright and Kent went off mad."

Charlie in turn stared at Lydia.

Kent in the meantime was grinning at Lydia amiably.

"h.e.l.lo, Lyd! Want to dance?"

"I can't. Don't know how," replied Lydia, despondently.

"Easy as anything. Come on, I'll teach you."

Lydia seized Kent's lapel with fingers that would tremble slightly.

"Kent, I da.s.sn't stir. My back breadth don't match and my skirt hangs awful."

"Oh, shucks!" replied Kent, angrily, "you girls are all alike. Red's my favorite color."

"Mine too," said Charlie Jackson at his elbow. "What're you two arguing about?"

"Her dress," growled Kent, "I don't see anything the matter with it, do you?"

"Nope, and it's on the prettiest girl in the room too, eh, Kent?"

"You bet," returned Kent, believing, though, that he lied, for Olga was as pretty as a tea rose.

Lydia blushed and gasped.

"If you won't dance, come on over and have some lemonade," suggested Kent.

"If I sit in the window, will you bring me a gla.s.s?" asked Lydia, still mindful of the back breadth.

"You take her to the window and I'll get the lemo, Kent," said Charlie.

Kent led the way to the window-seat. "You're a good old sport, Lyd,"

he said. "Charlie'll look out for you. I gotta get back to Olga."

he returned to make peace with the pink organdy. She was very lovely and Kent was having his first flirtation. Yet before he went to sleep that night the last picture that floated before his eyes was of a thin little figure with worn mittens clasped over patched knees and a ravished child's face looking into his.

Charlie Jackson sat out two whole dances with Lydia. Their talk was of Adam and of fishing. Lydia longed to talk about Indians with him but didn't dare. Promptly at ten, Amos appeared at the front door.

Lydia's first party was over. Amos and old Lizzie were charmed with Lydia's description of it and were sure she had had a wonderful time.

But Lydia felt that the dress had made of the party a hideous failure.

She knew now that she was marked among her mates as a poverty stricken little dowd whom popular boys like Kent and Charlie pitied.

And yet because life is as kind to us as we have the intelligence to let it be, it was out of the party that grew slowly a new resolve of Lydia's--to have some day as pretty hands and as well shod feet as Olga and Hilda and Cissy, to learn how to make her dresses so that even the composing of an organdy might not be beyond her.

They saw less of John Levine during the late winter and early spring.

He was running for sheriff on the Republican ticket. He was elected early in April by a comfortable majority and invited Amos and Lydia to a fine Sunday dinner in celebration at the best hotel in town. Kent's father in April was promoted from a minor position in the office of the plow factory to the secretaryship of the company. The family immediately moved to a better house over on the lake sh.o.r.e and it seemed to Lydia that Kent moved too, out of her life.

She missed him less than might have been expected. Her life was so different from that of any of the children that she knew, that growing into adolescence with the old bond of play disappearing, she fell back more and more on resources within herself. This did not prevent her going faithfully once a month to call on Margery Marshall. And these visits were rather pleasant than otherwise. Margery was going through the paper doll fever. Lydia always brought Florence Dombey with her and the two girls carried on an elaborate game of make-believe, the intricacies of which were entirely too much for Elviry Marshall, sitting within earshot.

Elviry Marshall had two consuming pa.s.sions in life--Margery and gossip.

The questions she asked always irritated Lydia vaguely.

"What wages is your Pa getting now, Lydia?"

"Just the same, Mrs. Marshall."

"Don't you pay Lizzie anything yet?"

"No, Ma'am."

"How much is your grocery bill this month?"

"I don't know."

"Does your Pa ever talk about getting married again?"

"No, Ma'am! Oh, no, Ma'am!"

Lizzie almost exploded with anger when Lydia retailed these questions, but Amos only laughed.

"Pshaw, you know Elviry!"

"Yes, I know Elviry! She's a snake in the gra.s.s. Always was and always will be."

"She's a dandy housekeeper," murmured Lydia. "I wonder where she learned. And she isn't teaching Margery a thing. I like Mr. Marshall."

"Dave's a miser. He always was and he always will be," snapped Lizzie.

"I despise the whole kit and biling of them, money or no money. Dave never earned an honest cent in his life."

"Lots of rich men haven't," replied Amos.

Amos' garden was a thing of beauty. Its trim rows of vegetables were bordered with sunflowers, whose yellow heads vied in height with the rustling ears of corn. Amos had a general grudge toward life. He had a vague, unexpressed belief that because he was a descendant of the founders of the country, the world owed him an easy living. He had a general sense of superiority to his foreign born neighbors and to the workmen in the plow factory.

But in his garden, all his grudges disappeared. Every evening until dark and every Sunday he worked away, whistling softly to himself. He always felt nearer to his wife, in the garden. She too had been bred on a New England farm. He always felt as if the fine orderliness of the rows was for her.