He pulled Lydia to him and kissed her gently on the cheek. "If you were ten years older and I were ten years younger--"

"Then we'd travel," said the child, with a happy giggle as she ran out of the room.

There was silence for a moment, then John Levine said, "Too bad old Lizzie is such a slob."

"I know it," replied Amos, "but she gets no wages, just stayed on after nursing my wife. I can't afford to pay for decent help. And after all, she does the rough work, and she's honest and fond of the children."

"Still Lydia ought to have a better chance. I wish you'd let me--" he hesitated.

"Let you what?" asked Amos.

"Nothing. She'd better work out things her own way. She'll be getting to notice things around the house as she grows older."

"It is the devil's own mess here," admitted Amos. "I'm going to move next month. This place has got on my nerves."

"No, Daddy, no!" exclaimed Lydia.

Both men started as the little girl appeared in the kitchen door. "I came down to put Florence Dombey to bed," she explained. "Oh, Daddy, don't let's move again! Why, we've only been here two years."

"I've got to get into a place where I can have a garden," insisted Amos. "If we go further out of town we can get more land for less rent."

"Oh, I don't want to move," wailed Lydia. "Seems to me we've always been moving. Last time you said 'twas because you couldn't bear to stay in the house where mother died. I don't see what excuse you've got this time."

"Lydia, go to bed!" cried Amos.

Lydia retreated hastily into the kitchen and in a moment they heard her footsteps on the back stairs.

"It's a good idea to have a garden," said John Levine. "I tell you, take that cottage of mine out near the lake. I'll let you have it for what you pay for this. It'll be empty the first of September."

"I'll go you," said Amos. "It's as pretty a place as I know of."

Again silence fell. Then Amos said, "John, why don't you go to Congress? Not to-day, or to-morrow, but maybe four or five years from now."

Levine looked at Amos curiously. The two men were about the same age.

Levine's brown face had a foreign look about it, the gift of a Canadian French grandfather. Amos was typically Yankee, with the slightly aquiline nose, the high forehead and the thin hair, usually a.s.sociated with portraits of Daniel Webster.

"Nice question for one poor man to put to another," said Levine, with a short laugh.

"No reason you should always be poor," replied Amos. "There's rich land lying twenty miles north of here, owned by nothing but Indians."

Levine scratched his head.

"You could run for sheriff," said Amos, "as a starter. You're an Elk."

"By heck!" exploded John Levine. "I'll try for it. No reason why a real estate man shouldn't go into politics as well as some of the shyster lawyers you and I know, huh, Amos?"

Upstairs, Lydia stood in a path of moonlight pulling off her clothes slowly and stifling her sobs for the sake of the little figure in the bed. Having jerked herself into her nightdress, she knelt by the bedside.

"O G.o.d," she prayed in a whisper, "don't let there be any more deaths in our family and help me to bring little Patience up right." This was her regular formula. To-night she added a plea and a threat. "And O G.o.d, don't let us move again. Seems though I can't stand being jerked around so much. If you do, G.o.d, I don't know what I'll say to you--Amen."

Softly as a shadow she crept in beside her baby sister and the moonlight slowly edged across the room and rested for a long time on the two curly heads, motionless in childhood's slumber.

CHAPTER II

THE HEROIC DAY

"Where the roots strike deepest, the fruitage is best."--_The Murmuring Pine_.

Little Patience had forgotten the red balloon, overnight. Lydia had known that she would. Nevertheless, with the feeling that something was owing to the baby, she decided to turn this Sat.u.r.day into an extra season of delight for her little charge.

"Do you care, Dad," asked Lydia, at breakfast, "if baby and I have lunch over at the lake sh.o.r.e?"

"Not if you're careful," answered Amos. "By the way," he added, "that cottage of John Levine's is right on the sh.o.r.e." He spoke with studied carelessness. Lydia had a pa.s.sion for the water.

She stared at him now, with the curiously pellucid gaze that belongs to some blue eyed children and Amos had a vague sense of discomfort, as if somehow, he were not playing the game quite fairly. He dug into his coat pocket and brought up a handful of tobacco from which he disinterred two pennies.

"Here," he said, "one for each of you. Don't be late for supper, chickens."

He kissed the two children, picked up his dinner pail and was off.

Lydia, her red cheeks redder than usual, smiled at Lizzie, as she dropped the pennies into the pocket of her blouse and stuffed a gray and frowsy little handkerchief on top of them.

"Isn't he the best old Daddy!" she exclaimed.

"Sure," said Lizzie absentmindedly, as she poured out her third cup of coffee. "Lydia, that dress of yours is real dirty. You get into something else and I'll wash it out to-day."

"I haven't got much of anything else to get into, have I, Lizzie?--except my Sunday dress."

"You are dreadful short of clothes, child, what with the way you grow and the way you climb trees. I'm trying to save enough out of the grocery money to get you a couple more of them galatea dresses for when school opens, but land--your poor mother was such a hand with the needle, you used to look a perfect picture. There," warned by the sudden droop of Lydia's mouth, "I tell you, you'll be in and out of the water all day, anyhow. Both of you get into the bathing suits your Aunt Emily sent you. They're wool and it's going to be a dreadful hot day."

"Jefful hot day," said little Patience, gulping the last of her oatmeal.

"All right," answered Lydia, soberly. "Wouldn't you think Aunt Emily would have had more sense than to send all those grown up clothes? Who did she think's going to make 'em over, now?"

"I don't know, child. The poor thing is dead now, anyhow. Folks is always thoughtless about charity. Why I wasn't taught to sew, I don't know. Anyhow, the bathing suits she got special for you two."

"You bet your life, I'm going to learn how to sew," said Lydia, rising to untie the baby's bib. "I'm practising on Florence Dombey. Mother had taught me straight seams and had just begun me on over and over, when--"

"Over and over," repeated the baby, softly.

Lizzie put out a plump, toil-scarred hand and drew Lydia to her.

"There, dearie! Think about other things. What shall poor old Liz fix you for lunch?"

The child rubbed her bright cheek against the old woman's faded one.