Lydia of the Pines

He knows that the green hills shelter in their gentle valleys many placid lakes. Some of them are shallow and bordered with wild rice. Some are couched deep in the hollow of curving bluffs. Some are carefully secreted in virgin pine woods.

"Do you care, Dad," asked Lydia, at breakfast, "if baby and I have lunch over at the lake shore?" "Not if you're careful," answered Amos. "By the way," he added, "that cottage of John Levine's is right on the shore." He spoke with studied carelessness. Lydia had a passion for the water. She stared a

The bright red color left her cheeks. "I wouldn't think much of your father, my child," he said, huskily, "if he let me whip you, even if I wanted to." Lydia took a quick look up into his face. Then she gave a little gasping sigh, her lips quivered and she leaned against his knee. "Look here, Lydia,

Amos unwrapped his to find therein a pipe tray fashioned from cigar box wood and stained with Lydia's walnut dye. Lizzie's gift was a flat black pin-cushion, with "Lizzie, with love from Lydia," embroidered crazily on it in red. Florence Dombey showed no emotion over her gift, a string of red beads

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 L

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.

"Here! Here! This won't do, my young Indian!" cried Amos. "Let me get at him!" panted Charlie.

She was growing tall, and her beauty already was remarkable. Her little head carried its great black braid proudly. The pallor of her skin was perfectly healthy—and even the Senior lads were seen to observe her with interest and appreciation. The results of Lydia's summer dressmaking had not been ba

The day was a legal holiday and even the saloons were closed. Yet Lake City was full of drunken men by noon. Every hack, surrey and hotel bus in town was busy in the pay of one faction or the other hauling voters to the booths. The Capitol square was deserted but groups of men, some of them very dru

But Lydia and Kent did not want to use the roads. It was with the old familiar sense of make believe adventure that they started on what they called a Bee-line southwest. And it was mid-afternoon before, hungry and leg weary, they reached the store that backed up against the Indian school! They boug

The day before they broke camp, Lydia's old squaw appeared and asked for Charlie Jackson. Charlie and Kent were cooking dinner. "Dear me," said Miss Towne, "tell him to take the poor thing away, Lydia." "He must feed her, first," exclaimed Lydia, leading the old Indian over to the cooking shelter. K

He had nothing to do with half-breeds." "I don't see why you always speak so of the mixed bloods," interrupted Lydia. "Their white blood ought to improve them." "It ought, yes,—but it doesn't. And the reason is that only the rottenest kind of a white man'll make a squaw a mother. And only the low ha

For a long time she sat with Florence Dombey in her arms, looking from the hectic china face to the scintillating turquoise of the lake and listening to the hushed whispering of the pine. Finally with Adam lumbering jealously after her, she climbed the narrow stairs into the attic. Back under the ea

College life was not much unlike High School life for Lydia. She of course missed the dormitory living which is what makes University existence unique. The cottage was nearly three miles from the campus. Lydia took a street-car every morning, leaving the house with her father.

Yet neither Charlie nor Billy had really forced her to a decision. Lydia was grown up. All her young life she had carried the responsibilities and had faced the home tragedies that come usually only to grown folk. Now, in her young womanhood it was natural and inevitable that she should turn to the

Lydia was frightened, Amos was irritable and sullen by turns after the summons finally came. They were due at the hearing at nine o'clock and arrived a little late. Amos had refused to be hurried. The room in which the hearing was held was big and cool, with a heavily carpeted floor and walls lined

But Lydia had prophesied truly. No girl as beautiful as Margery could be kept in Coventry long and though she refused for a time to go to parties, it was not long before Margery was taking tramps with the college boys and joining happily enough in the simple pleasures at the cottage. Lydia did not h

Even tales of the wonders of the Prom did not disturb her much. She made up her lost classroom work, then took on an extra course in English Essayists with Professor Willis, just to satisfy her general sense of superiority to the ordinary temptations that should have disturbed a young female with fi

Perhaps there were other members of the class to whom their senior insignia meant as much as they did to Lydia, but that is to be doubted. Although, ever since her illness, she had firmly resolved never to worry again over her meager wardrobe, she almost wept with joy when she first beheld herself i

All this, Lydia told herself, should have made her happy, and yet, she was not. Even when Professor Willis took her to a Military hop and brought her home in a hack, she was conscious of the feverish sense of loss and uncertainty that had become a part of her daily living. Several times she had an a