Lydia of the Pines/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
THE HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR
"Where the pine forest is destroyed, pines never come again."
LYDIA sighed helplessly and began to stitch again on the fringe, thrusting her needle in and out viciously.
"Years ago," began Charlie, grimly, "my father foresaw what the whites were trying to do. None of the other full bloods believed him. 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 harpies in places like Last Chance will let an Indian father a child."
Lydia flushed but compressed her lips and let Charlie speak on. She knew that it was useless to try to stem the tide of protest that was rising to his lips.
"Father was the chief of the tribe and he called council after council until at last they all decided he'd better go to Washington and see if he could get help from the Indian Commissioner. Even then John Levine had a following of half-breeds. He told the yellow curs to kidnap my father and he'd see if he could make him more reasonable. So the half-breeds laid in ambush the day father started for Washington. Father put up an awful fight and they killed him!"
"Oh, Charlie!" cried Lydia, dropping her sewing. "Oh, Charlie!"
"Yes," said the Indian, tensely, "and though Levine wasn't there he was just as much my father's murderer as if he'd fired the shot. Of course, nothing was ever done by the authorities. It was hushed up as an Indian brawl. But my sister, she was twenty then, she found out about Levine and she came in and set fire to his house one night, thinking she'd burn him to death. Instead of that, she just scared his old hired man who was drunk. Levine was away from home. But he's a devil. He found out it was my sister and he told her the only way she could keep from being jailed was to sell him all our pines—for a hundred dollars. So she did, but she shot at him that Thanksgiving night when he'd been at your house."
"Oh, Charlie!" whispered Lydia, horror in her blue eyes and her parted lips. She looked at him in utter dismay. No longer was he the debonair favorite of the High School. In his somber eyes, his thin cold lips, his tense shoulders, the young girl saw the savage. She looked from Charlie to the familiar garden, to Adam, scratching fleas, and beyond to the quiet herds in the Norton meadows. Surely Charlie's tale of killings had no place in this orderly life. Then her glance fell upon the pine beside the gate. It murmured softly. Again Lydia saw the cloistered depths of the reservation pines and again there stirred within her that vague lust for ownership. And she knew that Charlie's tale was true.
She moistened her dry lips. "But what can I do, Charlie! I'm only a girl."
"I'll tell you what you can do. You can throw down your murderer friend and side with me. You can get every one you know to side with me. And, Lydia, never tell Levine, or any one else, what you know about him. It wouldn't be safe!"
He leaned toward her as he spoke and Lydia shivered. "I won't," she whispered. Then she said aloud in sudden resentment, "But I'm not going to throw Mr. Levine down without his having a chance to explain. Who are you to think you've got a right to ask me?"
Charlie caught her slender wrist in a firm grasp. "I'm a human being fighting for justice—no—fighting for existence. That's who I am."
"Oh, I don't want to know about it!" cried Lydia. "I don't want to think about it! I'm just a girl. I want to be happy just a little while before I grow up. I've had too much unhappiness."
"Yes, you have had," agreed Charlie, grimly, "and that's why you will think about it in spite of yourself. You understand how I feel because you've suffered. When are you going to throw Levine down?"
Lydia's face whitened. "Never!" she said.
"What! When you know he's a murderer?"
"He never intended to kill your father. Anyhow, I can't help what he's done. He's like my own father and brother and mother all in one to me."
The two young people sat looking into each other's eyes. Suddenly Charlie threw Lydia's hand from him, and like Billy Norton, he strode down the path and out of the gate without a word. Lydia was trembling violently but she picked up her sewing and forced herself to finish the rugs and spread them on the living-room floor. They looked very well, she thought. Later on, they showed a vicious tendency to turn up, to wrinkle and scuffle easily, threatening the life and limb of the heavy treading Lizzie and of Amos a dozen times a day. But the evening after Charlie's visit she was too distrait to notice the complaints of her elders.
Levine did not appear at the cottage for several days. During that time Lydia tried to put Charlie's story out of her mind. With housework and swimming and giggling with Margery, she managed to do this during the day, but at night she dreamed of it and woke, and spoke to Adam.
When John did come out she avoided talking to him and he caught her several times looking at him with a sad and puzzled expression. When they started on their usual Sunday walk, Amos went back to the house for his cane and Levine said, abruptly, "Out with it, young Lydia!"
"I promised I wouldn't," she said.
"Been hearing more stories about my wickedness?" asked John.
Lydia nodded, miserably.
"My dear," Levine said quietly, "this is a man's game. I'm playing a rough-and-tumble, catch-as-catch-can fight. In it, the weak must fail and maybe die. But out of it a great good will come to this community. As long as the Indians are here to exploit, this community will be demoralized. I'm using every means fair or foul to carry my purpose. Can't you let it go at that?"
Lydia set her teeth. "Yes, I can and I will," she said, as her father came up with his cane.
And though this was more easily said than done and the thought of murdered chiefs and starved babies troubled her occasionally, she did not really worry over it all as much as she might have were she not entering her senior year in the High School.
If life holds any position more important, any business more soul satisfying than that of being a High School senior, few people are so fortunate as to have discerned it. Being a college senior is a highly edifying and imposing business, but the far greater advantages lie with the High School senior. He is four years younger. He has lost no illusions. He has developed no sense of values. He is not conscious of the world outside his vision. But in spite of a smug conviction of superiority, the college senior has heard life knocking at the door of his young illusions. He has moments of wistful uncertainty. No, it is the High School senior who is life's darling.
Lydia was not altogether an easy person to live with this year although both Lizzie and Amos realized that never had she been so altogether sweet and lovable as now. She objected to Lizzie's table manners. She was hurt because Amos would eat in his shirt-sleeves, and would sit in his stocking feet at night, ignoring the slippers she crocheted him. She stored in the attic the several fine engravings in gilt frames that her father and mother had brought with them from New England. In their place she hung passepartouted Gibson pictures clipped from magazines. And she gave up reading tales of travel and adventure, gave up Dickens and Thackeray and Mark Twain and took to E. P. Roe and other writers of a sticky and lovelorn nature.
In spite of the camping trip, Lydia saw little of her campmates. Charlie did not reenter school in the fall. Olga and Gustus were devoted to each other and, to Lydia's surprise, Kent took Margery to several parties.
"I thought you liked Gustus best," she said to Margery one Saturday afternoon late in the fall. Lydia was calling on Margery and the two were making fudge.
"Oh, that was last year! Gustus is too sickly for me. I'm crazy about Kent. He's so big and strong and bossy!"
A little pang shot through Lydia's heart. But she was saved a reply by Elviry, who as usual was within earshot.
"Kent Moulton doesn't amount to anything. His father's got nothing but a salary. Gustus'll have the brewery."
"Well, who wants to marry a brewery," sniffed Margery. "If you think I'm going to have any old bossy, beery German like Gustus'll be, you're mistaken. Kent comes of fine Puritan stock."
"Your ancestors don't pay the bills," said Elviry, sharply. "If your father has that extra money he's expecting at Christmas time, you'll just go East to boarding-school, Margery."
"I don't want to go," protested Margery. "I love High School."
"Makes no difference. You have common tastes, just like your father. I want you should have refined tastes in your friends particularly."
And Dave must have received his extra money, for after the Christmas holidays, Margery tearfully departed for the Eastern finishing school. The night after her departure, Kent made his first call on Lydia in many months. The two withdrew to the kitchen to make candy and there Lydia's surprise and pleasure gave way to suspicion. Kent seemed to want to talk for the most part about Margery!
"Hasn't she grown to be a beauty," he said, beating the fudge briskly.
"She always was beautiful," replied Lydia, who was cracking walnuts. "Didn't we use to hate her though! Well, she was the whiniest little snip!"
"Oh, that was her mother's fault! The only good thing about this boarding-school deal is that it gets her away from Elviry Marshall. Put more nuts in here, Lyd. You like her now, don't you?"
"Yes, I do," replied Lydia, honestly, "though she's an awful silly. She never reads anything, and she flunked all her Thanksgiving examinations."
"Anybody as pretty as Margery doesn't need to be brilliant," said Kent.
"And she spoons, and you don't think much of girls that spoon." Lydia's cheeks were a deeper pink than usual.
"Shucks, don't be catty, Lydia!" growled Kent.
Lydia suddenly chuckled, though tears were very near the surface. "Well, when I'm an old maid here in the cottage, you and Margery can come out and call in your automobile."
"Who's talking about marrying or you being an old maid?" asked Kent, disgustedly. "Gee, you girls make me sick!"
Lydia's jaw dropped. Then she gave a laugh that ended abruptly. "Heavens, how clothes do count in life," she sighed. "Come on in and give Dad and Lizzie some fudge, Kent."
Kent called several times during the winter, but he never asked Lydia to go to a party nor did any of the other boy friends she saw daily in school—boys with whom she chummed over lessons, who told her their secrets, who treated her as a mental equal, yet never asked to call, or slipped boxes of candy into her desk or asked her into a drugstore for a sundae or a hot chocolate.
Nobody resented this state of affairs more than old Lizzie. After Kent's third or fourth call, she said to Lydia, closing the door behind him, "Yes, Kent'll come out here and see you, but I notice he don't take you anywhere. If you had fine party clothes and lived on Lake Shore Avenue, he'd be bowing and scraping fast enough."
Lydia tossed her head. "I don't care about going to parties."
"You do, too," insisted the old lady. "You're eating your heart out. I know. I was young once."
Amos looked up from his paper. "Lydia's too young to go if they did ask her. But why don't they ask?"
"It's because I'm too poor and I live so far out and I don't spoon," answered Lydia. "I don't care, I tell you." And just to prove that she didn't care, Lydia bowed her face in her hands and began to cry.
A look of real pain crossed Amos' face. He got up hastily and went to Lydia's side.
"Why, my little girl, I thought you were perfectly happy this year. And your clothes look nice to me." He smoothed Lydia's bright hair with his work-scarred hand. "I tell you, I'll borrow some money, by heck, and get you some clothes!"
Lydia raised a startled face. "No! No! I'd rather go in rags than borrow money. We're almost out of debt now and we'll stay out. Don't borrow, Daddy," her voice rising hysterically. "Don't borrow!" Adam began to howl.
"All right, dearie, all right!" said Amos.
"I'm an old fool to have said anything," groaned Lizzie. "What does it matter when she's the best scholar in her class and everybody, teachers and boys and girls alike, loves her."
Lydia wiped her eyes and hugged her father, then Adam and then Lizzie.
"I've got John Levine, anyhow," she said.
"You certainly have, hand and foot," said Amos.
The matter was not mentioned again directly. But the little scene rankled with Amos. A week or so later he said at supper, "Lydia, I'm thinking seriously of moving."
"Moving! Where? Why?" exclaimed Lydia.
"Well, I can borrow enough money, I find, to add to the rent we're paying, to rent the old stone house next to Miss Towne's. My idea is to move there just till you finish college! Then we'll go out on a farm. But it'll give you your chance, Lydia."
"Land!" murmured Lizzie.
Lydia hesitated. To move into the house next the Townes would be to arrive, to enter the inner circle, to cease to be a dowd. But—she looked about the familiar rooms.
"Daddy," she said, "would you really want to leave this cottage?"
"I'd just as soon," replied Amos. "Most places are alike to me since your mother's death. I could stand doing without the garden, if I had the farm to look forward to."
"How'd we pay the money back?" asked Lydia.
"After the Levine bill passes," said Amos, "I'll have a section of pines."
Instantly Lydia's sleeping land hunger woke and with it the memory of Charlie's tales. She sat in deep thought.
"Daddy," she said, finally, "we're not going to borrow, and we're not going to move again. I don't see why people want to keep moving all the time. I love this place, if it is only a cottage, and I'm going to stay here. I wish we could buy it and hand it down in the family so's it would be known forever as the Dudley place. Then nobody'd ever forget our name. What's the use of trying to make a splurge with borrowed money? We thought it was awful when the Barkers mortgaged their house to buy an automobile."
"All right," said Amos, reluctantly. "But remember, you've had your chance and don't feel abused about our poverty."
"I won't," replied Lydia, obediently.
And to her own surprise, she did feel less bitter about her meager, home-made clothing. She had had a chance to improve it and had resisted the temptation.
She told Ma Norton of Amos' plan, and her refusal. Ma heard her through in silence. They were sitting as usual in the kitchen of the Norton farmhouse. Lydia ran over nearly every Saturday afternoon but she seldom saw Billy. Amos had refused to allow Lydia to continue fudge selling and Ma supposed that that was why her son never spoke of Lydia or was about when she called.
"You did exactly right, Lydia," was Ma's verdict. "And you mustn't lay it all to clothes, though I've always maintained that party-going boys were just as silly about clothes as party-going girls. You're old for your age, Lydia. It takes older men to understand you. I suppose your class has begun to talk about graduation. It's March now."
"Yes," said Lydia. "We've chosen the class motto and the class color. I was chairman of the motto committee and we chose Ducit Amor Patriae—and purple and white's our color."
"For the land's sake," murmured Ma. "Why do you children always choose Latin or Greek mottoes? Hardly anybody in the audience knows what they mean. I never did get Billy's through my head."
Lydia laughed. "We just do it to be smart! But I chose this one. It's one John Levine gave me years ago. I thought it was a good one for young Americans—Love of Country leads them."
"Indeed it is. Especially with all the foreign children in the class. I'll have to tell Billy that. He's doing fine in his law but his father's broken-hearted over his giving up farming."
"I'll bet he goes back to it. He's a born farmer," said Lydia.
Late in March the valedictorian and salutatorian of the class were chosen. The custom was for the teachers to select the ten names that had stood highest for scholarship during the entire four years and to submit these to the pupils of the class, who by popular vote elected from these the valedictorian and the salutatorian.
To her joy and surprise Lydia's was one of the ten names. So were Olga's and Kent's.
"Olga and Kent will get it," Lydia told Amos and Lizzie. "I'm going to vote for them myself. All the boys are crazy about Olga and all the girls are crazy about Kent."
The day on which the election took place was cold and rainy. Amos plodding home for supper was astonished to see Lydia flying toward him through the mud a full quarter of a mile from home.
"Daddy, they elected me valedictorian! They did! They did!"
Amos dropped his dinner pail. "You don't mean it! How did it happen! I never thought of such a thing." He was as excited as Lydia.
She picked up his pail and clung to his arm as they started home.
"I don't know how it happened. They just all seemed to take it for granted. No one was surprised but me. Olga got four votes and Mamie Aldrich ten and I got sixty-six! Daddy! And Mamie wasn't cross but Olga was. Oh, isn't it wonderful!"
"Valedictorian! My little Lydia! Scholarship and popular vote! I wish your mother was here. What does Lizzie say?"
Lydia giggled. "I left Lizzie carrying on an imaginary conversation with Elviry Marshall, after she'd cried over me for half an hour. And, Daddy, nobody was surprised but me! Not the teachers or anybody!"
"Thank God, there's some democracy left in the world," said Amos. "Evidently those youngsters voted without prejudice. They can give us elders a few points. Lord, Lydia! and folks have been looking down on us because we were poor and I'm little better than a day laborer. I'll write to Levine tonight. He'll have to be here for the exercises."
"And Kent is salutatorian. He won by just two votes. I've got to begin to plan about my dress."
"Now, I'm going to buy that dress, Lydia, if I have to borrow money. You aren't going to begin any talk about earning it."
"Oh, all right," said Lydia, hastily. "You won't have to borrow. White goods is always cheap and I'll get it right away so I can put lots of hard work on it."
"What's your speech going to be about?" asked Amos, as they turned in the gate.
"I haven't had time to think about that. I'll plan it all out while I'm sewing. I must make a V neck so I can wear the dress without the collar to the Senior Ball."
Lizzie was waiting supper for them and poured the tea into the sugar bowl as she described to Amos the agonies of mind Elviry Marshall would endure on hearing the news. Ma Norton came over during the evening to exchange a setting of eggs but wouldn't sit down after Amos had forestalled Lizzie in telling of Lydia's honor. She said she couldn't wait to get home to tell Pa and Billy.
Billy did not congratulate Lydia. He passed her just as he had during all the months, with a curt little "Hello." To tell the truth Lydia was heartily ashamed of herself for her shabby reception of Billy's plea. Not that she had softened toward him! But she knew she had been unkind and she missed the desultory companionship she had had with Billy.
The preparation of the dress went on amazingly well. The speech making was less simple. As was customary, Lydia chose the class motto for her subject and sweated inordinately to find something to say. She complained bitterly to Miss Towne and Amos because during the four years at High School nothing at all was taught about love of country, or patriotism, or anything that would make the motto suggestive.
"How about your one term of Civil Government?" asked Miss Towne.
"Oh, I was a freshman then and I've forgotten it all,—except the preamble to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence."
Lydia stopped thoughtfully.
Amos answered her plaint indignantly. "Well, for heaven's sake! And you a descendant of the Puritans! Lord, what's become of the old stock! No, I won't help you at all. Think it out for yourself."
And think it out Lydia did, sitting on the front steps with her sewing and listening to the sighing of the pine by the gate.
Spring flew by like the wind, and June came. There was but one flaw in Lydia's happiness. Nobody asked her to attend the Senior Ball that was to take place on Graduation night. To be sure, it was not an invitation affair. The class was supposed to attend in a body but there was, nevertheless, the usual two-ing and only a very few of the girls who had no invitation from boys would go. Lydia, herself, would have cut off her hand rather than appear at her own Senior Ball without a young man.
She had pinned some faith to Kent, until she had heard that Margery was to be home in time for the graduating exercises. As June came on and the tenth drew near, a little forlorn sense of the unfairness of things began to obscure Lydia's pride and joy in her honor. On the ninth, the last rehearsal of the speech had been made; the dress was finished and hung resplendent in the closet; Amos himself had taken Lydia into town and bought her white slippers and stockings, taking care to inform the street-car conductor and the shoe clerk carelessly the wherefore and why of his mission.
And Lydia knew that none of her classmates was going to ask her to the ball. "They think they've done enough in giving me the valedictory," she thought. "As if I wouldn't exchange that in a minute for a sure enough invitation."
Mortified and unhappy, she avoided her mates during the last week of school, fearing the inevitable question, "Who's going to take you, Lyd?"
The tenth dawned, a lovely June day. Amos had half a day off and was up at daylight, whistling in the garden. The exercises began at ten and by half past eight, Lydia was buttoned into her pretty little organdy, Lizzie was puffing in her black alpaca and Amos was standing about in his black Sunday suit which dated back to his early married days. By nine-thirty they had reached the Methodist church and Amos and Lizzie were established in the middle of the front row of the balcony while Lydia was shivering with fright in the choir-room where the class was gathered.
Somebody began to play the organ and somebody else who looked like Miss Towne shoved Lydia toward the door and she led the long line of her mates into the front pews. The same minister who had buried little Patience, prayed and a quartette sang. A college professor spoke at length, then Kent appeared on the platform.
Good old Kent, even if he wouldn't take Lydia to parties! Kent, with his black eyes and hair, his ruddy skin and broad shoulders, was good to look on and was giving his speech easily and well. Lydia had heard it a dozen times in rehearsal but now not a word Kent said was intelligible to her. She was seeing him in a red bathing suit as he hung Florence Dombey from a yard arm of the willow. She was hearing him as he knelt in the snow with an arm about her shoulders, "I'm so doggone sorry for you, Lydia." What a dear he had been! Now it all was different. They were grown up. This day marked their growing up and Kent didn't want to take her to parties.
Kent bowed and took his seat. The quartette sang and somebody prodded Lydia smartly in the back. She made her way up to the platform and began to speak automatically.
It was a very young and girlish speech. It was delivered with tremendous sincerity. Yet it did not matter much what she said, for what counted was that Lydia's contralto voice was very young and rich, that her golden hair was like a nimbus about her head, that her lips were red and sweet, that her cheeks were vivid and that her eyes were very blue, very innocent and clear.
Amos with tight clenched fists and Lizzie with her lips a thin seam of nervous compression, were swelled with vanity and torn with fear lest she forget her lines.
But John Levine, who had dashed in late and stood unnoticed in the crowd under the gallery listened intently, while he yearned over Lydia's immature beauty like a mother.
"And so," she ended, "when we say good-by, you all must remember that we go out into the world resolved to live up to our motto. That we believe with our forefathers that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. That all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that because the New England people in the Middle West are far from the cradle of liberty where these ideas were born, living among foreigners it behooves the members of our class to carry our motto into their daily life. Love of country leads us and so farewell!"
It was a foolish, sentimental little speech with one or two real thoughts in it and John Levine smiled even while the tears filled his eyes. He told himself that no one, least of all probably Lydia herself, realized the cynical application of the class motto to Lake City conditions.
The diplomas were distributed. The great morning was over. After the congratulations and the handshaking, Lydia found herself with her father, Lizzie, Levine and Ma Norton on the way to the trolley. Lydia walked between her father and John.
"You'll come out to dinner, Mr. Levine," asked Lydia.
"No, ma'am," replied the Congressman. "I return to Washington on the 12:30 train, which gives me just time to see you to the trolley."
"Why, what's the matter?" asked Amos.
"We vote on the Levine bill, the morning I get back to Washington. I just ran out to see young Lydia graduate."
Amos groaned, "John, you're a fool!"
Levine laughed. "Lydia, am I a fool?" He looked down at the flushed face above the dainty organdy.
"No," she answered, giving him a swift look. "You're a goose and a lamb."
"So! You see you don't understand me, Amos," said John, triumphantly as he helped Lydia aboard the street-car. "Good-by, young Lydia. I'll be home in a week or so."
And so the great event ended. After dinner Amos rushed back to the factory, Lydia hung the graduation gown away in her closet and she and Adam spent the afternoon on the lake shore, where the delicate splendor and perfume of June endeavored in vain to prove to Lydia that the Senior Ball was of no consequence.
She was silent at supper, while Amos and Lizzie went over the details of the morning again. After the dishes were washed she sat on the steps in the dusk with Adam's head in her lap when a carriage rolled up to the gate. A man came swiftly up the path. As he entered the stream of lamplight from the door Lydia with a gasp recognized Billy Norton. Billy, wearing a dress suit and carrying a bouquet of flowers!
"Good evening, Lydia," he said calmly. "Will you go to the Senior Ball with me?"
Lydia was too much overcome for speech. She never before had seen a man in a dress suit! It made of Billy a man of the world. Where was the country boy she had snubbed?
"Here are some flowers I hope you'll wear," Billy went on, formally. "Would you mind hurrying? It's pretty late."
"Oh, Billy!" breathed Lydia, at last. "Aren't you an angel!"
She jumped to her feet and rushed through the house into her room, leaving Billy to explain to her father and Lizzie. In half an hour the two were seated in the carriage, an actual, party-going, city hack, and bumping gaily on the way to the Ball.
In her gratitude and delight, Lydia would have apologized to Billy for her last summer's rudeness, but Billy gave her no opportunity. He mentioned casually that he had been up on the reservation, for a week, returning only that afternoon so that he had missed her graduation exercises. They chatted quite formally until they reached Odd Fellows' Hall, where the dancing had already begun.
Lydia's first dancing party! Lydia's first man escort and he wearing a dress suit and there were only two others in the Hall! Who would attempt to describe the joy of that evening? Who would have recognized Billy, the farmer, in the cool blond person who calmly appropriated Lydia's card, taking half the dances for himself and parceling out the rest grudgingly and discriminatingly. Kent was allowed two dances. He was the least bit apologetic but Lydia in a daze of bliss was nonchalant and more or less uninterested in Kent's surprise at seeing her at a dance.
For three hours, Lydia spun through a golden haze of melody and rhythm. Into three hours she crammed all the joy, all the thrill, that she had dreamed of through her lonely girlhood. At half after eleven she was waltzing with Billy.
"We must leave now, Lydia," he said. "I promised your father I'd have you home by midnight."
"Oh, Billy! Just one more two step and one more waltz," pleaded Lydia.
"Nope," he said, smiling down into her wistful eyes. "I want to get a stand-in with your Dad because I want to take you to more parties."
"Oh, Billy! Do you!" breathed Lydia. "Well, I don't think there's any one in the world has nicer things happen to them than I do! Oh, Billy, just this waltz!"
It would have taken a harder heart than Billy's to resist this. He slipped his arm about her and they swung out on the floor to the strains of The Blue Danube, than which no lovelier waltz has ever been written.
They did not speak. Billy, holding the slender, unformed figure gently against his breast, looked down at the golden head with an expression of utter tenderness in his eyes, of deep resolve on his lips.
At the end, Lydia looked up with a wondering smile. "I didn't know any one could be so perfectly happy, Billy. I shall always remember that of you—you gave me my happiest moment."
On the way home in the bumping hack, Billy seemed to relax. "Well, did I give you a good time, Miss, or didn't I? Could Kent or Gustus have done better?"
"Oh, they!" cried Lydia indignantly. "But, Billy, I didn't know you could dance."
"I couldn't, but I've been taking lessons all winter. I'm not going to give a girl a chance twice to call me down the way you did last summer. Of course, this is just a second-hand dress suit, but I think it looks all right, don't you?"
"Billy," said Lydia, "last summer I was just a silly little girl. Now, I'm grown up. You were the swellest person at the ball to-night. You just wait till I tell your mother about it."
Billy went up the path with Lydia to the steps and held her hand a moment in silence after he said, "It's a wonderful night!"
A wonderful night, indeed! The moon hung low over the lake and the fragrance of late lilac and of linden blooms enveloped them. Youth and June-moonlight and silence! A wonderful night indeed!
"You are very sweet, Lydia," whispered the young man. He laid his cheek for a moment against her hand, then turned quickly away.
Lydia watched the carriage drive off, stood for a moment trying to impress forever on her mind the look and odor of the night, then with a tremulous sigh, she went indoors.