Lydia of the Pines. Honoré Morrow
white picket fence. At the gate a pine tree stood. There were oaks and lilac bushes in the front yard. Through the leaves, Lydia saw the blue of the lake.
"Our yard runs right down to the water!" she cried, as the driver lifted the baby down and she followed after. "Gee! I'm glad we moved!"
"It is a nice little spot," said the driver, "but kinda lonely." He set the perambulator inside the fence, then balanced the dining-room table on his head and started up the path to the door.
Lydia looked along the road, where an occasional house was to be seen.
"I hope kids live in those houses," she said, "but if they don't, baby and the lake are company enough for me, and Kent can come out on his wheel."
She strapped Patience into the perambulator, then ran up to the house. The front door gave directly into a living-room of good proportions. Out of this folding doors led into a small dining-room and beyond this a kitchen of generous size with a wonderful view of the glimmering lake from its rear windows. A comfortable-sized bedroom opened off each of these rooms. Lydia ran through the little house eagerly. It was full of windows and being all on one floor, gave a fine effect of spaciousness. It was an old house but in excellent repair as was all John Levine's property.
"I'm going to have the bedroom off the kitchen, 'cause you can see the lake from it," she told the driver.
"It'll be colder'n charity in the winter. Better take the middle one," he remarked, setting the kitchen stove down with a bang.
"No, old Lizzie'll want to have that. Well, I'll begin to get things settled."
Lizzie arrived on the third and final load. She brought with her a lunch that they shared with the driver. He good-naturedly set up the kitchen stove and the three beds for them and departed with the hope that they would not be too lonesome.
Lydia and old Lizzie put in an afternoon of gigantic effort. By six o'clock, the beds were made, dishes unpacked and in the china closet, the table was set for supper and an Irish stew of Lydia's make was simmering on the stove.
When Amos came up the path at a half after six, his dinner pail in his hand, he found Lydia flat on her back on the little front porch. Her curly head was wet with perspiration; face, hands and blouse were black. The baby sat beside her, trying to get Florence Dombey to sleep.
"Well," said Amos, looking down on his family, "how do you like it,
Lydia?"
"It's great! My back's broken! Supper's ready."
"You shouldn't lift heavy things, child! How often have I told you?
Wait until I get home."
"I want to get things done," replied Lydia, "so's I can do a little playing before school opens. Come on in and see all we've done, Daddy."
She forget her aching back and led the way into the house. Amos was as excited and pleased as the children and Lizzie, so tired that her old hands shook, was as elated as the others.
"It's much more roomy than the old house and all on one floor. 'Twill save me the stairs. And the garden'll be fine," she said, failing to call attention to the fact that the water was far from the house and that there was no kitchen sink.
"We've got to try to keep this place cleaner than we did the other," said Amos. "Lydia, better wash up for supper."
"Oh, Daddy," said Lydia, "I'm too tired! Don't make me!"
"All right," answered Amos, "but your mother was always clean and so am
I. I don't see where you get it."
"Maybe one of my ancestors was a garbage man," suggested Lydia, sliding into her place at the table.
She allowed Lizzie to carry Patience into their bedroom after supper and Amos, smoking in the yard and planning the garden for next year, waited in vain to hear "Beulah Land" and "Wreathe me no gaudy chaplet" float to him from the open window.
"Where's Lydia, Lizzie?" he asked as the old lady came out to empty the dish water.
"She ain't come out yet. Maybe she's fell asleep too."
The two tip-toed to the window. On the bed under the covers was little Patience, fast asleep, and beside her, on top of the covers, fully dressed, lay Lydia, an arm across her little sister, in the sleep of utter exhaustion.
"I'll just take her shoes off and cover her and leave her till morning," said Lizzie.
But Amos, gazing at his two ill-kempt little daughters, at the chaotic room, did not answer except to murmur to himself, "Oh, Patience! Patience!"
The cottage was somewhat isolated. Amos was three quarters of a mile from his work. The schoolhouse was a mile away and the nearest trolley, which Lizzie must take to do the family shopping, was half a mile back along the dirt road.
Nevertheless, all the family felt that they had taken a distinct step upward in moving into lake shore property and nobody complained of distances. Amos began putting in his Sundays in cleaning up the bramble-grown acres he intended to turn into a garden in the spring. He could not afford to have it plowed so he spaded it all himself, during the wonderful bright fall Sabbaths. Nor was this a hardship for Amos. Only the farm bred can realize the reminiscent joy he took in wrestling with the sod, which gave up the smell that is more deeply familiar to man than any other in the range of human experience.
A dairy farmer named Norton, up the road, gave him manure in exchange for the promise of early vegetables for his table. After his spading was done in late September, Amos, with his wheelbarrow, followed by the two children, began his trips between the dairy farm and his garden patch and he kept these up until the garden was deep with fertilizer.
There never had been a more beautiful autumn than this. There was enough rain to wet down the soil for the winter, yet the Sundays were almost always clear. Fields and woods stretched away before the cottage, crimson and green as the frosts came on. Back of the cottage, forever gleaming through the scarlet of the autumn oaks, lay the lake, where duck and teal were beginning to lodge o' nights, in the rice-fringed nooks along the shore.
Lydia was happier than she had been since her mother's death. She took the long tramps to and from school, lunch box and school bag slung at her back, in a sort of ecstasy. She was inherently a child of the woods and fields. Their beauty thrilled her while it tranquilized her. Some of the weight of worry and responsibility that she had carried since her baby sister of two weeks had been turned over to her care left her.
Kent was enchanted with the new home. Football was very engrossing, yet he managed to get out for at least one visit a week. He and Lydia discovered a tiny spring in the bank above the lake and they began at once to dam it in and planned a great series of ditches and canals.
The doll's furniture was finished by October and Lydia began work on the doll's house.
One Saturday afternoon early in October she was established on the front steps with her carpentry when a surrey stopped at the gate. Little Patience, in a red coat, rolled to her feet. She had been collecting pebbles from the gravel walk.
"Mardy!" she screamed. "Baby's Mardy!" and started down the walk to meet Margery and her father.
"Darn it," said Lydia to herself. "Hello, Marg! How de do, Mr.
Marshall."
"Well! Well!" Dave Marshall lifted the tails of his light overcoat and sat down on the steps. "Gone into house building, eh, Lydia? Did you do it all yourself? Gee! that's not such a bad job."
Lydia had the aptitude of a boy for tools. On one end of the cracker box was a V-shaped roof. There were two shelves within, making three floors, and Lydia was now hard at work with a chisel and jackknife hacking out two windows for each floor.
She stood, chisel in hand, her red coat sleeves rolled to her elbows, her curly hair wind-tossed, staring at Marshall half proudly, half defiantly.
Dave laughed delightedly. "Lydia, any time your father wants