Lydia of the Pines. Honoré Morrow
he said belligerently, to Margery, "do you see anything green?"
Margery shrugged her shoulders. "Watcha playing?"
"Nothing! Want to play it?" replied Lydia.
"Thanks," answered Margery. "I'll watch you two while I sit with the baby. Isn't she just ducky in that bathing suit?"
Lydia melted visibly and showed a flash of white teeth. "You bet! How's Gwendolyn?" nodding toward the great bisque doll seated in the wonderful doll carriage. "I wish I had a doll like that."
"She isn't in it with Florence Dombey," said Kent. "Florence is some old sport, she is. Guess I'd better cut her down."
It was remarkable that while on most occasions Lydia was the tenderest of mothers to Florence Dombey, she was, when the fever of "play and pretend" was on her, capable of the most astonishing cruelties. During the game of pirates, Florence Dombey had been hung from a willow branch, in lieu of a yardarm, and had remained dangling there in the wind, forgotten by her mother.
Kent placed her in Patience's carriage. "I'll tell you what I'll do," he said. "I'll go up the shore and get Smith's flat boat. We'll anchor it out from the shore, and that'll be the wreck. We'll swim out to her and bring stuff in. And up under the bank there we'll build the cave and the barricade."
"Gee," exclaimed Lydia, "that's the best we've thought of yet. I'll be collecting stuff to put in the wreck."
All during the golden August afternoon the game waxed joyfully. For a long time, Margery sat aloof, playing with the baby. But when the excavating of the cave began, she succumbed, and began to grovel in the sand with the other two. She was allowed to come in as Friday's father, and baby Patience, panting at her work of scratching the sand with a crooked stick, was entered as the Parrot. Constant small avalanches of sand and soil from the bank powdered the children's hair and clothes with gray-black dust.
"Gosh, this is too much like work," groaned Kent, at last. "I'll tell you, let's play the finding of Friday's father."
"I don't want to be tied up in a boat," protested, Margery, at once.
"Mardy not in boat," chorused little Patience, toddling to the water's edge and throwing in a handful of sand.
"Isn't she a love!" sighed Margery.
"Huh, you girls make me sick," snorted Kent. "We won't tie you in the boat. We'll bring the boat in and get you, then we'll anchor it out where it is now, and—and—I'll go get Smith's rowboat, and Friday and I'll come out and rescue you."
Margery hesitated. "Aw, come on!" urged Kent. "Don't be such a 'fraid cat. That's why us kids don't like you, you're such a silly, dressed-up doll."
The banker's daughter flushed. Though she loved the pretty clothes and though the sense of superiority to other children, carefully cultivated by her mother, was the very breath of her nostrils, she had never been quite so happy as this afternoon when grubbing on an equality with these three inferior children.
"I'm not afraid at all and I'm just as dirty as Lydia is. Go ahead with your old boat."
They tethered Patience with Kent's cord to one of the willow trees and Margery was paddled out several boat lengths from the shore and the great stone that served for anchor was dropped over. Kent took a clean dive overboard, swam ashore and disappeared along the willow path. Little Patience set up a wail.
"Baby turn too. Baby turn, too," she wept.
"I'll go stay with her till Kent comes," said Lydia, diving into the water as casually as if she were rising from a chair.
"I won't stay in this awful boat alone!" shrieked Margery.
Lydia swam steadily to the shore, then turned. Margery was standing up in the boat.
"Sit down! Sit down!" cried Lydia.
Margery, beside herself with fear, tossed her arms, "I won't stay in this old—"
There was a great splash and a choking cry as Margery's black braid disappeared beneath the water.
"And she can't swim," gasped Lydia. "Kent!" she screamed, and made a flying leap into the water. Her slender, childish arms seemed suddenly steel. Her thin little legs took a racing stroke like tiny propellers. Margery came up on the far side of the boat and uttered another choking cry before she went down again. Lydia dived, caught the long black braid and brought the frenzied little face to the surface. Margery immediately threw an arm around Lydia's neck, and Lydia hit her in the face with a clenched small fist and all the strength she could muster.
"Let go, or I'll let you drown. Turn over on your back. There isn't a thing to be afraid of."
Margery, with a sob, obeyed and Lydia towed her the short distance to the boat. "There, catch hold," she said.
Both the children clung to the gunwale, Margery choking and sobbing.
"I can't lift you into the boat," panted Lydia. "But quit your crying.
You're safe. There's Kent."
The whole episode had taken but a few minutes. Kent had heard the call and some note of need in it registered, after a moment, in his mind. He ran back and leaped into the water.
He clambered into the flat boat and reaching over pulled Margery bodily over the gunwale. The child, sick and hysterical, huddled into the bottom of the boat.
"Are you all right, Lyd?" he asked.
"Sure," replied Lydia, who was beginning to recover her breath.
It was the work of a minute to ground the boat. Then unheeding little
Patience's lamentations, the two children looked at each other and at
Margery.
"I'll run for her mother," said Kent.
"And scare her to death! She isn't hurt a bit," insisted Lydia.
"Margery, stop crying. You're all right, I tell you."
"I'll tell you," said Kent, "let's put her in Patience's carriage, and carry her home. The water she swallowed makes her awful sick at her stomach, I guess."
The fright over, the old spirit of adventure, with an added sense of heroism, animated Kent and Lydia.
Margery was teased out of the boat and assisted into the perambulator, with her dripping white legs dangling helplessly over the end. Little Patience's tears were assuaged when she was placed in the doll buggy, with Margery's doll in her arms. Florence Dombey was tied papoose fashion to Lydia's back. The bicycle was hidden in the cave and with Kent wheeling Margery and Lydia, Patience, the procession started wildly for home.
By the time they had turned into the home street, Margery was beginning to recover, but she was still shivering and inclined to sob. Other children followed them and it was quite an imposing group that turned in at the Marshall gate, just as Mrs. Marshall came to the door to bid a guest good-by.
The scene that followed was difficult for either Lydia or Kent to describe afterward. There was a hullabaloo that brought half the mothers of the neighborhood into the yard. The doctor was sent for. Margery was put to bed and Kent and Lydia were mentioned as murderers, low-down brats and coarse little brutes by Mrs. Marshall, who ended by threatening them with the police.
Old Lizzie appeared on the scene in time to take Lydia's part and Kent disappeared after Mrs. Marshall had told him that Margery's father would be around to see his father that evening.
"Is the child dead?" demanded old Lizzie, holding Patience on one arm while Lydia clung to the other.
"She was able to walk upstairs," said a neighbor. "It's just Mrs.
Marshall's way, you know."
"I'll way her," snorted Lizzie. "Fine thanks to Lydia for saving the child. Come home with your old Liz, dearie, and get into the nice clean dress I've got for you."
Lydia told the story to