Lydia of the Pines Part 25

"Shame he had to work, isn't it?" grinned Charlie. "Poor little Kent!"

The three laughed, for Kent now towered above Lydia a half head and was as brawny as Charlie.

"There comes Margery," said Lydia. "She hardly speaks to me now, she's been to New York."

"She _is_ a peach," exclaimed Charlie, eying Margery in her natty little blue suit appraisingly.

"Some swell dame, huh?" commented Kent, his hands in his trousers'

pockets, cap on the back of his head. "h.e.l.lo, Marg! Whither and why?"

"Oh, how de do, Kent!" Margery approached languidly, including Lydia and Charlie in her nod.

"Got any paper dolls in your pocket, Miss Marshall?" inquired Charlie.

Margery tossed her head. "Oh, I gave up that sort of thing long ago!"

"Land sakes!" The young Indian chuckled.

"How do you like High School, Margery?" asked Lydia.

"Oh, it's well enough for a year or so! Of course Mama, I mean--Mother's going to send me to New York to finish."

"'Mother!' suffering cats!" moaned Kent. "Marg, you're getting so refined, I almost regret having pulled you out of the lake that time."

"_You_! Why Kent Marshall, I pulled her out myself!" exclaimed Lydia.

"And I saved both of you--and got licked for it," said Kent.

"I hope you all had a pleasant summer," observed Margery, twisting up the curls in front of her small ears. "Mother and I were in New York."

Kent, Lydia and Charlie exchanged glances.

"I had a pretty good summer," said Lydia. "I sewed and cooked and scrubbed and swam and once Adam, Dad, Mr. Levine and I walked clear round the lake, eighteen miles. Adam nearly died, he's so fat and bow-legged. He scolded all the way."

"I don't see how your father can let that Mr. Levine come to your house!" exclaimed Margery with sudden energy. "My father says he's a dangerous man."

"He's a crook!" said Charlie, stolidly and finally.

Lydia stamped her foot. "He's not and he's my friend!" she cried.

"You'd better not admit it!" Margery's voice was scornful. "Daddy says he's going to speak to your father about him."

"Your father'd better not go up against Levine too hard," said Kent, with a superior masculine air. "Just tell him I said so."

"You don't stick up for Levine, do you, Kent?" asked Charlie, indignantly.

"Why, no, but Dave Marshall's got no business to put his nose in the air over John Levine. I don't care if he is Margery's father.

Everybody in town knows that he's as cruel as a wolf about mortgages and some of his money deals won't bear daylight."

"Don't you dare to say such things about my father," shrieked Margery.

"He was awful good to Dad and me about a money matter," protested Lydia.

"Aw, all of us men are good to you, Lyd," said Kent impatiently.

"You're that kind. Being good to you don't make a man a saint. Look at Levine. He's got a lot of followers, but I'll bet you're the only person he's fond of."

"He's a crook," repeated Charlie, slowly. "If what he's trying to do goes through, my tribe'll be wanderers on the face of the earth. If I thought it would do any good, I'd kill him. But some other brute of a white would take his place. It's hopeless."

The three young whites looked at the Indian wonderingly. Their little spatting was as nothing, they realized, to the mature and tragic bitterness that Charlie expressed. A vague sense of a catastrophe, epic in character, that the Indian evidently saw clearly, but was beyond their comprehension, silenced them. The awkward pause was broken by the school bell.

Lydia had plenty to think of on her long walk home. Charlie's voice and words haunted her. What did it all mean? Why was he so resentful and so hopeless? She made up her mind that when she had the opportunity to ask him, she would. She sighed a little, as she thought of the comments of her mates on John Levine. Little by little she was realizing that she was the only person in the world that saw the gentle, tender side of the Republican candidate for Congress. The realization thrilled her, while it worried her. She had an idea that she ought to make him show the world the heart he showed to her. As she turned in at the gate and received Adam's greetings, she resolved to talk this matter over with Levine.

The opportunity to talk with Charlie came about simply enough. At recess one day a week or so later he asked her if she was going to the first Senior Hop of the year. Lydia gave him a clear look.

"Why do you ask me that? Just to embarra.s.s me?" she said.

Charlie looked startled. "Lord knows I didn't mean anything," he exclaimed. "What're you so touchy about?"

Lydia's cheeks burned redder than usual. "I went to a party at Miss Towne's when I was a Freshman and I promised myself I'd never go to another."

"Why not!" Charlie's astonishment was genuine.

"Clothes," replied Lydia, briefly.

The Indian boy leaned against a desk and looked Lydia over through half-closed eyes. "You're an awful pretty girl, Lydia. Honest you are, and you've got more brain in a minute than any other girl in school'll have all her life."

Lydia blushed furiously. Then moved by Charlie's simplicity and obviously sincere liking, she came closer to him and said, "Then, Charlie, why hasn't any boy ever asked me to a party? Is it just clothes?"

Looking up at him with girlish wistfulness in the blue depths of her eyes, with the something tragic in the lines of her face that little Patience's death had written there irradicably, with poverty speaking from every fold of the blouse and skirt, yet with all the indescribable charm of girlish beauty at fifteen, Lydia was more appealing than Charlie could stand.

"Lydia, I'll take you to a party a week, if you'll go!" he cried.

"No! No! I couldn't go," she protested. "Answer my question--is it clothes?"

"No, only half clothes," answered Charlie, meeting her honestly. "The other half is you know too much. You know the fellows like a girl that giggles a lot and don't know as much as he does and that's a peachy dancer and that'll let him hold her hand and kiss her. And that's the honest to G.o.d truth, Lydia."

"Oh," she said. "Oh--" Then, "Well, I could giggle, all right. I can't dance very well because I've just picked up the steps from watching the girls teach each other in the cloakroom. Oh, well, I don't care! I've got Adam and I've got Mr. Levine."

"He's a nice one to have," sneered Charlie.

"Why do you hate him so, Charlie?" asked Lydia.

"Lots of reasons. And I'll hate him more if he gets his bill through Congress."

"I don't see why you feel so," said Lydia. "You get along all right without the reservation, why shouldn't the other Indians. I don't understand."

"No, you don't understand," replied Charlie, "you're like most of the other whites round here. You see a chance to get land and you'd crucify each other if you needed to, to get it. What chance do Indians stand? But I tell you this," his voice sank to a hoa.r.s.e whisper and his eyes looked far beyond her, "if there is a G.o.d of the Indians as well as the whites, you'll pay some day! You'll pay as we are paying."