LITMIR.BIZ

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hearty rap on the door roused him. Lizzie let John Levine in.

      "Where's Lydia?" was Levine's first Question.

      Lizzie pointed to the couch, where, undisturbed, Lydia slept on.

      "Good!" said John. He drew his chair up beside Amos' and the two fell into low-voiced conversation.

      It must have been nine o'clock when Lydia opened her eyes to hear Amos say fretfully,

      "I tell you, I went to him to-day as I'll go to no man again. I begged him to renew the note, but he insisted his duty to the bank wouldn't let him. I told him it would put you in a terrible fix, that you'd gone on the note when you couldn't afford it. He grinned a devil's grin then and said, 'Amos, I know you've got nothing to lose in this. If you had, for the sake of your children—I mean Lydia, I'd hold off. But Levine can fix it up!'"

      "So I could, ordinarily," said Levine in a troubled voice. "But it just happens that everything I've got on earth is shoe-stringed out to hang onto that pine section of mine up in Bear county. I'm mortgaged up to my eyebrows. Marshall knows it and sees a chance to get hold of the pines, damn him!"

      Lydia sat up and rubbed her eyes.

      "Well! Well! young Lydia," cried Levine. "Had a fine sleep, didn't you!"

      "I'm awful hungry," said the child.

      "Bless your soul," exclaimed Lizzie. "I'll warm your supper up for you in a minute."

      Lydia stood with hands outstretched to the base burner, her hair tumbled, her glance traveling from Amos to Levine.

      "What makes Mr. Marshall act so?" she asked.

      "Sho," said Levine, "little girls your age don't know anything about such things, do they, Amos? Come here. You shall eat your supper on my lap."

      "I'm getting too old for laps," said Lydia, coming very willingly nevertheless within the compass of John's long arms. "But I love you next to Daddy now, in all the world."

      John swept her to his knees and put his cheek against hers for a moment, while tears gleamed in his black eyes.

      "Eat your supper and go to bed, Lydia," said Amos.

      "Don't be so cross, Amos," protested Levine.

      "God knows I'm not cross—to Lydia of all people in the world," sighed Amos, "but she worries over money matters just the way her mother did and I want to finish talking this over with you."

      "There's nothing more to talk about," Levine's voice was short. "Let him call in the loan, the fat hog!"

      Lydia slept the long night through. She awoke refreshed and renewed. After first adjusting herself to the awful sense of loss, which is the worst of waking in grief, the recollection of the conversation she had heard the night before returned with sickening vividness. After she had wiped the breakfast dishes for Lizzie she stood for a long time at the living-room window with Florence Dombey in her arms staring at the lake. Finally, she tucked the doll up comfortably on the couch and announced to Lizzie that she was going skating.

      An hour later, Dave Marshall heard his clerk protesting outside his door and a childish voice saying, "But please, just for a minute. He likes me. He truly does."

      Then the door opened and Lydia, breathless and rosy and threadbare, came into his little private office. She closed the door and stood with her back against it, unsmiling.

      "I'm in quarantine," she said, "so I won't come near you."

      "Why, Lydia!" exclaimed Marshall, "where did you come from!"

      "Home. Mr. Marshall, won't you fix Daddy's note if he gives you me?"

      "Huh!" ejaculated Marshall.

      "You said last fall," the child went on, her voice quavering but her eyes resolute, "that if Daddy ever wanted to sell me, you'd buy me. I think I ought to be worth a thousand dollars. I can do so much work around the house and help you train Margery! I can work hard. You ask John Levine."

      Marshall's fat face was purple and then pale.

      "Does your father know you're here, Lydia?" he asked.

      She clasped her mittened hands in sudden agitation.

      "Nobody knows but you," she exclaimed. "Oh! you mustn't tell the man out there my name. I'm in quarantine and I'd be arrested, if the health office knew!"

      "I won't tell," said Dave, gently. "Come over here by me, Lydia.

       Margery is away on a visit so I'm not afraid for her."

      Lydia crossed the room. Marshall took the skates from her shoulders and unfastened her coat.

      "Sit down on that chair and let's talk this over. You know what a note is, do you, Lydia?"

      "It's money you owe," she said, her blue eyes anxiously fixed on

       Marshall's face.

      He nodded. "Yes. When your mother was sick, your father asked my bank here to lend him a thousand dollars for two years. Now, your father is very poor. He doesn't own anything that's worth a thousand dollars and I knew he could never pay it back. So I told him he must get some one to promise to pay that money for him if he couldn't, at the end of the two years. Understand?"

      Lydia nodded.

      "Well, he got John Levine. Now the two years are up and unless that thousand dollars is paid, the people whose money I take care of in the bank, will each lose some of that thousand. See?"

      Lydia stared at him, struggling to take in the explanation. "I see," she said. "But if you'd pay a thousand dollars for me, that would fix it all up."

      "Why Lydia, do you mean you would leave your father?"

      "I wouldn't want to," she answered earnestly, "but Lizzie could take care of Daddy. He doesn't really need me. There isn't anybody really needs me—needs me—now—"

      She swallowed a sob, then went on. "Mr. Levine just mustn't pay it.

       He's awful worried. His land's fixed so's he'd never get over it. And

       he's the best friend we have in all the world. He just mustn't pay it.

       It would kill mother, if she knew. Oh, she hated borrowing so."

      Marshall chewed his cigar. "Levine," he growled, "is a long legged crook."

      Lydia flew out of her chair and shook her fist in the banker's face. "Don't you dare say that!" she cried. "He's a dear lamb, that's what he is."

      Dave's fat jaw dropped. "A dear lamb, eh? Ask him some time what a land shark is—a dear lamb?"

      He went on chewing his cigar and Lydia returned to her chair. Whether it was the anxious round eyes, above the scarlet cheeks, whether it was the wistful droop of the childish lips, whether it was the look that belongs to ravished motherhood and seemed grossly wrong on a child's face, whether it was some thought of his own pampered little daughter, whether it was that curious appeal Lydia always made to men, or a combination of all, that moved Marshall, he could not have told. But suddenly he burst forth.

      "Good God, I've done hard things in my life, but I can't do this! Lydia, you go home and tell your father I'll renew that note, but he's got to pay the interest and ten per cent. of the principal, every year till he's paid it up. Here, I'll write it down. And tell him that I'm not doing it for him or for that skunk of a Levine, but I'm doing it for you. Here, I'll write that down, too."

      He folded the bit of paper and put it in an envelope. "Come here," he said. He pinned the note into the pocket of her blouse. "Understand, Lydia," he said in a low voice, tilting her head up so that he looked down into her eyes, "I'm buying your friendship with this. You go on living with your father and taking care of him, but I'm buying your friendship for me and Margery—for good and all." He looked out of the window with a curious air of abstraction. Then, "Button your coat and run along."

      "I haven't thanked you," exclaimed

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