The next day was Saturday, and Lydia started an attack on the living-room immediately after breakfast.  She re-oiled the floors.  She took down the curtains, washed and ironed them and put them up again.  She blacked the base burner and gave the howling Adam a bath.  The old mahogany worried her, even after she had polished it and re-arranged it until the worst of the scratches were obscured.

Her father’s old wooden armchair, a solid mahogany that had belonged to his great-grandfather, she decided to varnish.  She gave it two heavy coats and set it close to the kitchen stove to dry.  By this time she was tired out.  She lay in the dusk on the old couch watching the red eyes of the base burner, when Billy came in.

“Just stopped on my way home to see if you’d go skating to-night,” he said.  “Tired out?  What’ve you been doing?”

Lydia enumerated the day’s activities ending with, “Professor Willis is coming to call this evening.”

Billy gave a low whistle.  “Of course, I knew they’d begin to take notice sooner or later.  But I don’t see why you wanted to wear yourself out for a sissy like him.”

“He’s not a sissy.  He’s a gentleman,” said Lydia, calmly.  She was still curled up on the couch and Billy could just distinguish her bright hair in the red glow from the stove.

Billy was silent for a moment, then he said, “It’s a shame you have to work so hard.  I think of you so often when I see other girls in their pretty clothes, gadding about!  Doggone it! and you’re worth any ten of them.  If I had my way—­”

He paused and for a moment only the familiar booming of the ice disturbed the silence.

“I don’t mind the work so much as I do going without the pretty clothes,” said Lydia.  “I suppose you’ll think I’m awful silly,” she suddenly sat up in her earnestness, “but when I get to thinking about how I’m growing up and that dresses never can mean to me when I’m old what they do now—­oh, I can’t explain to a man!  It’s like Omar Khayyam—­

  “’Yet ah, that Spring should vanish with the rose
  That youth’s sweet scented manuscript should close—­’

and my youth’s going to close without the sweet scent of the rose.”

Billy made one great stride over to the couch and sitting down beside Lydia he took her thin, work hardened little hands in his.  “Lydia, no!  You don’t see yourself right!  All the dresses in the world couldn’t make you sweeter or more fragrant to a fellow’s heart than you are now.  The only importance to the clothes is that you love them so.  Don’t you see?”

Lydia laughed uncertainly.  “I see that you’re a dear old blarney, Billy.  And I know one thing I have got that not one girl in a thousand has and that is the friendship of some of the best men in the world.  In lots of ways, I’m very lucky.  Honestly, I am!  Trot on home, Billy.  I’ve got to get supper.  And I don’t have to work so hard, remember that.  Half my work is in trying to fix up the house.”