“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 to sell you, I’m in the market.”  He looked at the nails hammered in without a crack or bruise in the wood, then laughed again.

“Get your and the baby’s hats, Lydia.  We stopped to take you for a ride.”

Lydia’s eyes danced, then she shook her head.  “I can’t!  The bread’s in baking and I’m watching it.”

“Where’s Lizzie?”

“She went in town to do the marketing!  Darn it!  Don’t I have awful luck?”

Lydia sighed and looked from baby Patience and Margery, walking up and down the path, to Mrs. Marshall, holding the reins.

“Well, anyhow,” she said, with sudden cheerfulness, “Mrs. Marshall’ll be glad I’m not coming, and some day, maybe you’ll take me when she isn’t with you.”

Dave started to protest, then the polite lie faded on his lips.  Lydia turned her pellucid gaze to his with such a look of mature understanding, that he ended by nodding as if she had indeed been grown up, and rising, said, “Perhaps you’re right.  Good-by, my dear.  Come, Margery.”

Lydia stood with the baby clinging to her skirts.  There were tears in her eyes.  Sometimes she looked on the world that other children lived in, with the wonder and longing of a little beggar snub-nosed against the window of a French pastry shop.

John Levine came home with Amos that night to supper.  Amos felt safe about an unexpected guest on Saturday nights for there was always a pot of baked beans, at the baking of which Lizzie was a master hand, and there were always biscuits.  Lydia was expert at making these.  She had taken of late to practising with her mother’s old cook book and Amos felt as if he were getting a new lease of gastronomic life.

“Well,” said Levine, after supper was finished, the baby was asleep and Lydia was established with a copy of “The Water Babies” he had brought her, “I had an interesting trip, this week.”

Amos tossed the bag of tobacco to Levine.  “Where?”

“I put in most of the week on horseback up on the reservation.  Amos, the pine land up in there is something to dream of.  Why, there’s nothing like it left in the Mississippi Valley, nor hasn’t been for twenty years.  Have you ever been up there?”