“Lydia,” said her father abruptly.  “You’re a big girl now.  You asked for skates and a sled for Christmas.  My child, I don’t see how you children are going to have anything extra for Christmas, except perhaps a little candy and an orange.  That note with Marshall comes due in January.  By standing Levine off on the rent, I can rake and scrape the interest together.  It’s hopeless for me even to consider meeting the note.  What Marshall will do, I don’t know.  If I could ever get on my feet—­with the garden.  But on a dollar and a half a day, I swan—­”

“No Christmas at all?” quavered Lydia.  “Won’t we even hang up our stockings?”

“If you’ll be contented just to put a little candy in them.  Come, Lydia, you’re too big to hang up your stocking, anyhow.”

Lydia left her father and walked over to the window.  She pressed her face against the pane and looked back to the lake.  The sun was sinking in a gray rift of clouds.  The lake was a desolate plain of silvery gold touched with great shadows of purple where snow drifts were high.  As she looked, the weight on her chest lifted.  The trembling in her hands that always came with the mention of money lessened.  The child, even as early as this, had the greatest gift that life bestows, the power of deriving solace from sky and hill and sweep of water.

“Anyhow,” she said to her father, “I’ve still got something to look forward to.  I’ve got the doll house to give baby, and Mr. Levine always gives me a book for Christmas.”

“That’s a good girl!” Amos gave a relieved sigh, then went on with his brooding over his unlighted pipe.

And after all, this Christmas proved to be one of the high spots of Lydia’s life.  She had a joyous 24th.  All the morning she spent in the woods on the Norton farm with her sled, cutting pine boughs.  As she trudged back through the farmyard, Billy Norton called to her.

“Oh, Lydia!”

Lydia stopped her sled against a drift and waited for Billy to cross the farmyard.  He was a large, awkward boy several years older than Lydia.  He seemed a very homely sort of person to her, yet she liked his face.  He was as fair as Kent was dark.  Kent’s features were regular and clean-cut.  Billy’s were rough hewn and irregular, and his hair and lashes were straight and blond.

What Lydia could not at this time appreciate was the fact that Billy’s gray eyes were remarkable in the clarity and steadiness of their gaze, that his square jaw and mobile mouth were full of fine promise for his manhood and that even at sixteen the framework of his great body was magnificent.

He never had paid any attention to Lydia before and she was bashful toward the older boys.

“Say, Lydia, want a brace of duck?  A lot of them settled at Warm Springs last night and I’ve got more than I can use.”

He leaned his gun against the fence and began to separate two birds from the bunch hanging over his shoulder.