“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.”