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.