With Adam at her heels, she took to solitary tramping through the neighboring woods where at times she met Indians from the reservation—­a buck asleep on a log—­a couple of squaws laughing and chatting while they ate food they had begged—­an Indian boy, dusty and tired, resting after a trip to Lake City.  Lydia was a little afraid of these dark folk, though they always smiled at her.  She would jerk at Adam’s collar and cuff his ears for growling, then make off toward home.

It was a walk of just a mile from the cottage to the High School.  Lydia was very nervous about her first day at High School.  Kent was entering at the same time and she would have liked to have asked to go with him but she knew he would resent violently being associated with a girl on so important an occasion.

So it was that one of the teachers observed a child in a faded but clean galatea sailor suit, with curly blond hair barely long enough to tie in her neck, standing in one of the lower halls after the mob of seven or eight hundred boys and girls had been successfully herded into the great Assembly room.

“What is your name, my dear?” asked the teacher.

Lydia silently presented her promotion card.  The teacher nodded.

“Come along, Miss Dudley, or you’ll miss the principal’s speech.”

She seated Lydia near her in the Assembly room, then looked her over curiously.  The child’s face was remarkably intelligent, a high bred little face under a finely domed head.  The back of her ears and the back of her neck were dirty, and her thin hands were rough as if with housework.  The galatea sailor suit was cheap and coarse.

“A sick mother or no mother,” was the teacher’s mental note.  “I must inquire about her.  Almost too bashful to breathe.  Precocious mentally, a child physically.  I’ll look out for her to-day.”

Miss Towne had the reputation of an unfeeling disciplinarian among the pupils, but Lydia did not know this.  She only knew that by some miracle of kindness she came to understand the classroom system of recitations, that she was introduced to different teachers, that she learned how to decipher the hours of her recitations from the complicated chart on the Assembly room blackboard, and that at noon she started for home with a list of textbooks to be purchased, and a perfectly clear idea of what to do when she returned on the morrow.

The streets were full of children of all ages flocking toward the book stores.  Lydia walked along slowly, thinking deeply.  She knew that her list of books came to something over five dollars.  She knew that this sum of money would floor her father and she knew that she would rather beg on the streets than start Amos on one of his tirades on his poverty.

She pegged along homeward, half elated over the excitement of the day, half depressed over her book problem.  When she turned into the dirt road.  Billy Norton overtook her.  He was wearing a very high starched collar and a new suit of clothes.  Billy was a senior and felt his superiority.  Nevertheless, he wanted to tell his troubles—­even to a first year pupil.