“Gee, don’t I have the luck!” he groaned.  “I could get on the School football team, I know it, if I didn’t have to come home right after school to deliver milk.  Hang it!”

Lydia looked at him quickly.  “How much milk do you have to deliver?”

“Aw, just a snag.  Two quarts up the road to Essers’ and two to Stones’.  They both got babies and have to have it.  Think of putting me off the school team for four quarts of baby milk!”

“Oh, Billy,” gasped Lydia, “I’ll do it for you—­if—­Billy, have you got your freshman textbooks still?”

“Sure,” answered the boy.  “They’re awful banged up, but I guess all the pages are there.”

Lydia was breathless with excitement.  “Billy, if you’ll let me have your books, I’ll carry the milk for you, all winter.”

The big boy looked at the little girl, curiously.

“They’re a ratty lot of old books, Lydia.  Half the fun of having school books is getting new ones.”

“I know that,” she answered, flushing.

“Hanged if I’ll do it.  Let your dad get you new ones.”

“He’d like to as well as any one, but he can’t right now and I’m going to look out for my own.  Oh, Billy, let me do it!”

“You can have ’em all and welcome,” exclaimed Billy, with a sudden huskiness in his voice.  “Gosh, you’re awful little, Lydia.”

Lydia stamped her foot.  “I won’t take anything for nothing.  And I’m not little.  I’m as strong as a horse.”

“Well,” conceded Billy, “just till after Thanksgiving is all I want.  Come on along home now and we’ll fix it up with Ma.”

Ma Norton twisted Lydia around and retied her hair ribbon while she listened.  They all knew Lydia’s pride, so she quenched the impulse to give the child the books and said, “Till Thanksgiving is plenty of pay, Billy, and when the snow comes, the two mile extra walking will be too much.  Get the books out of the parlor closet.  You got a—­a—­ink on the back of your neck, Lydia.  Wait till I get it off for you.”

She wet a corner of a towel at the tea kettle and proceeded to scour the unsuspecting Lydia’s neck and ears.  “Children in the high school are apt to get ink in the back of their necks and ears,” she said. “Always scrub there, Lydia!  Remember!”

“Yes, Ma’m!  Oh, gosh, what a big pile!  Thank you ever so much, Billy.  I’ll be here right after school to-morrow, Mrs. Norton.”

Lydia spent a blissful evening mending and cleaning Billy’s textbooks, with Adam snoring under her feet and her father absorbed in his newspaper.

The delivering of the milk was no task at all, though had it not been for Adam trudging beside her with his rolling bulldog gait and his slavering ugly jaw, she would have been afraid in the early dusk of the autumn evenings.