The High School was a different world from that of the old ward school.  The ward school, comprising children of only one neighborhood with the grades small, was a democratic, neighborly sort of place.  The High School gathered together children from all over town, of all classes, from the children of lumber kings and college professors, to the offspring of the Norwegian day laborer and the German saloon keeper.  There were even several colored children in the High School as well as an Indian lad named Charlie Jackson.  In the High School, class feeling was strong.  There were Greek letter societies in the fourth grade, reflecting the influence of the college on the lake shore.  Among the well-to-do girls, and also among those who could less well afford it, there was much elaborate dressing.  Dancing parties were weekly occurrences.  They were attended by first year girls of fourteen and fifteen as well as by the older girls, each lass with an attendant lad, who called for her and took her home unchaperoned.

It took several months for Lydia to become aware of the complicated social life going on about her.  She was so absorbed while in school in adjusting herself to the new type of school life,—­a different teacher for each study, heavier lessons, the responsibility of collateral reading—­that the Christmas holidays came before she realized that except in her class room work, she had nothing whatever in common with her classmates.

All fall she saw very little of Kent.  He was on the freshman football squad and this was a perfectly satisfactory explanation of his dereliction—­had he cared to make any—­as far as Saturdays went.  In the Assembly room because he had chosen the Classical course, his seat was far from Lydia’s, who had chosen the English course.

Saturday was a busy day for Lydia at home.  Old Lizzie, who was nearing sixty, was much troubled with rheumatism and even careless Lydia felt vaguely that the house needed a certain amount of cleaning once a week.  So, of a Saturday morning, she slammed through the house like a small whirlwind, leaving corners undisturbed and dust in windrows, but satisfied with her efforts.  Saturday afternoon, she worked in the garden when the day was fair, helping to gather the winter vegetables.  Before little Patience’s death she had gone to Sunday School, but since that time she had not entered a church.  So Sunday became her feast day.  She put in the entire morning preparing a Sunday dinner for her father and nearly always John Levine.  After dinner, the three, with Adam, would tramp a mile up the road, stopping to lean over the bars and talk dairying with Pa Norton, winter wheat with Farmer Jansen, and hardy alfalfa with old Schmidt.  Between farms, Amos and John always talked politics, local and national, arguing heatedly.

To all this, Lydia listened with half an ear.  She loved these walks, partly because of the grown up talks, partly because Adam loved them, mostly because of the beauty of the wooded hills, the far stretch of the black fields, ready plowed for spring and the pale, tender blue of the sky that touched the near horizon.  If she missed and needed playmates of her own age, she was scarcely conscious of the fact.