“You certainly are a little sunfish in the water,” panted Charlie, as they sat with feet dangling off the pier.

“Ought to be, I’m in it enough,” returned Lydia.  “Charlie, there’s a poor old squaw came here to-day.  What’s the matter with the Indians?  Why don’t they work?”

Charlie turned to look at the white child, uneasily.  The two made a wonderful contrast.  Charlie was big and bronze and deep chested, with regular features although they were a little heavy.  Lydia, growing fast, was thinner than ever but cheeks and eyes were bright.

Charlie’s mouth twisted in a sneer.  “Why don’t they work?  Why don’t the whites give ’em a chance?  Dirty thieves, prowling round like timber wolves.  Ask Dave Marshall.  Ask that gumshoeing crook of a Levine.  Don’t ask me.”

“Levine’s not a crook,” shouted Lydia.  “He’s my friend.”

The sneer left Charlie’s face and he laughed.  “Your friend is he, little sunfish!”

“Yes,” said Lydia, furiously.  “He gave me Adam,” hugging the dog’s ugly, faithful head.  He immediately tried to sit in her wet lap.  “And he’s done as much for me as my own father.”

“If he’s your friend,” said the Indian gently, “I won’t speak against him to you again.”

Lydia instantly was mollified.  Charlie was so old and so young!  He was so different from Kent that staring into his deep black eyes, Lydia suddenly felt his alien race.

“I must go in and dress,” she said.  “It’s time to get supper.”

Charlie nodded and untied his canoe.  After he was seated with paddle lifted, he glanced up at her mischievously.

“You’re a very nice little girl,” he said; “I shall come again.  You may call me Uncle Charlie.”

Lydia put out her tongue at him.  “Good-by, Uncle!” she called and raced up the bank to the house.

“Daddy,” she said that night at supper, “why should Mr. Marshall and Charlie Jackson both say Mr. Levine is a crook?”

Amos ate a piece of bread meditatively before replying.  “Any man that goes into politics in this country leaves his reputation behind him.  You and I’ll never have a better friend than John Levine.”

Lydia nodded.  She was only a child after all and still retained implicit faith in the opinion of those she loved.  She went back to school that fall full of interest and importance.  She was a sophomore now and very proud of the fact that she knew the ropes.  Her arrangement with Billy held for his second year books.  With much pinching of the grocery money, Lizzie had achieved two new galatea sailor suits and so while she felt infinitely inferior to the elaborately gowned young misses of her grade, Lydia was not unhappy.

There was a new course of study offered the pupils this year.  It was called the Cookery Course and was elective, not required.  Lydia turned her small nose up at it.  She was a good cook, without study, she told herself.  But Miss Towne thought differently.  She called Lydia into her room one day, early in the term.  “Lydia, why don’t you take the Cooking Course?”