As soon as the shooting was known, there was a deluge of offers of help.  All the organizations to which Levine belonged as well as his numerous acquaintances were prodigal in their offers of every kind of assistance.

But John fretfully refused.  He would have no nurse but Lizzie, share no roof but Amos’.  “You’re the only folks I got,” he told Amos again and again.

The shooting was a seven days’ wonder, but no clue was found as to the identity of the would-be assassin.  Charlie Jackson had spent the evening with Kent.  As the monotony of Levine’s convalescence came on, gossip and conjecture lost interest in him.  John himself would not speak of the shooting.

It was after Christmas before John was able to sit up in Amos’ arm chair and once more take a serious interest in the world about him.  Lydia, coming home from school, would find Adam howling with joy at the gate and John, pale and weak but fully dressed, watching for her from his arm chair by the window.  The two had many long talks, in the early winter dusk before Lydia started her preparations for supper.  One of these particularly, the child never forgot.

“Everybody acted queer about Charlie Jackson, at first,” said Lydia, “but now you’re getting well, they’re all just as crazy about him as ever.”

“He’ll kill some one in a football scrimmage yet,” was John’s comment.

“No, the boys say he never loses his temper.  The rest of them do.  I wish girls played football.  I bet I’d make a good quarterback.”

John laughed weakly but delightedly.  “You must weigh fully a hundred pounds!  Why, honey, they’d trample a hundred pounds to death!”

“They would not!” Lydia’s voice was indignant.  “And just feel my muscles.  I get ’em from swimming.”

John ran his hand over the proffered shoulders and arm.  “My goodness,” he said in astonishment.  “Those muscles are like tiny steel springs.  Well, what else would you like to be besides quarterback, Lydia?”

“When I was a little girl I was crazy to be an African explorer.  And I’d still like to be, only I know that’s not sensible.  Adam, for Pete’s sake get off my feet.”

Adam gave a slobbery sigh and withdrew a fraction of an inch.  Levine watched Lydia in the soft glow of the lamp light.  Her hair was still the dusty yellow of babyhood but it was long enough now to hang in soft curls in her neck after she had tied it back with a ribbon.  She was still wearing the sailor suits, and her face was still thin and childish for all she was a sophomore.

“I don’t suppose you could explore,” said Levine, meditatively.

“Oh, I could, if I had the money to outfit with, but I’ll tell you what I really would like best of all.”  Lydia hitched her chair closer to Levine and glanced toward the kitchen where Lizzie was knitting and warming her feet in the oven.  “I’d like to own an orphan asylum.  And I’d get the money to run it with from a gold mine.  I would find a mine in New Mexico.  I know I could if I could just get out there.”