“Seems to me all your plans need money,” suggested John.

“Yes, that’s the trouble with them,” admitted Lydia, with a sigh.  “And I’ll always be poor—­I’m that kind.”

“What are you really going to do with yourself, Lydia, pipe dreams aside?”

“Well, first I’m going to get an education, clear up through the University.  ’Get an education if you have to scrub the streets to do it,’ was what Mother always said.  ‘You can be a lady and be poor,’ she said, ‘but you can’t be a lady and use poor English.’  And then I’m going to be as good a housekeeper as Mrs. Marshall and I’m going to dress as well as Olga Reinhardt, and have as pretty hands as Miss Towne.  And I’m never going to move out of the home I make.  Maybe I’ll get married.  I suppose I’ll have to ’cause I want at least six children, and some one’s got to support them.  And I’ll want to travel a good deal.”

“Travel takes money,” John reminded her.

“Not always.  There was The Man Without a Country, but I wouldn’t want to have what he had.  Seems to me it was a little thing he said after all.  Mr. Levine, why did he feel so terrible about the poem?”

“What poem?” asked Levine.

Lydia cleared her throat.

  “’Breathes there a man with soul so dead
  Who never to himself hath said
  This is my own, my native land?’

—­and you know the rest.”

John Levine looked at Lydia strangely.  There was a moment’s pause, then she said, “But I don’t understand just what it all means.”

“Lots of us don’t,” commented John, briefly.  “But if I had a son I’d beat understanding of it into him with a hickory club.”

Lydia’s jaw dropped.  “But—­but wouldn’t you beat it into your daughter?”

“What’s the use of trying to teach patriotism to anything female?” There was a contemptuous note in Levine’s voice that touched Lydia’s temper.

“Well, there’s plenty of use, I’d have you know!” she cried.  “Why, I was more interested in Civil Government last year than any of the boys except Charlie Jackson.”

Levine laughed, then said soberly, “All right, Lydia, I’d be glad to see what you can do for your country.  When you get that orphan asylum, put over the door, ‘Ducit Amor Patriae.’”

Lydia looked at him clearly.  “You just wait and see.”

She went soberly toward the kitchen for her apron, and Levine looked after her with an expression at once wistful and gentle.  Lydia looked up “Ducit Amor Patriae” in a phrase book the next day.  She liked the sound of it.

By the middle of January, Levine was sufficiently recovered to leave.  The Saturday before he left occurred another conversation between him and Lydia that cemented still further the quaint friendship of the two.