The opportunity to talk with Charlie came about simply enough. At recess one day a week or so later he asked her if she was going to the first Senior Hop of the year. Lydia gave him a clear look.
“Why do you ask me that? Just to embarrass me?” she said.
Charlie looked startled. “Lord knows I didn’t mean anything,” he exclaimed. “What’re you so touchy about?”
Lydia’s cheeks burned redder than usual. “I went to a party at Miss Towne’s when I was a Freshman and I promised myself I’d never go to another.”
“Why not!” Charlie’s astonishment was genuine.
“Clothes,” replied Lydia, briefly.
The Indian boy leaned against a desk and looked Lydia over through half-closed eyes. “You’re an awful pretty girl, Lydia. Honest you are, and you’ve got more brain in a minute than any other girl in school’ll have all her life.”
Lydia blushed furiously. Then moved by Charlie’s simplicity and obviously sincere liking, she came closer to him and said, “Then, Charlie, why hasn’t any boy ever asked me to a party? Is it just clothes?”
Looking up at him with girlish wistfulness in the blue depths of her eyes, with the something tragic in the lines of her face that little Patience’s death had written there irradicably, with poverty speaking from every fold of the blouse and skirt, yet with all the indescribable charm of girlish beauty at fifteen, Lydia was more appealing than Charlie could stand.
“Lydia, I’ll take you to a party a week, if you’ll go!” he cried.
“No! No! I couldn’t go,” she protested. “Answer my question—is it clothes?”
“No, only half clothes,” answered Charlie, meeting her honestly. “The other half is you know too much. You know the fellows like a girl that giggles a lot and don’t know as much as he does and that’s a peachy dancer and that’ll let him hold her hand and kiss her. And that’s the honest to God truth, Lydia.”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh—” Then, “Well, I could giggle, all right. I can’t dance very well because I’ve just picked up the steps from watching the girls teach each other in the cloakroom. Oh, well, I don’t care! I’ve got Adam and I’ve got Mr. Levine.”
“He’s a nice one to have,” sneered Charlie.
“Why do you hate him so, Charlie?” asked Lydia.
“Lots of reasons. And I’ll hate him more if he gets his bill through Congress.”
“I don’t see why you feel so,” said Lydia. “You get along all right without the reservation, why shouldn’t the other Indians. I don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t understand,” replied Charlie, “you’re like most of the other whites round here. You see a chance to get land and you’d crucify each other if you needed to, to get it. What chance do Indians stand? But I tell you this,” his voice sank to a hoarse whisper and his eyes looked far beyond her, “if there is a God of the Indians as well as the whites, you’ll pay some day! You’ll pay as we are paying.”