“I’m not ashamed to be a hired girl for your mother, Billy Norton,” snapped Lydia.

“Well, I’m ashamed for you,” answered the young man.  “You earn your money some other way.”

Lydia looked meaningly at Billy’s big hands, rough and red with milking and farm work.

“You do hired man’s work for your father.  How’ll you live that down?”

It was Billy’s turn to blush.  “I’m a man,” he replied.

Lydia’s voice suddenly quivered.  “Then how can I earn money?”

“Dead easy!  You make the best fudge in the world.  Put some for sale in the University book store.  I’m clerking there an hour every day.”

“The very thing!” cried Ma Norton.

“Billy, you are a duck!” shrieked Lydia.

“Gimme something to eat, Ma, before I go out to milk,” said Billy, with a grin that struggled to be modest.

Billy’s suggestion proved indeed to be a happy one.  He was a willing pack horse and middleman for Lydia and though the demand for fudge was never overwhelming, Lydia by the end of May had cleared something over thirty-five dollars.

Her joy over this method of earning money was not confined to its relation to her camping trip.  She saw herself helping to pay up their indebtedness to Levine, Marshall having made good his threat to call in the note.  She saw herself gradually developing an enormous trade that finally should demand a whole store for itself.  The store would develop into a candy factory.  The candy factory would grow into a business that would send Lydia, admired and famous, traveling about the world in a private yacht.

In the meantime, she expended the whole of four dollars on a pair of buckskin outing boots and eight dollars on a little corduroy hunting coat and skirt.  When the clothes arrived from the Chicago mail order house, Amos, Lizzie and Lydia had an exciting hour.  Amos had brought the package home from town with him, and supper had been held back while Lydia tried on the clothes.  Amos and Lizzie smiled when the young girl pranced out before them.  The suit was cheap but well cut, with belt and pockets and welted seams.  The soft buckskin shoes fitted the slender calves like velvet.  With her bright cheeks and her yellow hair above the fawn-colored corduroy, Lydia looked half boy, half woman.

“My soul, Lydia, they’re just grand!” cried Lizzie.

“What boys are going in that crowd?” demanded Amos.

“Charlie and Kent and—­Margery’s mother’s given in—­’Gustus Bach.  I told you.  Daddy, don’t you like the suit?”

“Like it!” exclaimed Amos.  “Lydia, I’m stunned by it!  It makes me realize my little girl’s growing up to be a pretty woman.  I wish I could have bought you your first suit myself, Lydia.  But on a dollar and a half a day, I swan—­”

The brightness suddenly left Lydia’s face.  “Oh, Daddy,” she exclaimed, “I’m a pig to spend all this money on myself!  You take the rest of the money, for the note.”