Amos gave a laugh that was half gay, half grim.  “Lydia, you spend every cent of that money on yourself.  You’ve earned it in more ways than one.  I wish John Levine could see you in it.  I guess he will though.  Congress will rest most of the summer.  Let’s have supper now.”

Lydia spun through her Junior examination blissfully.  For once marks and final averages were of little importance to her.  For the week after school closed, she was going camping!

Charlie and Kent were making all the camp preparations.  Miss Towne and the three girls were to be at Lydia’s gate with their suitcases at nine o’clock of a Monday morning.  Other than this, they had received no orders.

Amos had been very sober when he said good-by to Lydia, at half past six.  “It’s your first trip, Lydia.  Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want your mother to see.”

Lydia looked at him wonderingly, then threw her arms about his neck.  “Oh, Daddy, I don’t want to go off and leave you two whole weeks!”

“It’s too late to back out now.  Go on and have a good time,” said Amos, picking up his dinner pail.  Lydia watched him down the road.  Suddenly she realized how lonely her father must be without her mother.

“I oughtn’t to go, Lizzie,” she said.

“Shucks!  Think of all you’ll have to tell us when you get home.  Don’t be a cry baby, child.”

Promptly at nine Charlie and Kent whirled up to the gate in a carryall.  The driver was the same man who had moved the Dudley family five years before.  He greeted Lydia with a grin.

“You’ve grow’d some, eh, Lydia?  Where’s the rest of the women folks?”

“Here come Miss Towne and Olga!” cried Kent.  “Margery’ll be late, of course.”

At nine-fifteen Margery was driven up in state by Elviry, and at nine-twenty the carryall was off to the north in a cloud of dust, leaving Adam howling dismally at the gate.

For fifteen miles the way led up and down hill over a dusty country road that wound for the most part past great wheat farms and grazing lands, vividly green under the June sky.  Here and there were woods of young oak and birch, self sowed, replacing the pine long since cleared off.  For the last five miles there were few farms.  The rolling hills disappeared and low lying lakes, surrounded by marshes took their places.  The young rice bordering the lakes was tenderly green and the marshes were like fields of corn with their thick growth of cat-tail.  Beyond the marshes the hills rose again, with the road winding like a black ribbon over their curving bosoms into the vivid sky beyond.

“Where the hills begin again, that’s the reservation,” said Charlie.

“Where are the pines?” asked Lydia.  “I thought it was all pines.”

“You’ll see plenty, before the trip’s over.  Just beyond that group of buildings is the reservation line.”

The buildings Charlie pointed to were the first that had appeared in several miles.  A two-story, unpainted frame house with several barns and sheds comprised the group.  There was a sign on the front of the house.