“Hello, Lyd!  Awful glad you’re back!”

He sat down on the step below her and Lydia wrinkled her nose.  He carried with him the odor of hay and horses.

“How’s your mother?” asked Lydia.  “I’m coming over, to-morrow.”

“Mother’s not so very well.  She works too hard at the blamed canning.  I told her I’d rather never eat it than have her get so done up.”

“I’ll be over to help her,” said Lydia.  “We had a perfectly heavenly time in camp, Billy.”

“Did you?” asked her caller, indifferently.  “Hay is fine this year.  Never knew such a stand of clover.”

“Miss Towne was grand to us.  And Kent and Charlie are the best cooks, ever.”

“Great accomplishment for men,” muttered Billy.  “Are you going to try to sell fudge, this winter, Lyd?”

“I don’t know,” Lydia’s tone was mournful, “Daddy hates to have me.  Now I’m growing up he seems to be getting sensitive about my earning money.”

“He’s right too,” said Billy, with a note in his voice that irritated Lydia.

“Much you know about it!  You just try to make your clothes and buy your school books on nothing.  Dad’s just afraid people’ll know how little he earns, that’s all.  Men are selfish pigs.”

Astonished by this outburst, Billy turned round to look up at Lydia.  She was wearing her Sunday dress of the year before, a cheap cotton that she had outgrown.  The young man at her feet did not see this.  All he observed were the dusty gold of her curly head, the clear blue of her eyes and the fine set of her head on her thin little shoulders.

“You always look just right to me, Lyd,” he said.  “Listen, Lydia.  I’m not going to be a farmer, I’m—­”

“Not be a farmer!” cried Lydia.  “After all you’ve said about it!”

“No!  I’m going in for two years’ law, then I’m going into politics.  I tell you, Lydia, what this country needs to-day more than anything is young, clean politicians.”

“You mean you’re going to do like Mr. Levine?”

“God forbid!” exclaimed the young man.  “I’m going to fight men like Levine.  And by heck,” he paused and looked at Lydia dreamily, “I’ll be governor and maybe more, yet.”

“But what’s changed you?” persisted Lydia.

“The fight about the reservation, mostly.  There’s something wrong, you know, in a system of government that allows conditions like that.  It’s against American principles.”

His tone was oratorical, and Lydia was impressed.  She forgot that Billy smelled of the barnyard.

“Well,” she said, “we’d all be proud of you if you were president, I can tell you.”

“Would you be!” Billy’s voice was pleased.  “Then, Lydia, will you wait for me?”

“Wait for you?”

“Yes, till I make a name to bring to you.”

Lydia flushed angrily.  “Look here, Billy Norton, you don’t have to be silly, after all the years we’ve known each other.  I’m only fifteen, just remember that, and I don’t propose to wait for any man.  I’d as soon think of waiting for—­for Adam, as for you, anyhow.”