content as she munched her cake.

"I brought a newly illustrated copy of 'Tom Sawyer' for you to see,
Lydia," said Levine. "Keep it as long as you want to. It's over on
the couch there."

Lydia threw herself headlong on the book and the two men returned to
the conversation she had interrupted.

"My loan from Marshall comes due in January," said Amos. "My lord,
I've got to do something."

"What made you get so much?" asked Levine.

"A thousand dollars? I told you at the time, I sorta lumped all my
outstanding debts with the doctor's bill and funeral expenses and
borrowed enough to cover."

"He's a skin, Marshall is. Why does he live on this street except to
save money?"

Lydia looked up from "Tom Sawyer." There were two little lines of
worry between her eyes and the little sick sense in the pit of her
stomach that always came when she heard money matters discussed. Her
earliest recollection was of her mother frantically striving to devise
some method of meeting their latest loan.

"I'd like to get enough ahead to buy a little farm. All my folks were
farmers back in New Hampshire and I was a fool ever to have quit it.
It looked like a mechanic could eat a farmer up, though, when I was a