Sawyer," looked up with sudden interest.

"Daddy, let's go back there to live. I'd love to live in a house with
loopholes."

The two men laughed. "You should have been a boy, Lydia," said Amos.

"A boy," sniffed Levine, "and who'd have mothered little Patience if
she'd been a boy?"

"That's right--yet, look at that litter on the desk in the parlor."

Both the men smiled while Lydia blushed.

"What are you going to do with that doll furniture, Lydia?" asked John
Levine.

"I'm going to make a doll house for little Patience, for Christmas."
Lydia gave an uncomfortable wriggle. "Don't talk about me so much."

"You're working a long way ahead," commented Amos. "That was your
mother's trait. I wish I'd had it. Though how I could look ahead on a
dollar and a half a day--Lydia, it's bedtime."

Lydia rose reluctantly, her book under her arm.

"Don't read upstairs, child," Amos went on; "go to bed and to sleep,
directly."

Lydia looked around for a safe place for the book and finally climbed