over little Patience, then she stood looking out over the lake. The
morning wind had died and the water lay as motionless and perfect a
blue as the sky above. Faint and far down the curving shore the white
dome of the Capitol building rose above soft billows of green tree
tops. Up the shore, woods crowned the gentle slopes of the hills.
Across the lake lay a dim green shore-line of fields. Lydia gave a
deep sigh. The beauty of the lake shore always stirred in her a
wordless ecstasy. She waded slowly to her waist into the water, then
turned gently on her back and floated with her eyes on the sky. Its
depth of color was no deeper nor more crystal clear than the depths of
her own blue gaze. The tender brooding wonder of the lake was a part
and parcel of her own little face, so tiny in the wide expanse of water.

After some moments of drifting, she turned on her side and began to
swim along the shore. She swam with a power and a precision of stroke
that a man twice her size would have envied. But it must be noted that
she did not get out of eye and ear shot of the perambulator beneath the
willows; and she had not been swimming long before a curious agitation
of the mosquito netting brought her ashore.

She wrung the water from her short skirt and was giving little Patience
her bread and milk, when Kent returned with a paper bag.

"Ma was cross at me for pestering her, but I managed to get some
sandwiches and doughnuts. Come on, let's begin. Gee, there's a squaw!"

Coming toward the three children seated in the sand by the perambulator
was a thin bent old woman, leaning on a stick.

"Dirty old beggar," said Kent, beginning to devour his sandwiches.