along to bed, Lydia."

"Lydia's not a kid. She's a grown-up lady in disguise," said Levine,
catching her hand as she passed and drawing her to him. "Good night,
young Lydia! If you were ten years older and I were ten years
younger--"

Lydia smiled through tear-dimmed eyes. "We'd travel!" she said.

Cold weather set in early this year. Before Thanksgiving the lake was
ice-locked for the winter. The garden was flinty, and on Thanksgiving
Day, three inches of snow fell. The family rose in the dark. Amos,
with his dinner pail, left the house an hour before Lydia and the sun
was just flushing the brown tree tops when she waved good-by to little
Patience, whose lovely little face against the window was the last
thing she saw in the morning, the first thing she saw watching for her
return in the dusk of the early winter evening.

Amos, always a little moody and a little restless, since the children's
mother had gone to her last sleep, grew more so as the end of the year
approached. It was perhaps a week before Christmas on a Sunday
afternoon that he called Lydia to him. Patience was having her nap and
Lizzie had gone to call on Mrs. Norton.

Lydia, who was re-reading "The Water Babies," put it down reluctantly
and came to her father's side. Her heart thumped heavily. Her
father's depressed voice meant just one thing--money trouble.

He was very gentle. He put his hand on the dusty yellow of her hair.
He was very careful of the children's hair. Like many New England farm