"How about your one term of Civil Government?" asked Miss Towne.
"Oh, I was a freshman then and I've forgotten it all,--except the preamble to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence."
Amos answered her plaint indignantly. "Well, for heaven's sake! And you a descendant of the Puritans! Lord, what's become of the old stock! No, I won't help you at all. Think it out for yourself."
And think it out Lydia did, sitting on the front steps with her sewing and listening to the sighing of the pine by the gate.
Spring flew by like the wind, and June came. There was but one flaw in Lydia's happiness. Nobody asked her to attend the Senior Ball that was to take place on Graduation night. To be sure, it was not an invitation affair. The class was supposed to attend in a body but there was, nevertheless, the usual two-ing and only a very few of the girls who had no invitation from boys would go. Lydia, herself, would have cut off her hand rather than appear at her own Senior Ball without a young man.
She had pinned some faith to Kent, until she had heard that Margery was to be home in time for the graduating exercises. As June came on and the tenth drew near, a little forlorn sense of the unfairness of things began to obscure Lydia's pride and joy in her honor. On the ninth, the last rehearsal of the speech had been made; the dress was finished and hung resplendent in the closet; Amos himself had taken Lydia into town and bought her white slippers and stockings, taking care to inform the street-car conductor and the shoe clerk carelessly the wherefore and why of his mission.
And Lydia knew that none of her classmates was going to ask her to the ball. "They think they've done enough in giving me the valedictory," she thought. "As if I wouldn't exchange that in a minute for a sure enough invitation."
Mortified and unhappy, she avoided her mates during the last week of school, fearing the inevitable question, "Who's going to take you, Lyd?"
The tenth dawned, a lovely June day. Amos had half a day off and was up at daylight, whistling in the garden. The exercises began at ten and by half past eight, Lydia was buttoned into her pretty little organdy, Lizzie was puffing in her black alpaca and Amos was standing about in his black Sunday suit which dated back to his early married days. By nine-thirty they had reached the Methodist church and Amos and Lizzie were established in the middle of the front row of the balcony while Lydia was shivering with fright in the choir-room where the class was gathered.