e only safe way to
live. If other folks want to be safe let them tell their own truths. It
doesn't often help them for us to do it for 'em. My own principle has
been not to tell a lie about other folks' affairs, but to reserve the
truth. Understand?"

"I think I do," said Miss Lydia, faintly, "but it's difficult."

Doctor Lavendar looked at his two gold pieces thoughtfully. "Lydia," he
said, "it's like walking on a tight rope." Then he chuckled, dismissed
the subject, and spread out his eagles on the table. "Look at 'em!
Aren't they pretty? You see how glad Mary's young man was to get her.
I'll go halves with you!"

Her recoil as he handed her one of the gold pieces made him give her a
keen look; but all she said was: "Oh _no_! I wouldn't touch it!" Then
she seemed to get herself together: "I don't need it, thank you, sir,"
she said.

When she went away Doctor Lavendar, looking after her, thrust out his
lower lip. "_Lydia_ not 'need' an eagle?" he said. "How long since?" And
after a while he added, "Now, what on earth--?"

Old Chester, too, said, "What on earth--?" when, in December, Miss Lydia
turned the key in her front door and, with her carpetbag and bandbox,
took the morning stage for Mercer.

And we said it again, a few weeks later, when Mrs. Barkley received a
letter in which Miss Lydia said she had been visiting friends in Indiana
and had been asked by them to take care of a beautiful baby boy, and she
was bringing him home with her, and she hoped Mrs. Barkley would give
her some advice about taking care of babies, for she was afraid she
didn't know much--("'Much'?" Mrs. Barkley snorted. "She knows as much
about babies as a wildcat knows about tatting!")--and she was, as ever,
Mrs. Barkley's affectionate Lyddy.

The effect of this letter upon Old Chester can be imagined. Mrs. Drayton
said, "What I would like to know is, _whose baby is it_?"

Mrs. Barkley said in a deep bass: "Where will Lyddy get the money to
take care of it? As for advising her, I advise her to leave it on the
doorstep of its blood relations!"

Doctor Lavendar said: "Ho, hum! Do you remember what the new Mr. Smith
said about her when she gave her party? Well, I agree with him!" Which
(if you recall Mr. Smith's exact words) was really a shocking thing for
a minister of the gospel to say!

Mrs. William King said, firmly, that she called it murder, to intrust a
child to Miss Lydia Sampson. "She'll hold it upside down and never know
th