"There's nothing more to talk about," Levine's voice was short. "Let him call in the loan, the fat hog!" Lydia slept the long night through. She awoke refreshed and renewed. After first adjusting herself to the awful sense of loss, which is the worst of waking in grief, the recollection of the conversation she had heard the night before returned with sickening vividness. After she had wiped the breakfast dishes for Lizzie she stood for a long time at the living-room window with Florence Dombey in her arms staring at the lake. Finally, she tucked the doll up comfortably on the couch and announced to Lizzie that she was going skating. An hour later, Dave Marshall heard his clerk protesting outside his door and a childish voice saying, "But please, just for a minute. He likes me. He truly does." Then the door opened and Lydia, breathless and rosy and threadbare, came into his little private office. She closed the door and stood with her back against it, unsmiling. "I'm in quarantine," she said, "so I won't come near you." "Why, Lydia!" exclaimed Marshall, "where did you come from!" "Home. Mr. Marshall, won't you fix Daddy's note if he gives you me?" "Huh!" ejaculated Marshall. "You said last fall," the child went on, her voice quavering but her eyes resolute, "that if Daddy ever wanted to sell me, you'd buy me. I think I ought to be worth a thousand dollars. I can do so much work around the house and help you train Margery! I can work hard. You ask John Levine." Marshall's fat face was purple and then pale. "Does your father know you're here, Lydia?" he asked. She clasped her mittened hands in sudden agitation. "Nobody knows but you," she exclaimed. "Oh! you mustn't tell the man out there my name. I'm in quarantine and I'd be arrested, if the health office knew!" "I won't tell," said Dave, gently. "Come over here by me, Lydia. Margery is away on a visit so I'm not afraid for her." Lydia crossed the room. Marshall took the skates from her shoulders and unfastened her coat. "Sit down on that chair and let's talk this over. You know what a note is, do you, Lydia?" "It's money you owe," she said, her blue eyes anxiously fixed on Marshall's face. He nodded. "Yes. When your mother was sick, your father asked my bank here to lend him a thousand dollars for two years. Now, your father is very poor. He doesn't own anything that's worth a thousand dollars and I knew he could never pay it back. So I told him he must get some one to promise to pay that money for him if he couldn't, at the end of the two years. Understand?" Lydia nodded. "Well, he got John Levine. Now the two years are up and unless that thousand dollars is paid, the people whose money I take care of in the bank, will each lose some of that thousand. See?" Lydia stared at him, struggling to take in the explanation. "I see," she said. "But if you'd pay a thousand dollars for me, that would fix it all up."