Adam gave a slobbery sigh and withdrew a fraction of an inch. Levine watched Lydia in the soft glow of the lamp light. Her hair was still the dusty yellow of babyhood but it was long enough now to hang in soft curls in her neck after she had tied it back with a ribbon. She was still wearing the sailor suits, and her face was still thin and childish for all she was a sophomore. "I don't suppose you could explore," said Levine, meditatively. "Oh, I could, if I had the money to outfit with, but I'll tell you what I really would like best of all." Lydia hitched her chair closer to Levine and glanced toward the kitchen where Lizzie was knitting and warming her feet in the oven. "I'd like to own an orphan asylum. And I'd get the money to run it with from a gold mine. I would find a mine in New Mexico. I know I could if I could just get out there." "Seems to me all your plans need money," suggested John. "Yes, that's the trouble with them," admitted Lydia, with a sigh. "And I'll always be poor--I'm that kind." "What are you really going to do with yourself, Lydia, pipe dreams aside?" "Well, first I'm going to get an education, clear up through the University. 'Get an education if you have to scrub the streets to do it,' was what Mother always said. 'You can be a lady and be poor,' she said, 'but you can't be a lady and use poor English.' And then I'm going to be as good a housekeeper as Mrs. Marshall and I'm going to dress as well as Olga Reinhardt, and have as pretty hands as Miss Towne. And I'm never going to move out of the home I make. Maybe I'll get married. I suppose I'll have to 'cause I want at least six children, and some one's got to support them. And I'll want to travel a good deal." "Travel takes money," John reminded her. "Not always. There was The Man Without a Country, but I wouldn't want to have what he had. Seems to me it was a little thing he said after all. Mr. Levine, why did he feel so terrible about the poem?" "What poem?" asked Levine. Lydia cleared her throat. "'Breathes there a man with soul so dead Who never to himself hath said This is my own, my native land?' --and you know the rest." John Levine looked at Lydia strangely. There was a moment's pause, then she said, "But I don't understand just what it all means." "Lots of us don't," commented John, briefly. "But if I had a son I'd beat understanding of it into him with a hickory club." Lydia's jaw dropped. "But--but wouldn't you beat it into your daughter?" "What's the use of trying to teach patriotism to anything female?" There was a contemptuous note in Levine's voice that touched Lydia's temper. "Well, there's plenty of use, I'd have you know!" she cried. "Why, I was more interested in Civil Government last year than any of the boys except Charlie Jackson."