"Why Lydia, do you mean you would leave your father?"
"I wouldn't want to," she answered earnestly, "but Lizzie could take care of Daddy. He doesn't really need me. There isn't anybody really needs me--needs me--now--"
She swallowed a sob, then went on. "Mr. Levine just mustn't pay it. He's awful worried. His land's fixed so's he'd never get over it. And he's the best friend we have in all the world. He just mustn't pay it. It would kill mother, if she knew. Oh, she hated borrowing so."
Marshall chewed his cigar. "Levine," he growled, "is a long legged crook."
Lydia flew out of her chair and shook her fist in the banker's face. "Don't you dare say that!" she cried. "He's a dear lamb, that's what he is."
Dave's fat jaw dropped. "A dear lamb, eh? Ask him some time what a land shark is--a dear lamb?"
He went on chewing his cigar and Lydia returned to her chair. Whether it was the anxious round eyes, above the scarlet cheeks, whether it was the wistful droop of the childish lips, whether it was the look that belongs to ravished motherhood and seemed grossly wrong on a child's face, whether it was some thought of his own pampered little daughter, whether it was that curious appeal Lydia always made to men, or a combination of all, that moved Marshall, he could not have told. But suddenly he burst forth.
"Good God, I've done hard things in my life, but I can't do this! Lydia, you go home and tell your father I'll renew that note, but he's got to pay the interest and ten per cent. of the principal, every year till he's paid it up. Here, I'll write it down. And tell him that I'm not doing it for him or for that skunk of a Levine, but I'm doing it for you. Here, I'll write that down, _too_."
He folded the bit of paper and put it in an envelope. "Come here," he said. He pinned the note into the pocket of her blouse. "Understand, Lydia," he said in a low voice, tilting her head up so that he looked down into her eyes, "I'm buying your friendship with this. You go on living with your father and taking care of him, but I'm buying your friendship for me and Margery--for good and all." He looked out of the window with a curious air of abstraction. Then, "Button your coat and run along."