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Updated: May 26, 2025
So little Lydia Bestman stood drearily watching with sorrow-filled eyes the England of her babyhood fade slowly into the distance eyes that were fated never to see again the royal old land of her birth. Already the deepest grief that life could hold had touched her young heart. She had lost her own gentle, London-bred mother when she was but two years old.
There were forty-nine, all told. That evening she counted them again; there were forty-eight. Then she complained to her husband that one of the children had evidently stolen a cake. Bestman inquired which child was fond of the cakes. Mrs. Bestman replied that she did not know, unless it was Lydia, who always liked them. Lydia was called. Her father, frowning, asked if she had taken the cake.
I am happy, happy, child, and you will be happy with him, too." And that night Lydia Bestman laid her down to rest, with her heart knowing the greatest human love that had ever entered into her life. Mr. Evans was almost beside himself with joyousness when the young people rather shyly confessed their engagement to him.
"I can hardly say just how but " she ended with only a smile. For a full minute he caught and held her glance. She seemed unable to look away, but her grave, blue English eyes were neither shy nor confident. They just seemed to answer his then, "Miss Bestman, will you be my wife?" he asked gently. She was neither surprised nor dismayed, only stood silent, as if she had forgotten the art of speech.
This beautiful child was but a few weeks old when Mr. Bestman wrote, announcing to his daughter his intention of visiting her for a few days. So he came to the Indian Reserve, to the handsome country home his Indian son-in-law had built. He was amazed, surprised, delighted. His English heart revelled in the trees. "Like an Old Country gentleman's estate in the Counties," he declared.
Like most transplanted Englishmen, Mr. Bestman cut himself completely off from the land of his fathers; his interests and his friends henceforth were all in the country of his adoption, and he chose Ohio as a site for his new home. He was a man of vast peculiarities, prejudices and extreme ideas a man of contradictions so glaring that even his own children never understood him.
And here was Chief George Mansion's silent, unpretentious little mother possessing all this power among her people, and she, Lydia Bestman, was shaking hands with her! It seemed very marvellous.
The child said no. "You are not telling the truth," Mr. Bestman shouted, as the poor little downtrodden girl stood half terrified, consequently half guilty-mannered, before him. "But I am truthful," she said. "I know nothing of the cake." "You are not truthful. You stole it you know you did. You shall be punished for this falsehood," he stormed, and reached for the cat-o'-nine-tails.
"Yes," defied Lydia, "an Indian, who can give me not only a better home than this threadbare parsonage of yours" here she swept scornful eyes about the meagre little, shabby room "yes, a home that any Bestman would be proud to own; but better than that," she continued ragingly, "he has given me love love, that you in your chilly, inhuman home sneer at, but that I have cried out for; love that my dead mother prayed should come to me, from the moment she left me a baby, alone, in England, until the hour when this one splendid man took me into his heart."
Can't you understand that I am only an untitled commoner to his people? I am only a white girl." "Only a white girl!" repeated the sister, sarcastically. "Do you mean to tell me that you believe these wretched Indians don't want him to marry you? You, a Bestman, and an English girl? Nonsense, Lydia! You are talking utter nonsense." But the sister's voice weakened, nevertheless.
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