Half bewildered, as if it were a strange place, she felt the conductor take her arm. Then someone else grasped it, a rather tall figure with a familiar face, and a delighted voice at his side exclaimed:
"Why, Helen Grant! You have grown almost out of recollection!"
"Oh, Mrs. Dayton! Oh, Mr. Warfield!"
That was all she could say at first. Mr. Warfield looked after her trunk; Mrs. Dayton surveyed her from head to foot.
"You"ll have to go in long dresses," she began in an amused tone.
"Oh, I don"t want to grow up, Mrs. Dayton. I don"t want to be a young lady. Girls have such a good time, and in my heart and all over me I am just a girl," she exclaimed vehemently.
"I am glad of that, too. Joanna wondered if you had forgotten how to dry gla.s.s and china, and would be clear spoiled at boarding school. You haven"t changed a bit in looks, and your face isn"t a day older, but you are almost as tall as I. Just now I haven"t but two or three boarders, and I want all of you that I can have for the pure pleasure of the thing."
Mr. Warfield soon joined them. Here was the library in which she had taken such pleasure, the street with the stores, the window in which she had seen her Madonna, and now she knew so much about the old ones and their painters. A turn in this quiet street and here they were. She would not have been startled to see Mrs. Van Dorn on the porch. There were an old lady and an old gentleman, both silver-haired and placid, she in an almost quakerish garb, but looking very sweet.
"You are tired and dusty, I know, and want a bit of freshening up. Mr.
Warfield is going to stay to dinner, and then you can have your talk.
His school just closed yesterday, and he goes away to-morrow. We have almost quarreled about you; he hates girls" boarding schools and was sure you would come back a niminy, priminy Miss with high heels and trains and all that," laughing gayly.
"He doesn"t know anything about Aldred House," Helen replied, amused.
"Here, you are to have a room to yourself, though I expect to-morrow Uncle Jason will whisk you off. That old couple downstairs, Mr. and Mrs. White, have Mrs. Van Dorn"s room. And she"s careering around Europe like any young thing! She does surprise me. Now when you are ready come down, for we are just dying to inspect you and see how much you have changed."
Helen recalled the fact that a year ago she thought this the most beautiful place imaginable. There was the tall, slim rowan-tree, full of green berries that would hang out beads of red flame in the autumn, the tamarack with its sprays of delicate leaves, the big, burly, black walnut on the corner, the wild clematis and Virginia creeper, the prim flower-beds.
"There will be plenty of time to look at them through the summer," she thought, so she bathed her face, brushed her hair, shook out the pretty _plisse_ shirtwaist she had in her satchel, tied a blue ribbon round her neck and looked as fresh as a just opened flower.
CHAPTER XVI
HOPE THROUGH A WIDER OUTLOOK
She had on nice-fitting b.u.t.ton boots with heels only moderately high, a dark-blue, thin summer-cloth skirt up to her ankles, with several rows of st.i.tching through the hem, the crumply white plisse waist that fell like drapery about shoulders and arms, her hair was a ma.s.s of braids at the back with a straight parting from forehead to crown, some short curling ends about the edge of her fair brow, and the blue of her eyes was many shades deeper than the ribbon around her neck. Mrs. Van Dorn was no more anxious to have her a young lady than Mr. Warfield.
She was just a bright, intelligent, good-looking girl, who would never be girlishly pretty, but something better, perhaps a handsome woman at five-and-twenty, and always attractive from the sort of frank sweetness, the wholesomeness of the thorough girl.
Mr. Warfield felt rather vexed at being disappointed, yet down in his heart he was glad she was fulfilling the sort of ideal he had of her, the girl she might become with proper training, he had often said, even to Mrs. Dayton. He thought he should know on just what lines to develop the best and highest in her. He held a very good opinion of a man"s training for certain natures, and hers was one. Then he felt a little sore at not being able to keep a sort of supervision over her by letter.
But when she came and sat down by him in that unaffected manner and looked out of such frank eyes; smiled with an every-day cordiality, as if the smile was in constant use, he was a little nonplused.
"What have you been doing this whole year?" he asked with interest.
"Could you pa.s.s an examination for the High School?"
"Oh, do you remember how frightened I was? But some of the questions would not cause me five minutes" thought now. I"ve had a magnificent time with history and literature, and a tough time with Latin. It is one of the things I have to delve at this summer. It seems to me most of my life is school life. I can"t stop anywhere. Something is thrust at me all the time."
"You used to love to study," complainingly.
"I love it yet. Botany is delightful, it is so full of live wonders. I do not care so much for chemistry. And physics----"
"They require close attention. And what accomplishments?" in a dissatisfied tone.
"French that I am not in love with, but Mrs. Van Dorn insists upon it, and the piano, drawing, and painting."
"A waste of time most of them," he commented severely.
"Sketching is very fascinating."
"And a camera can give you the picture twice as well."
"Some of the Seniors do beautiful work. One of them goes abroad to study and perfect herself in art. Miss Gertrude Aldred will go after next year."
"That may be very well for pastime, or waste-time," with a touch of sarcasm, "but I don"t suppose any of these girls could get their living at it?"
"I don"t know as they will be compelled to."
"But everybody has to be put through the same mill, I suppose?"
"Not exactly. Some studies are elective. Three of the girls go to college. Of course many of them do not expect to turn their education to any account. I should like to know just what I am to do with mine,"
and she laughed softly.
"I thought you once looked up to teaching as a sort of glorified existence."
The touch of irony did not hurt her at all.
"I still think it one of the finest professions. Only--I should like to have a school of smart, eager children, and go on and on with them. I think it must be very hard to take up a new dull cla.s.s every season."
"It is," he returned frankly. "It was one of the drawbacks, like going down to the foot of your own cla.s.s."
"So I think I shall have a boarding school and keep the girls year after year."
"Well, are you deep in metaphysics or transcendentalism?" asked a cheerful voice, as Mrs. Dayton"s ample figure emerged from the door-way.
"You do not seem to be "sicklied o"er with the pale cast of thought."
That is an old-fashioned quotation and was in the copy books at school in my day, when to be thin and pale was the mark of a student. And wasn"t midnight oil another? You do not show marks of either, Helen."
"Oh, the lights are out and we have to be in bed at ten. We can rise as early as we like in the morning, however," laughed Helen.
"Numbers of the old ideas have been exploded. Still, we must admit they made some good scholars. The students were more in earnest, they were not so superficial."
"But it takes a long while to learn everything thoroughly. That is where teachers and professors have the advantage, they can spend their whole lives over it," exclaimed Helen. "Honestly," and a rather mischievous light flashed across her face, "I do not think the average girl is a born student. Perhaps the boy isn"t either. But there seem to be so many things in a girl"s life, so many sides to it"--and a thoughtful crease came in her forehead.
"You have found that out early. But the successes must be able to do several things well, and to bring knowledge into action, not have a lot of useless matter stored up in the brain waiting for the time to make it serviceable, and then it is not fresh, often not useful."
"Like the old clothes you pile up in the garret," interpolated Mrs.
Dayton. "They are out of date and moth-eaten. There are many things it is not worth while to save up. I have a boarder here who has saved up all her troubles since she was ten years old, and lives them over, takes them out and puts them back. She is a well-informed woman, too. There is the bell, so come in to dinner."
There were only Mr. and Mrs. White, Mrs. Carson, the woman of many troubles, and Mr. Conway, who gave Helen a warm welcome, but was amazed at the change in her.