"Oh, yes, you"ll go off with that woman, and she"ll get tired of you and ship you off. You mark my words."
"Then I can take up teaching, which will be my delight. She has offered me these two years of training and I mean to make the best of them, to crowd in all I can, to fit myself to earn my living in the way I like best of all. I do suppose we all have some choice."
Aunt Jane flounced out of the room. There was something burning on the stove, and she was glad of the excuse. And all she said when Helen was going over to North Hope, was:
"Well, come whenever you like. The house is always open to you."
Uncle Jason was very tender to her.
"Mother"s a bit cranky," he said. "Even Jenny plagues her about it. I think she"s jealous of that Mrs. Van Dorn, and she has an idea of her own about bringing up girls. But they"re not all alike and some are fit for one thing, some for another. Jenny"s got the right of it. It"s best for everyone to do what he"s best fitted for, or _she_," smiling a little. "And it stands to reason that you might take after your own father. You"re not all Mulford."
It was very delightful to be back with Mrs. Dayton. One new couple had come, but they were very quiet people. And the girls about began to call on her. Ella Graham had enough of the High School.
"I just went for the name of it," she explained. "I should never teach, and what is the use of wasting all that time and bothering your brains for nothing? I shall get married the first good chance I have."
Lu Searing bewailed the hard work as well and wasn"t sure she would keep on. She wanted to go somewhere to boarding school, she had heard girls had such fun getting in sc.r.a.pes and out of them again. Marty Pendleton was sick of it too, and was going to learn dressmaking. Dan Erlick had gone to be clerk in the drug store.
"And to think how hard Mr. Warfield worked over them all!" Helen exclaimed, indignantly. "It doesn"t do him a bit of credit."
"He had four new ones this summer. Well, there does seem a good deal of work in this world without much result," said Jenny.
Helen studied her Latin with a will, and one day to make some knotty point clearer went to the reference department of the library. Miss Westerly, the librarian, had seen her the summer before and been interested in what had befallen her, and now they took up quite a friendship. The library was open only two evenings in the week, after eight o"clock, and Miss Westerly found it very pleasant to visit on Mrs. Dayton"s porch and talk to a girl as bright and ambitious as Helen.
She was a college graduate and a thorough student, not considering her education finished.
"I should like so to go to college," Helen said. "But I don"t know--I should have to earn some money first."
"I have a friend who entered college at twenty-seven. She was a clerk in a store and then an old uncle left her some money. She was born for a student, and she graduated with honors. She is thirty-five now, vice-princ.i.p.al in a large seminary at the West, and a very successful teacher. Then I know of a girl who spent two years at college, taught three years and then went back and finished. Some women, as well as some men, love knowledge."
"I have half a mind to say I will go, no matter what stands in the way,"
and Helen smiled vaguely. If one _could_ see into the future.
"Perhaps your friend may send you."
Helen wondered whether she would dare propose it.
Once a week she went out to the farm. Aunt Jane had "cooled down" a little, for Uncle Jason had said, "If you can"t get along, mother, I"ll hire someone through the heat of the summer. Nancy Bird would come in a minute. As for thinking to put Helen to housework, washing and ironing and all that, when someone else is taking care of her, I don"t see as it would be just the thing, no more than to call Sam home when Mr. Bartow has given him a good lay."
"I don"t see as Helen is any better than my girls, and they are going to be brought up to work. Her father didn"t make out much for all his education."
Helen did have some nice visits with Jenny, who was rather more modern and broader minded than her mother. She kept her house with some system, of course, there was no one to disarrange her methods. She was blithe and cheerful and eager to get along, but she and Joe went off driving now and then, and she listened with slow-growing interest when he read aloud to her.
But altogether, Helen was not sorry when she found herself on the way back to school. She had a warmer feeling than ever for Mrs. Van Dorn and had written her two charming letters from Mrs. Dayton"s porch.
What a trouble her education seemed to some of those who had no hand in it.
CHAPTER XVII
IN THE DELIGHTFUL CURRENT
Helen Grant came to Aldred House again on Friday afternoon. Miss Daisy, who had been there but an hour, rushed down to welcome her.
"Oh, dear! If something had happened and you had _not_ come," she cried, "I should really have been broken-hearted, and I don"t see what good Samaritan could have bound up the wounds. And most things are going to be strange and new."
"New girls?" inquiringly.
"Yes, ever so many of them. There were several Mrs. Aldred could not take last year. She is closeted with two now, and you may as well come upstairs at once. I have some new pictures--we will give away the old ones. And the sweetest new willow rocker. But what do you think has happened to Roxy Mays?"
"Marriage," cried Helen laughingly.
"No, but a fortune. And her oldest sister was married to a designer or something who goes abroad to ill.u.s.trate Russia. The old great-aunt died suddenly, and left a good deal of money to Mr. Mays, and ten thousand dollars to Roxy. So her mother and the other sister and she sailed the last week in August. Of course Roxy is in high feather. And Miss Reid and Miss Gertrude Aldred have gone to Rome under the care of a friend of Mrs. Aldred"s. Two of the girls have gone to Leipsic. Oh, dear, I wonder if _we_ will ever go abroad?"
"It is a lovely dream. I do hope to compa.s.s it some time," and a longing light filled Helen"s eyes.
"And there is so much to see here. We had a cousin of father"s visiting us who had spent seven years in Mexico, and knew President Diaz quite well. He tells such interesting stories about the wonders there, the discoveries and the traces of people who must have lived a thousand or perhaps more years ago. Then my brother has a friend who is deep in those marvelous exhumations in Arizona. Presently we shall be a famous country, if we haven"t castles and cathedrals."
Helen"s trunk came up and she began to unpack. There were some new gowns.
"Are you going in long skirts?" inquired Daisy.
"Not this winter. I should like to be "only a girl" ever so long," and Helen smiled dreamily. "It seems as if I had been only a very little girl thirteen years or so, and now I want to be just a big girl.
Womanhood looks so strange and mysterious to me. There are so many things to be decided then, and now you can hover about the edge, just slip into the surf of that river called the future and then draw back.
You don"t have to cross it. But some day you must, and shoulder its responsibilities."
"How queer and solemn that sounds. And I am a whole year older, and I ought to be ever so much ahead of you."
"You are in Latin and French. I studied up some. I met a delightful woman,--well I saw her last summer, and oddly enough she remembered me from the books I read,--that I never should have known about but for Mrs. Van Dorn. She is the librarian. And we have had such a nice time.
She is a college graduate, and she has inspired me with a longing to go.
But then I want everything. Travel and music and churches and ruins and histories of nations that have been swept away, and to climb the pyramids, and to ask the Sphinx her mighty question----"
"_Your_ mighty question as to what secret is in her ponderous brain?"
Both girls laughed heartily, merrily.
"Well, I must say, Helen Grant, your wishes comprise enough for a lifetime! And you have left out Paris, and that quaint, delightful, clean, watery Holland, and Moscow, and India."
"There is too much for one lifetime. I wonder if we _do_ come back and take some of the pleasures in the life afterward? But then we don"t remember what has gone before, so where is the benefit?"
"There are ever so many new girls," said Daisy presently.
"I wonder if we haven"t a small share of duty towards them," remarked Helen, considering. "I thought it lovely of you girls to come and welcome me when I was a stranger."
"Roxy was splendid at that. I am not sure but there was some curiosity in it. She liked to get down to the bottom of a girl"s soul and life and know all that had happened to her. And she was very amusing with her bright comments and comparisons. I was desperately in love with her at first," and Daisy colored warmly. "Then she said little things about other girls that I didn"t like. And you were so upright, so generous in your criticisms, so ready to make allowance. And after all that mistake about Miss Craven she was very unwilling to own she had been wrong.
Wasn"t I fearfully jealous? Didn"t I act like a fiend?"