pass on the street. Suppose one of the servants at your uncle's house
should see it? You have no right to put temptation in people's way."

Helen accepted his scolding meekly as long as he did not refuse to carry
out her plan for Sadie Goronsky. When Dud heard the full particulars of
the Western girl's acquaintanceship with Sadie, he had no criticism to
offer. That very day Dud engaged the store, paid three months' rent, and
bought the furnishings. Sadie was not to be told until the store was ready
for occupancy. There was still time enough. Helen knew that the millinery
season did not open until February.

Meanwhile, although Helen's goings and comings were quite ignored by Uncle
Starkweather and the girls, some incidents connected with Helen Morrell
had begun to stir to its depth the fountain of the family's wrath against
the girl from Sunset Ranch.

Twice May Van Ramsden had come to call on Helen. Once she had brought Ruth
and Mercy De Vorne with her. And on each occasion she had demanded that
Gregson take their cards to Helen.

Gregson had taken the cards up one flight and then had sent on the cards
by Maggie to Helen's room. Gregson said below stairs that he would "give
notice" if he were obliged to take cards to anybody who roomed in the
attic.

May and her friends trooped up the stairs in the wake of their cards,
however--for so it had been arranged with Helen, who expected them on both
occasions.

The anger of the Starkweather family would have been greater had they
known that these calls of their own most treasured social acquaintances
were really upon the little old lady who had been shut away into the front
attic suite, and whose existence even was not known to some of the
servants in the Starkweather mansion.

May, as she had promised, was bringing, one or two at a time, her friends
who, as children when Cornelius Starkweather was alive, had haunted this
old house because they loved old Mary Boyle. And May was proving, too, to
the Western girl, that all New York people of wealth were neither
heartless or ungrateful. Yet the crime of forgetfulness these young women
must plead to.

The visits delighted Mary Boyle. Helen knew that she slept better--after
these little excitements of the calls--and did not go pattering up and
down the halls with her crutch in the dead of night.

So the days passed, each one bringing so much of interest into the life of
Helen Morrell that she forgot to be lonely, or to