herself. It cost a good bit of money, but Helen knew no better way to
spend some of that thousand dollars that Big Hen had given to her.

Her small trunk was put in the baggage car, and all she carried was a
hand-satchel with toilet articles and kimono; and in it likewise was her
father's big wallet stuffed with the yellow-backed notes--all crisp and
new--that Big Hen Billings had brought to her from the bank.

When she was comfortably seated in her particular section, and the porter
had seen that her footstool was right, and had hovered about her with
offers of other assistance until she had put a silver dollar into his
itching palm, Helen first stared about her frankly at the other occupants
of the car.

Nobody paid much attention to the countrified girl who had come aboard at
the way-station. The Transcontinental's cars are always well filled. There
were family parties, and single tourists, with part of a grand opera
troupe, and traveling men of the better class.

Helen would have been glad to join one of the family groups. In one there
were two girls and a boy beside the parents and a lady who must have been
the governess. One of the girls, and the boy, were quite as old as Helen.
They were all so well behaved, and polite to each other, yet jolly and
companionable, that Helen knew she could have liked them immensely.

But there was nobody to introduce the lonely girl to them, nor to any
others of her fellow travelers. The conductor, even, did not take much
interest in the girl in brown.

She began to realize that what was the height of fashion in Elberon was
several seasons behind the style in larger communities. There was not a
pretty or attractive thing about Helen's dress; and even a very pretty
girl will seem a frump in an out-of-style and unbecoming frock.

It might have been better for the girl from Sunset Ranch if she had worn
on the train the very riding habit she had in her trunk. At least, it
would have become her and she would have felt natural in it.

She knew now--when she had seen the hats of her fellow passengers--that
her own was an atrocity. And, then, Helen had "put her hair up," which was
something she had not been used to doing. Without practice, or some
example to work by, how could this unsophisticated young girl have
produced a specimen of modern hair-dressing fit to be seen?

Even Dudley Stone could not have thought Helen Morrell pretty as she
looked now. And when she gazed in the gla