d good-by to
Mrs. Aldred and Miss Grace.

It was an uneventful journey until they reached New York. They stopped
at Mr. Castles' office, and he questioned Helen about her past year,
took her out to lunch, and then put her aboard her own train with
several papers and a magazine, and wished her a pleasant journey.

And pleasant it was, though she had a seat to herself. She could not
read, hardly look at the tempting array of pictures, there were so many
thoughts crowding in and through her mind. She had been very happy.
Schooldays were delightful. She wanted years and years of them.

Some ten miles before they reached Hope the passengers had to leave the
main line. She made her change without any difficulty, and saw that her
trunk was safely bestowed. Then on and on past farms and a few
straggling villages, when the train began to slow up and the conductor
called out--"North Hope."

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
glass 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 wan