t 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 button boots with heels only moderately high, a
dark-blue, thin summer-cloth skirt up to her ankles, with several rows
of stitching through the hem, the crumply white plisse waist that fell
like drapery about shoulders and arms, her hair was a mass 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 prope