rous contributions. There is
a fine reference-room for the scholars. Education seems to be made easy
now-a-days. Let us go in."

The lower floor was devoted to the library. A large room was shelved
around in alcoves, reserved for some particular kind of books. History,
biography, science, music, discoveries and travels, as well as novels.
The reading-room was at one end, the reference department at the other.
Just now it was very quiet, being rather dull times.

Up on the next floor was a fine auditorium for amusements and lectures.
In the wings were small rooms used for lodge meetings and such purposes.
Helen was very much interested. Oh, what a happy time! And yet she felt
a little conscience-smitten, as if she wasn't doing her whole duty.

The papers had come, and presently Mrs. Van Dorn took her accustomed
seat. Mrs. Pratt was at the corner of the piazza doing needlework. Miss
Lessing was sketching from nature. The younger girl was out hunting wild
flowers.

Helen read the home news, then the foreign news. It seemed queer to know
what they were doing in London, and Paris, and Rome, that hitherto had
been merely places on the map to her. And then what financiers in New
York were talking of, which really was an unknown language to her, but
not to Mrs. Van Dorn, who for years had held the key.

Perhaps the charm in Helen was her interest in what she was doing.
Sometimes she made quite a fanciful thing of her work at home, though
she was not what you would call a romantic girl. And now most of the
time she was reading, she put life into her tones. Mrs. Van Dorn had
been here and there, and she wanted the descriptions of things to seem
real to her.

"You're a very good reader," she said approvingly. "You must not let
anyone cultivate you on different lines with their elocutionary ideas,
or you will be spoiled. Who taught you?"

"Mr. Warfield. He was principal of the school. I was in his class last
year."

"He has some common sense. When you go to an opera you expect to hear
ranting and sighing, and sobbing, but sensible people do not talk that
way about the every-day things of life."

"I don't know what an opera is like," said Helen with a kind of bright
mirthfulness at her own ignorance.

"I suppose not. Men and women singing the love, and sorrow, and woe, and
trials of other men and women, long ago dead, or perhaps never alive
anywhere but in the composer's brain. It is the exquisite singing that
thrills y