't the Center would have heard about it."

That didn't altogether answer the question. Helen wanted some devotion
on which to build a romance. Since she could not put her mother in a
heroine's place, she wanted her father for a hero. But she had never
seen much of him, and she had always felt a little afraid of the grave,
tall, thin man who never caressed her, or indeed seemed to care about
her. Had anyone really loved him? Somehow she felt his had been a rather
solitary life and pitied him.

"He had a curious sort of voice," continued Mrs. Dayton. "It wasn't loud
or aggressive, but--well I think persuasive is the word I mean. He had a
way of making people think a good deal as he did, without really
believing in him or his theories. He was a man out of place, you'll find
what that means as you go on through life, a sort of round peg that
couldn't get fitted to the square hole in Hope Center."

"Oh, dear! I wonder if I shall be like him?" The tone was half
apprehensive, half amusing and the light in her eyes was full of curious
longing.

"I _do_ suppose you get your desire for knowledge from him. I never
heard of a Mulford who was much of a student, nor a Cummings either.
Though I am not sure education does all for people. You have to possess
some good sense to make right use of it. And some people with very
little book learning have no end of common sense and get along
successfully."

Then Mrs. Van Dorn's bell rang. Helen had been polishing the glasses
with a dry towel. Joanna always went over them twice, and this was quite
a relief to her.

Mrs. Dayton was putting away dishes and thinking. Helen was different
from the Mulford children. She was ambitious to step up higher, to get
out of the common-place round. It was not that she hated work, she did
it cheerfully, looking beyond the work for something, not exactly the
reward, but the thing that satisfied her. And Mrs. Dayton had found in
her life that a little of what one really wanted was much more enjoyable
than a good deal of what one did not want, no matter how excellent it
might be.

The book to-night was talks about Rome. Mrs. Van Dorn lived over again
in her reminiscences, making sundry interruptions. "It was here I met
such a one," she would say. "This artist from England or America was
painting such a picture." And there were walks on the Pincio, lingering
in churches, viewing palaces. And then--it was all real. Hadn't St. Paul
written letters from Rom