"I learned some of them in the summer. I was with a friend," and Helen flushed without quite knowing why. "I was a regular country girl—on a farm."
"I was too. I begin to think I ought not have come here, but I did not want to go where there were one or two hundred girls, and I did want to learn nice ways," hesitatingly.
"Then this is the very place to come."
"Only I did not imagine they were all rich girls; that is, society people," awkwardly.
"Oh, they are not. Two of the seniors mean to teach next year, so they cannot be rich. And one girl is going to an art school and means to work her way through. Of course most of them have fathers to care for them."
"I have never had anyone to care in that way. And it is curious, but on my father's side I have not a single near relative, perhaps none at all. And my mother was an only child."
"I have neither father or mother," returned Helen. "But I have some very kind relatives on my mother's side."
"It is dreadful to be all alone, and to think——"
Miss Craven paused and compressed her lips, looked indeed as if she would cry, but winked very hard. And then Helen noticed that she had lovely long lashes, much darker than her hair and that her upper eyelids were thin, almost transparent. It was queer how she was beginning to see these little points of comeliness.
"Oh, there are the girls!" she said.