Helen Grant's Schooldays

by Amanda M. Douglas

Another charm for Helen was her love of order and neatness, without being at all fussy, her wonderful blending of colors, the little touches that gave an air to the plainest surroundings. Then she was generally helpful. Helen had been indebted to her for many small aids along the difficult paths of learning that were quite unknown in Hope Center.

Daisy had made the first advances. She was more experienced in school ways, older, richer, and a favorite with the class. Helen felt honored by her preference. If she had been less lovable it might have savored of patronage and that Helen would have declined. It sometimes seemed as if she was the stronger, the leading spirit, as in some respects Daisy yielded unhesitatingly to her.

It was Helen's first girl friendship, and it possessed something of the marvel to her that Mrs. Dayton's kindliness had, since neither were in anywise compelled to take her up. But why had she ever promised to love Daisy only?

And did she really love Juliet Craven? This night was the first time Miss Craven had ever used her Christian name. She would hardly dream of being intimate with any of the young ladies in the senior class, though several of them were very cordial and she had been asked to sing for them and with them. Helen made a funny distinction about this, it was due to her voice and not her personality. She was too wholesome to feel aggrieved about such a thing and she had very little vanity. Being brought up by Aunt Jane would have taken the vanity out of any girl.

But there did not seem so much difference between her age and Miss Craven's as the years confessed. Helen knew a great deal more about the real world. She was likely to make a good logician. Her short experience at Mrs. Dayton's had given her the key to the larger world. Those women with their different qualities were reproduced here in the school, here in Westchester, and were no doubt repeated elsewhere. But Miss Craven knew nothing and was afraid to judge, to have decided opinions, to compare one with another. Her solitary life had taken her into the very heart of nature, of a certain kind of dreaming, and longing for knowledge, but that was widely different from the every day knowledge of general living. Helen had not been lonely, her mind was too active, and there had always been people about her. She wanted her knowledge to enable her to go out in the world and conquer it; girls of fourteen and older do have such dreams. Miss Craven wanted hers largely for herself alone.

Helen had pitied her, been very sympathetic, assisted her over rough places, and really advised. Was not this some of the work preached about on Sunday in the churches, helping the weaker brethren? She had hardly thought of religion up to this period of her life as having any duties in a practical sense, but Mrs. Aldred gave the school that tone, and Miss Grace was interested in the broader Christian life, not merely church-going.

So Miss Craven, curiously enough, had looked like a duty to Helen. She and Daisy did their brief reading every night, but since Christmas so many verses had pointed to the weaker brother. The stronger, wiser girls in school did not want anything of her, at least she thought she had nothing to give them, since they did not ask, and the word was "everyone that asketh." Miss Craven had asked by a glance of the eye, a pressure of the hand, a quiver of the wordless lips that hesitated to frame the desire into speech. Yes, she did love her if charity and kindliness were love, and—oh, there was something deeper, wider, higher.

She had not settled the question when she fell asleep, rather late for her and so she did not wake until Daisy touched her. Daisy Bell had half a mind to let her oversleep and lose a mark, then she really did love her too well.

"Oh, dear!" sighed Helen ruefully. "And I wanted to finish my Latin translation this morning."

There could be no thought of anything but hurrying downstairs. Miss Craven was in her place and glanced up with a certain eagerness in her eyes. All through breakfast time Daisy made herself uncomfortable, watching.