Some ten miles before they reached Hope the passengers had to leave the main line. She made her change without any difficulty, and saw that her trunk was safely bestowed. Then on and on past farms and a few straggling villages, when the train began to slow up and the conductor called out—"North Hope."
Half bewildered, as if it were a strange place, she felt the conductor take her arm. Then someone else grasped it, a rather tall figure with a familiar face, and a delighted voice at his side exclaimed:
"Why, Helen Grant! You have grown almost out of recollection!"
"Oh, Mrs. Dayton! Oh, Mr. Warfield!"
That was all she could say at first. Mr. Warfield looked after her trunk; Mrs. Dayton surveyed her from head to foot.
"You'll have to go in long dresses," she began in an amused tone.
"Oh, I don't want to grow up, Mrs. Dayton. I don't want to be a young lady. Girls have such a good time, and in my heart and all over me I am just a girl," she exclaimed vehemently.
"I am glad of that, too. Joanna wondered if you had forgotten how to dry glass and china, and would be clear spoiled at boarding school. You haven't changed a bit in looks, and your face isn't a day older, but you are almost as tall as I. Just now I haven't but two or three boarders, and I want all of you that I can have for the pure pleasure of the thing."
Mr. Warfield soon joined them. Here was the library in which she had taken such pleasure, the street with the stores, the window in which she had seen her Madonna, and now she knew so much about the old ones and their painters. A turn in this quiet street and here they were. She would not have been startled to see Mrs. Van Dorn on the porch. There were an old lady and an old gentleman, both silver-haired and placid, she in an almost quakerish garb, but looking very sweet.
"You are tired and dusty, I know, and want 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.