"He doesn't know anything about Aldred House," Helen replied, amused.
"Here, you are to have a room to yourself, though I expect to-morrow Uncle Jason will whisk you off. That old couple downstairs, Mr. and Mrs. White, have Mrs. Van Dorn's room. And she's careering around Europe like any young thing! She does surprise me. Now when you are ready come down, for we are just dying to inspect you and see how much you have changed."
Helen recalled the fact that a year ago she thought this the most beautiful place imaginable. There was the tall, slim rowan-tree, full of green berries that would hang out beads of red flame in the autumn, the tamarack with its sprays of delicate leaves, the big, burly, black walnut on the corner, the wild clematis and Virginia creeper, the prim flower-beds.
"There will be plenty of time to look at them through the summer," she thought, so she bathed her face, brushed her hair, shook out the pretty plissé shirtwaist she had in her satchel, tied a blue ribbon round her neck and looked as fresh as a just opened flower.
CHAPTER XVI
HOPE THROUGH A WIDER OUTLOOK
She had on nice-fitting button boots with heels only moderately high, a dark-blue, thin summer-cloth skirt up to her ankles, with several rows of stitching through the hem, the crumply white plissé waist that fell like drapery about shoulders and arms, her hair was a mass of braids at the back with a straight parting from forehead to crown, some short curling ends about the edge of her fair brow, and the blue of her eyes was many shades deeper than the ribbon around her neck. Mrs. Van Dorn was no more anxious to have her a young lady than Mr. Warfield.
She was just a bright, intelligent, good-looking girl, who would never be girlishly pretty, but something better, perhaps a handsome woman at five-and-twenty, and always attractive from the sort of frank sweetness, the wholesomeness of the thorough girl.
Mr. Warfield felt rather vexed at being disappointed, yet down in his heart he was glad she was fulfilling the sort of ideal he had of her, the girl she might become with proper training, he had often said, even to Mrs. Dayton. He thought he should know on just what lines to develop the best and highest in her. He held a very good opinion of a man's training for certain natures, and hers was one. Then he felt a little sore at not being able to keep a sort of supervision over her by letter.