"Indeed, you will do no such thing," was the quick reply. "And let me whisper a secret in your ear, though I don't know as it need be that. Mrs. Van Dorn wrote me a note, asking me to invite you here and keep you as much of the time as Aunt Jane would be willing to spare you. And she inclosed a check. I'd been ready enough to do it just for the pleasure."
"She is very generous," said Helen, much moved.
"And some people think her mean. She is unduly exact, but I guess the world would be better if more people paid their just debts instead of buying you a dollar gift when they owed you forty or fifty. But run out on the porch and talk to Mr. Warfield. He came purposely to see you. I'll be out and join the fray presently," her eyes overflowing with an amused light. "If you were older I should say—there, run along."
She checked herself just in time. It was on the tip of her tongue to add—"he is half in love with you." But the girl's face was so innocently frank that it would have been both ill-bred and cruel to suggest such a thing.
On the whole, it was a pleasant evening, though Helen was not a little puzzled by several things in Mr. Warfield's demeanor, and his resolutely keeping to his opinion that she would have been better off at the High School. Some way would have opened for her, he was confident.
Still, he gave her the most cordial good wishes. She had the making of a splendid girl and woman in her. He took great credit in the consciousness that he had seen this, and roused her from a commonplace existence, for now, whatever happened, she could not be commonplace; as if, indeed, the every-day lives were not often doing heroic and lovely deeds in their every-day sphere.
He was going for nine weeks to a summer college term, on the borders of a beautiful lake, where he would have refreshment of body as well as mind. So he might not see her again under a year.
"I do hope they will not have you spoiled," he said with his good-by. And as he walked down the street he muttered under his breath:
"That old woman will make a waiting maid of her in the end." He was jealous that the old woman should be able to dictate the girl's life just because she was rich.
She had such a happy morning with Mrs. Dayton, talking over last summer; Joanna studied her with admiring eyes and declared that she was not changed a bit, only had grown taller, and the mysterious alteration that comes to a girl on the boundary line, for which she had no words.