"New girls?" inquiringly.
"Yes, ever so many of them. There were several Mrs. Aldred could not take last year. She is closeted with two now, and you may as well come upstairs at once. I have some new pictures—we will give away the old ones. And the sweetest new willow rocker. But what do you think has happened to Roxy Mays?"
"Marriage," cried Helen laughingly.
"No, but a fortune. And her oldest sister was married to a designer or something who goes abroad to illustrate Russia. The old great-aunt died suddenly, and left a good deal of money to Mr. Mays, and ten thousand dollars to Roxy. So her mother and the other sister and she sailed the last week in August. Of course Roxy is in high feather. And Miss Reid and Miss Gertrude Aldred have gone to Rome under the care of a friend of Mrs. Aldred's. Two of the girls have gone to Leipsic. Oh, dear, I wonder if we will ever go abroad?"
"It is a lovely dream. I do hope to compass it some time," and a longing light filled Helen's eyes.
"And there is so much to see here. We had a cousin of father's visiting us who had spent seven years in Mexico, and knew President Diaz quite well. He tells such interesting stories about the wonders there, the discoveries and the traces of people who must have lived a thousand or perhaps more years ago. Then my brother has a friend who is deep in those marvelous exhumations in Arizona. Presently we shall be a famous country, if we haven't castles and cathedrals."
Helen's trunk came up and she began to unpack. There were some new gowns.
"Are you going in long skirts?" inquired Daisy.
"Not this winter. I should like to be 'only a girl' ever so long," and Helen smiled dreamily. "It seems as if I had been only a very little girl thirteen years or so, and now I want to be just a big girl. Womanhood looks so strange and mysterious to me. There are so many things to be decided then, and now you can hover about the edge, just slip into the surf of that river called the future and then draw back. You don't have to cross it. But some day you must, and shoulder its responsibilities."
"How queer and solemn that sounds. And I am a whole year older, and I ought to be ever so much ahead of you."