Helen Grant's Schooldays

by Amanda M. Douglas

"Yes, she ought," but in her secret soul Mrs. Aldred feared that was not Mrs. Van Dorn's design.

She was beginning to understand and love Latin, and doing very well at French. She did not display much aptitude for drawing, though she had a certain artistic taste in arrangement.

"But I really do not see any use of hammering away at music," she protested. "I never shall make a fine player."

"You will make a fine singer and you want some thorough knowledge for that," said Madame Meran.

"It was one of the branches Mrs. Van Dorn is very particular about," Mrs. Aldred added, in a tone that left no room for demur.

There was the usual fun and perhaps a little sly flirting among the newer students with the young men in the law offices. Autumn was quite a lively time, since court was in session. The girls were allowed to visit the fairs and entertainments of their respective churches, and occasionally spend Saturday afternoon with an outside acquaintance.

During the holidays Mrs. Dayton wrote that one of the High-School teachers had resigned and Mr. Warfield had gained the appointment, being much delighted with it, and would board with her. From home she heard that Jenny had a little son and they were all very joyous. Fan was going to spend the winter with her. Aurelia had been taken out of school as she didn't learn anything worth while, and Aunt Jane believed in making her girls useful.

"I don't wonder teachers get discouraged in a small country place," she thought, "when the parents care so little for education." She was glad Mr. Warfield had gone to the High School, where he could have a more congenial atmosphere.

Helen often wondered in these days what her father had been like, and how he came to drift to such a dull place as Hope Center. Twenty years before it had been a center of several things. The Church was flourishing. In the winter the large boys and girls came to school and the old-fashioned alligation, mensuration, and surveying were taught and made useful, the history of the country, parsing out of Milton's Paradise Lost, learning as much about the older English essayists and writers as was taught in the High School.

Now, the children, before they were fairly grown, went into shops or learned a trade. There had been a fine debating society in the Center, and people drove in from miles around to listen to the arguments, which were generally on stirring questions of the day, psychological fads being unknown, or the highest truth in them called by some other name.