Then the railroad had really cut it off. North Hope had grown at its expense.
She thought, too, not a little about her own future. What would happen at the close of the school year. At the first of January she and Daisy Bell and a Miss Gardiner went into Senior B. In another year she would graduate.
There was something in Mrs. Van Dorn's letters that appealed to her deeply at times, an interest that gave her a curious thrill. She wrote more earnestly herself, she realized what a great thing this had been to her, lifting her out of the common groove and giving her a decided standing among Hope people. And, oh! it had afforded her such splendid experiences with cultured people, some friends who might go a long way through life with her and enrich her path with their life.
"If you were going to college, I should want to go too," Daisy Bell said one day. "Papa would be delighted, I am sure. And though you are younger, I do not know so very much more," laughingly. "You always study in such desperate earnest. We should keep step together. Oh, don't you wish we could see into the future?"
Yes, she really did.
Her friendship with Juliet Craven touched another side of her nature. Miss Craven had a vein of peculiar romance. She improvised in music, she could imitate bird-songs in rare melody, she could go to depths of feeling in a few chords that stirred one's very soul. It was absolute genius.
"These are the things I used to sing to myself in the old home," she would say. "Sometimes I would put words to them."
"Why, that would be poetry. Why don't you try to write them down?" Helen inquired with newborn interest.
"There are so many things to study, to learn, to do. I am not pretty enough to attract people, but of course, I know the money would. Sometimes I wish I had only just enough for my own wants. Another year I shall come into actual possession of a large sum, and three years later, if the mines should be sold, there will be—well, I haven't any idea how much more. Mrs. Davis' plan is to take me abroad and find someone with a title to marry me. What could I do in that kind of life? I want something quiet, far-reaching. I should like to make unfortunate people happy. I wonder if there are any young girls in the world as lonely and as unfortunate as I was! I shudder when I think I might have gone on with grandfather until all the best years of my life were spent. Mrs. Howard advises me to stay here and get a thorough education, and I think that is best."
Helen was very decided in her opinion that it was by far the best. How queer that money should be so unequally divided, Miss Craven having so much more than she could use, Mrs. Van Dorn having so much, and some of the girls with such rich fathers, then others just squeezing through, she really having none at all.