Helen Grant's Schooldays

by Amanda M. Douglas

Sixteen years before he had come to Hope Center and taught school. A tall, thin nondescript sort of man, a college graduate, but that didn't raise him in anyone's estimation. He was queer and always working at some kind of problems, and doing bits of translating from old Latin and Greek writers, and spent his money for books that he considered of great value. Why pretty Kitty Mulford should have married him was a mystery, but why he should have taken her would have seemed a greater puzzle to intellectual people. They went to one of the larger cities, where he taught, then to another, and so on; and when Helen was seven her mother came back to the Center a hopeless invalid with consumption, and died. Mr. Grant seemed very much broken. No one knew what a trial the frivolous, childish wife had been. He was disappointed at not having a son. He had some peculiar ideas about a boy's education, and he didn't know what to do with a girl. So he left her with her aunt and uncle, and for four years sent them two hundred dollars a year for her keep. Then he went to Europe without so much as coming to say good-by, and no one had ever heard of him since.

Helen's memories of her mother were not delightful enough to build an altar to remembrance. She had fretted a good deal. When she was out of temper she slapped Helen on the shoulder, and said she was "just like her father." Helen waited on her, changed her slippers, brushed her hair, and would have made a famous nurse if the end had not come. And then the life was so different.

The Mulfords were in many respects happy-go-lucky people. Aunt Jane scolded a good deal, or rather talked in a very scolding tone. But the children came up without much governing. Once in a while Uncle Jason struck one of them with his old gray felt hat; Helen didn't remember ever seeing him have a new one, but he wore a black one on Sunday. There were five rollicking children, and one daughter grown, who was engaged to be married at seventeen. Helen ran and played and worked and sewed a little, which she hated, and studied and read everything she could get hold of. There were Sunday-school library books, some of them very good, too; there were books she borrowed, and some old ones up in the garret belonging to her father. She read these quite on the sly, for she knew she should hate to hear comments made about them, and Aunt Jane might burn them up.

Some years before she had a big rag doll that she was very fond of. It was her confidant, and wonderful stories, complaints, and wishes went into her deaf ears. 'Reely, the girl next to the two boys, wanted it, and ran away with it at every opportunity. One day they had a quarrel about it.

"It's mine!" declared Helen. "I'll hide it away. You have no business with it."

"What's that?" demanded Aunt Jane sharply. "Helen Grant, you just give that doll to 'Reely. You're too big for such nonsense! Now, 'Reely, that doll is yours, and if Helen takes it away, I'll just settle with her in a way she'll remember one while. You great baby-calf playing with dolls!"

Helen never troubled the doll after that. There was a crooked old apple-tree in the orchard, and after she had dipped into mythology she made a friend and confidant of it, read her stories to it, studied her lessons with it even in real cold weather. It was a sort of desultory education, until the last year, when Mr. Warfield came, and then Helen really found a friend worlds better than the old apple tree, though she still told it her dreams. And sometimes when the wind soughed through its branches it seemed as if she could translate what it said.

"Of course you go to the High School next year," Mr. Warfield said a week or so before school closed. "It would be such a pity for you to stop here. You have the making of a good scholar, and there is no reason why you shouldn't be a teacher. You have one admirable quality, you go so directly to the point, you are so ambitious, so in earnest, and you acquire knowledge so easily. You will make a broad-minded woman. I must say the Center people are rather narrow and self-satisfied, except the few new ones that have come in." And Mr. Warfield smiled.

Helen felt in her inner consciousness that it would be unwise to talk about the High School. And she was very busy. She was called upon to help with the ironing now. She darned all the stockings. She washed the supper dishes because Aunt Jane was tired out, and Jenny wanted to sew on her wedding outfit.

Everything had gone along very comfortably. Her white frock had a scant ruffle put on the bottom to lengthen it down, and new sleeves put in. Uncle Jason was really proud that she had to "speak a piece."