"Oh! oh!" and Helen Grant buried her face in Mrs. Van Dorn's lap and cried, overcome by a new and strange emotion. If the elder had followed her impulse she would have lifted the face and kissed it with the passionate tenderness that was smoldering in her soul, and had never been satisfied. But her experience in people had been wide and varied, she was suspicious, she could not trust easily, and here were at least two years that would go to the shaping of this girl's character. Might she not care largely for what the money would give her?
"My dear! my dear!" she began in a muffled sort of tone from contradictory emotions.
Helen raised her face of her own accord, and her eyes were like the sun shining through a shower.
"Oh, what must you think," and her voice had a broken tremulous sound, yet was very sweet. "I didn't see how anyone could cry for joy—but I am learning something new all the time. Are you in very earnest? Would you take me with you if I were older and knew more? And would you like to have me trained and made into the kind of girl that suited you?"
"A girl proud and honorable and truthful, sincere and grateful——"
"Oh, I would try to be all that. It seems almost as if I had been deceitful to Uncle Jason, not to tell him about the High School, but I was not sure of passing, and not sure that I could work my way through. And sometimes I don't tell Aunt Jane things because I know she would make such a fuss, and they are not bad in themselves, and often don't come to pass. But I hate falsehoods. It makes me angry when they are told to me."
Mrs. Van Dorn smiled at the impetuosity.
"But you would give up the High School for this other plan? You would be willing to go away among strangers, and trust me for the future? I will provide everything for you, you will not have a care, only to study and do your very best, and take care of yourself. Even if you should decide to teach rather than travel about with me, you would be at liberty to choose."
"I should choose you," she said frankly. "Oh, how can I thank you for anything so splendid! There are no words good enough."
She kissed the wrinkled hands fervently.