"But you don't know what the standard will be."
"Don't be discouraging, Mr. Warfield. Helen, go and get your papers," interposed Mrs. Dayton.
"Is that old body going to have Helen trained for a lady's maid?" Mr. Warfield asked in an imperious manner; his lips touched with a bit of scorn.
"You don't do her justice. At the end of two years Helen will be free to choose her future course. She will be only sixteen then."
"And spoiled utterly. Full of airs and graces. She is too fine a girl to be made a sort of puppet. There wasn't a girl in my class equal to her, and some had had much better advantages. I should not want her to go on living with the Mulfords."
Helen returned bright and eager, proud of her success as she handed him her examination papers. But Mr. Warfield would not be reconciled to the boarding school plan, and when he saw Mrs. Van Dorn step out of the carriage in her fine attire, he felt that he hated her; that she was an officious old body.
CHAPTER IX
DIFFERENT STANDPOINTS
Helen would have been figuratively torn to pieces if she had spent Sunday at the Center. Uncle Jason's first resolve was that he would wait until Sunday afternoon before announcing the conspiracy. The more he thought of the plan the greater the benefit to Helen seemed. She was different from the Mulfords, and she had no Cummings blood in her veins. She had changed these few weeks of her sojourn with Mrs. Dayton. Not that she had grown consequential. Indeed, she had never been more simply sweet than on this afternoon.