But the party on the attic floor was certainly a success. How pretty the little old lady looked, sitting in state with all the young and blooming faces about her! Here were growing up into womanhood and manhood (for some of the boys had not been ashamed to come) the children whom she had tended and played with and sung to.
And she sung to them again—verses of forgotten songs, lullabies she had crooned over some of their cradles when they were ill, little broken chants that had sent many of them, many times, to sleep.
Altogether it was a most enjoyable afternoon, and Nurse Boyle was promised that it should not be the last tea-party she would have. “If you are ’way up here in the top of the house, you shall no more be forgotten,” they told her.
Helen was the object next in interest to Nurse Boyle. May Van Ramsden had told about the Starkweathers’ little “Cinderella Cousin”; and although none of these girls and boys who had gathered knew the truth about Helen’s wealth and her position in life, they all treated her cordially.
When they trooped away and left the little old lady to lie down to recuperate after the excitement, Helen went to her own room, and remained closely shut up for the rest of the day.
At half-past six she came downstairs, bag in hand. She descended the servants’ staircase, told Mr. Lawdor that her trunk, packed and locked, was ready for the expressman when he came, and so stole out of the area door. She escaped any interview with her uncle, or with the girls. She could not bid them good-by, yet she was determined not to go back to Sunset Ranch on the morrow, nor would she remain another night under her uncle’s roof.