He could not dower them. Really, they needed no dower with their good looks, for they were all pretty. The Madison Avenue mansion gave them the open sesame into good society—choice society, in fact—and there some wealthy trio of unattached young men must see and fall in love with them.
And the girls understood this, too—right down to fourteen-year-old Flossie. They all three knew that to “pay poor papa” for reckless expenditures now, they must sooner or later capture moneyed husbands.
So, there was more than one reason why the three Starkweather girls leaped immediately from childhood into full-blown womanhood. Flossie had already privately studied the characters—and possible bank accounts—of the boys of her acquaintance, to decide upon whom she should smile her sweetest.
These facts—save that the mansion was enormous—were hidden from Helen when she arose on the first morning of her city experience. She had slept soundly and sweetly. Even the rustling steps on the ghost walk had not bothered her for long.
Used to being up and out by sunrise, she could not easily fall in with city ways. She hustled out of bed soon after daybreak, took a cold sponge, which made her body tingle delightfully, and got into her clothes as rapidly as any boy.
She had only the shoddy-looking brown traveling dress to wear, and the out-of-date hat. But she put them on, and ventured downstairs, intent upon going out for a walk before breakfast.
The solemn clock in the hall chimed seven as she found her way down the lower flight of front stairs. As she came through the curtain-hung halls and down the stairs, not a soul did she meet until she reached the front hall. There a rather decrepit-looking man, with a bleared eye, and dressed in decent black, hobbled out of a parlor to meet her.
“Bless me!” he ejaculated. “What—what—what——”
“I am Helen Morrell,” said the girl from Sunset Ranch, smiling, and judging that this must be the butler of whom the housekeeper had spoken the night before. “I have just come to visit my uncle and cousins.”
“Bless me!” said the old man again. “Gregson told me. Proud to see you, Miss. But—you’re dressed to go out, Miss?”