"If only mamma would like me a little," she used to think sometimes as she went off to bed chilled by Mrs. Desmond's frigid good-night, but full of happy plans for the morrow. But even of gaining "mamma's liking" Helen did not altogether despair. She meant to be so good, so obedient, she felt quite sure that she must win her stepmother at last.
"What is it that you wish for most in all the world?" she asked Harold suddenly one evening.
Mrs. Desmond had kept her room all day, and Helen and Harold, having drunk tea in the school-room, with the colonel as their guest, were sitting under an apple-tree in the orchard. The setting sun flooded the fair June landscape, and threw a glory round their young heads, showing to their half-bewildered childish eyes strange visions and "lights that never were on sea or land."
"What do I wish for most!" repeated Harold. "To do something great, I think. What is the good of living if one is only to be just like everyone else. I should like people to point me out as I went by, and to say, 'That is Harold Bayden. He did—' I wonder what I should like them to say, there are so many things it would be nice to be famous for."
"I don't think that I should care to be famous," said Helen gravely. "I should like everyone to like me. It is dreadful not to be liked."
"You can't expect everyone to like you. It is much better to have one or two people who like you very much."
"Yes. But people don't like me. I don't know why it is."
"Oh, Helen! doesn't your father like you? And I think that you are awfully jolly."
"Of course my father likes me, because he is my father. But you know that Grace and Agatha can't bear me. Perhaps you wouldn't like me, Harold, if you knew how wicked I have been."
"Nonsense, Helen!"