"Yes, I know. And there was danger, of course! But—Helen, that brings up exactly the subject that I'd been intending to speak to you about. Thus far—and advisedly, I know—we have kept you carefully in the background, my dear. But this isn't going to do forever, you know."
"Why not? I—I like it."
Mrs. Thayer smiled, but she frowned again thoughtfully.
"I know, dear; but if you are to learn this—this—" Mrs. Thayer stumbled and paused as she always stumbled and paused when she tried to reduce to words her present extraordinary mission. "You will have to—to learn to meet people and mingle with them easily and naturally."
The earnest look of the eager student came at once to Helen Denby's face.
"You mean, I'll have to meet and mingle with swell people if I, too, am— Oh, that horrid word again! Mrs. Thayer, why can't I learn to stop using it? But you mean— I know what you mean. You mean I'll have to meet and mingle with—with ladies and gentlemen if I'm to be one myself. Isn't that it?"
"Y-yes, of course; only—the very words 'lady' and 'gentleman' have been so abused that we—we—Oh, Helen, Helen, you do put things so baldly, and it sounds so—so— Don't you see, dear? It's all just as I've told you lots of times. The minute you begin to talk about it, you lose it. It's something that comes to you by absorption and intuition."
"But there are things I have to learn, Mrs. Thayer,—real things, like holding your fork, and clothes, and finger nails, and not speaking so loud, and not talking about 'folks' being 'swell' and 'tony,' and—"
"Yes, yes, I know," interrupted Mrs. Thayer, with a touch of desperation. "But, after all, it's all so—so impossible! And—" She stopped abruptly at the look of terrified dismay that always leaped to Helen Denby's eyes in response to such a word. "No, no, I don't mean that. But, really, Helen," she went on hurriedly, "the time has come when you must be seen more. And it will be quite safe at the shore, I am sure. You'll meet no one who ever saw you in Dalton; that is certain."
"Then, of course, if you say I'll have to—I'll have to. That's all."