“The same thing I always wear, I guess. I haven’t much choice in the matter, you know.”
Toinette colored slightly at her thoughtless remark, for she had not paused to think before speaking. All the girls knew that Helen’s purse was a very slender one, and that it was only by self-sacrifice and close economy that her parents were able to keep her at such an expensive school. She made no secret of her lack of money, but worked away bravely and cheerfully, always sunny, always happy, with the enviable faculty of invariably saying the right thing at the right time. She had pronounced artistic tendencies, and Miss Preston was anxious to encourage them in every possible way. Her great desire was to go to Europe and there see the originals of the famous paintings of which she read. Each year Miss Preston went abroad and took with her several of the girls whose parents could afford such indulgences for them, and Helen longed to be one of them, although she never for a moment hoped to be.
She did really remarkable work for a girl of her age, and was improving all the time, but the trip over the sea seemed as far off as a trip to the moon. Toinette was somewhat of a dilettante, and pottered away with her water-colors with more or less success. But she admired good work, and was quick to see that Helen was a hard student, and to respect her for it. Although so unlike in disposition, as well as position, a warm regard had sprung up between them, and Toinette spent many hours watching Helen work away at her drawing. The girl’s ambition was to illustrate, and there was hardly a girl in the school who had not posed for her, and the drawings in her sketch-book were excellent.
Toinette had never been taught to think much about others, and so it is not surprising that, while she admired Helen, and wished that she could have those things she so longed for, it never occurred to her that perhaps there were other and more fortunate girls who might have helped a trifle if they chose to do so. That she, herself, had it within her power to do it never entered her head till the girls began to talk about their new dresses, and what put it there then would be hard to tell. Nevertheless, come it did, and when she heard Helen speak so composedly of wearing to the school dance, the event of the season, in their eyes, the same dress which had done service for many a little entertainment given through the winter, and which gave unmistakable signs of having done so, she realized for the first time what it must mean to be deprived of those things which she had always accepted as a matter of course.
Still, no definite plans took shape in her head regarding it, and it is quite possible that none might ever have done so had not something occurred within a short time which seemed to be the hinge upon which her whole after-life swung.
As the girls were in the midst of their chatter about the new gowns a tap came at the door, and Fraulein Palme looked in to ask:
“Haf anyone seen my umbrel? I haf hunt eferywhere for him, and can’t see him anywhere.”
“No, Fraulein, we haven’t seen it,” answered several voices.
“Where did you last have it?” asked Ruth.
“Right away in my room a little while before I am ready to go out. I go down to the post-office and must get wet without him.”