Helen of the Old House

by Harold Bell Wright

The lawyer, who had stopped for a light, laughed. "I heard the Interpreter say once that 'to live on some sort of an elevation was to most people one of the prime necessities of life.'"

"Sure," agreed the philosopher, reaching for another box for the real-estate agent, "I'll bet old Adam Ward himself is just as human as the rest of us if you could only catch him at it."

For some time after her car, with Bobby and Maggie, had disappeared in its cloud of dust, among the wretched buildings of the Flats, Helen stood there, on the lower step of the zigzag stairway, looking after them. She was thinking, or perhaps she was wondering a little at herself. She might even have been living again for the moment those old-house days when, with her brother and Mary and Charlie Martin, she had played there on these same steps.

Those old-house days had been joyous and carefree. Her school years, too, had been filled with delightful and satisfying activities. After her graduation she had been content with the gayeties and triumphs of the life to which she had been arbitrarily removed by her father and the new process, and for which she had been educated. She had felt the need of nothing more. Then came the war, and, in her brother's enlistment and in her work with the various departments of the women forces at home, she had felt herself a part of the great world movement. But now when the victorious soldiers—brothers and sweethearts and husbands and friends—had returned, and the days of excited rejoicing were past, life had suddenly presented to her a different front. It would have been hard to find in all Millsburgh, not excepting the most wretched home in the Flats, a more unhappy and discontented person than this young woman who was so unanimously held to have everything in the world that any one could possibly desire.

Slowly she turned to climb the zigzag stairway to the Interpreter's hut.

CHAPTER III

THE INTERPRETER

The young woman announced her presence at the open door of the hut by calling, "Are you there?"

The deep voice of the Interpreter answered, "Helen! Here I am, child—on the porch. Come!" As she passed swiftly through the house and appeared in the porch doorway, he added, "This is a happy surprise, indeed. I thought you were not expected home for another month. It seems ages since you went away."

She tried bravely to smile in response to the gladness in her old friend's greeting. "I had planned to stay another month," she said, "but I—" She paused as if for some reason she found it hard to explain why she had returned to Millsburgh so long before the end of the summer season. Then she continued slowly, as if remembering that she must guard her words, "Brother wrote me that they were expecting serious labor troubles, and with father as he is—" Her voice broke and she finished lamely, "Mother is so worried and unhappy. I—I felt that I really ought not to be away."