“Oh, but it’s mean kind of work,” emphasized Nathalie, “and then, too, it’s only saving a mite; and it will take so much money for Dick’s operation.”
“Now, see here, Nathalie,” exclaimed her friend, “let’s figure this thing out.” Taking a pencil and pad that always hung by the table with Nathalie’s list of edibles to be served at each meal, she drew a chair up to the table and began to figure just how much Nathalie was saving her mother by doing the work herself.
Nathalie bent over her shoulder and watched eagerly as she saw the line of figures jotted down by Helen. Then she, too, put on her thinking-cap and in a few minutes the two girls had figured out quite a sum that Nathalie was actually saving in dollars and cents each week she did the work.
As Nathalie realized this fact, demonstrated so clearly by her friend, her eyes sparkled, and clapping her hands she cried, “Oh, Helen, I’m going to get Mother to let me do the work all the time—of course, as you say, the washing will have to be done out—but oh, I shall feel—”
“Now, Nathalie, don’t go off at a tangent; stop and consider before you make this suggestion to your mother. You must think just what it will cost you, that is, count what it will mean to suffer aches in your back and feet, to have fire-scorched cheeks,—they say cooking ruins the complexion,—red, sloppy hands, and all the rest of the penalties imposed on one for doing housework. If you put your hand to the plow, you know, once started you can’t look back.”
“Oh, yes, I know, Helen, it will be terrible to have to do these things, but if it will help me to earn money, even the teeniest bit, now that I know that it is to be done without the glory perhaps it won’t be so hard. Oh, I know Miss I Can will help me!” Nathalie smiled through the mist that would blur her eyes, “for I must help Dick.”
“Yes,” returned her friend, “if you feel that way, determined to help Dick, go ahead; for that will serve as the glory, that is, the incentive will help you through lots of hard things.”
Nathalie looked up at her friend’s grave face with wonder-lit eyes. “Oh, Helen,” she said solemnly, “do you know you are going to be a great woman? You are awfully wise for a girl of your age!”
Helen interrupted her with a merry laugh. “Oh, no, I’m not going to be a great woman at all. I should love to be—that is my ambition,—but one’s ambitions are not apt to materialize the way one expects them to, you know. But I’ll tell you, Nathalie,” her face sobered, “I have a very wise mother—she tells me these things. And then as I go about I find from experience that what she has said comes true.”
“Yes, Helen, you will be great,” nodded Nathalie sagely. “Perhaps you will not go about blowing a trumpet to let people know you are one of the world’s great ones, but you will be all the same, even if you never do a thing but live in this sleepy town and become a stenographer.”