"Dear me, Helen! How pretty your hair is, child. You must show me how you do it in that simple way."

But Flossie was more honest. She only nodded to Helen at first. Then, when Gregson was out of the room, she jumped up, went around the table swiftly, and caught the Western girl about the neck.

"Helen! I'm just as ashamed of myself as I can be!" she cried, her tears flowing copiously. "I treated you so mean all the time, and you have been so very, very decent about helping me in my lessons. Forgive me; will you?

Oh, please say you will!"

Helen kissed her warmly. "Nothing to forgive, Floss," she said, a little bruskly, perhaps. "Don't let's speak about it."

She merely bowed and said a word in reply to the others. Nor could Mr.

Starkweather's unctuous conversation arouse her interest.

"You have a part in the very worthy effort to liven up old Nurse Boyle, I understand?" said Mr. Starkweather, graciously. "Is there anything needed that I can have sent in, Helen?"

"Oh, no, sir. I am only helping Miss Van Ramsden," Helen replied, timidly.

"I think May Van Ramsden should have told _me_ of her plans," said Belle, tossing her head.

"Or, _me_," rejoined Hortense.

"Pah!" snapped Flossie. "None of us ever cared a straw for the old woman.

Queer old thing. I thought she was more than a little cracked."

"Flossie!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Starkweather, angrily, "unless you can speak with more respect for--ahem!--for a faithful old servitor of the Starkweather family, I shall have to--ahem!--ask you to leave the table."

"You won't have to ask me--I'm going!" exclaimed Flossie, flirting out of her chair and picking up her books. "But I want to say one thing while I'm on my way," observed the slangy youngster: "You're all just as tiresome as you can be! Why don't you own up that you'd never have given the old woman a thought if it wasn't for May Van Ramsden and her friends--and Helen?"

and she beat a retreat in quick order.

It was an unpleasant breakfast for Helen, and she retired from the table as soon as she could. She felt that this att.i.tude of the Starkweathers toward her was really more unhappy than their former treatment. For she somehow suspected that this overpowering kindness was founded upon a sudden discovery that she was a rich girl instead of an object of charity.

How well-founded this suspicion was she learned when she and Jess met.

Hortense brought her up two very elaborate frocks that forenoon, one for her to wear when she poured tea in Mary Boyle's rooms, and the other for her to put on for the Stones' dinner party.

"They will just about fit you. I'm a mite taller, but that won't matter,"

said the languid Hortense. "And really, Helen, I am just as sorry as I can be for the mean way you have been treated while you have been here. You have been so good-natured, too, in helping a chap. Hope you won't hold it against me--and _do_ wear the dresses, dear."

"I will put on this one for the afternoon," said Helen, smiling. "But I do not need the evening dress. I never wore one quite--quite like that, you see," as she noted the straps over the shoulders and the low corsage. "But I thank you just the same."

Later Belle said to her airily: "Dear Cousin Helen! I have spoken to Gustaf about taking you to the Stones' in the limousine to-night. And he will call for you at any hour you say."

"I cannot avail myself of that privilege, Belle," responded Helen, quietly. "Jess will send for me at half-past six. She has already arranged to do so. Thank you."

There was so much going on above stairs that day that Helen was able to escape most of the oppressive attentions of her cousins. Great baskets of flowers were sent in by some of the young people who remembered and loved Mary Boyle, and Helen helped to arrange them in the little old lady's rooms.

Tea things for a score of people came in, too. And cookies and cakes from the caterer's. At three o'clock, or a little after, the callers began to arrive. Belle, and Hortense, and Flossie received them in the reception hall, had them remove their cloaks below stairs, and otherwise tried to make it appear that the function was really of their own planning.

But n.o.body invited either of the Starkweather girls upstairs to Mary Boyle's rooms. Perhaps it was an oversight. But it certainly _did_ look as though they had been forgotten.

But the party on the attic floor was certainly a success. How pretty the little old lady looked, sitting in state with all the young and blooming faces about her! Here were growing up into womanhood and manhood (for some of the boys had not been ashamed to come) the children whom she had tended and played with and sung to.

And she sung to them again--verses of forgotten songs, lullabies she had crooned over some of their cradles when they were ill, little broken chants that had sent many of them, many times, to sleep.

Altogether it was a most enjoyable afternoon, and Nurse Boyle was promised that it should not be the last tea-party she would have. "If you are 'way up here in the top of the house, you shall no more be forgotten," they told her.

Helen was the object next in interest to Nurse Boyle. May Van Ramsden had told about the Starkweathers' little "Cinderella Cousin"; and although none of these girls and boys who had gathered knew the truth about Helen's wealth and her position in life, they all treated her cordially.

When they trooped away and left the little old lady to lie down to recuperate after the excitement, Helen went to her own room, and remained closely shut up for the rest of the day.

At half-past six she came downstairs, bag in hand. She descended the servants' staircase, told Mr. Lawdor that her trunk, packed and locked, was ready for the expressman when he came, and so stole out of the area door. She escaped any interview with her uncle, or with the girls. She could not bid them good-by, yet she was determined not to go back to Sunset Ranch on the morrow, nor would she remain another night under her uncle's roof.

CHAPTER XXVIII

A STATEMENT OF FACT

Dud Stone had that very day seen the fixtures put into the little millinery store downtown, and it was ready for Sadie Goronsky to take charge; there being a fund of two hundred dollars to Sadie's credit at a nearby bank, with which she could buy stock and pay her running expenses for the first few weeks.

Yet Sadie didn't know a thing about it.

This last was the reason Helen went downtown early in the morning following the little dinner party at the Stones'. At that party Helen had met the uncle, aunt, and cousins of Dud and Jess Stone, with whom the orphaned brother and sister lived, and she had found them a most charming family.

Jess had invited Helen to bring her trunk and remain with her as long as she contemplated staying in New York, and this Helen was determined to do.

Even if the Starkweathers would not let the expressman have her trunk, she was prepared to blossom out now in a b.u.t.terfly outfit, and take the place in society that was rightfully hers.

But Helen hadn't time to go shopping as yet. She was too eager to tell Sadie of her good fortune. Sadie was to be found--cold as the day was--pacing the walk before Finkelstein's shop, on the sharp lookout for a customer. But there were a few flakes of snow in the air, the wind from the river was very raw, and it did seem to Helen as though the Russian girl was endangering her health.

"But what can poor folks do?" demanded Sadie, hoa.r.s.ely, for she already had a heavy cold. "There is nothing for me to do inside the store. If I catch a customer I make somet'ings yet. Well, we must all work!"

"Some other kind of work would be easier," suggested Helen.

"But not so much money, maybe."

"If you only had your millinery store."

"Don't make me laugh! Me lip's cracked," grumbled Sadie. "Have a heart, Helen! I ain't never goin' to git a store like I showed you."

Sadie was evidently short of hope on this cold day. Helen seized her arm.

"Let's go up and look at that store again," she urged.

"Have a heart, I tell ye!" exclaimed Sadie Goronsky. "Whaddeyer wanter rub it in for?"

"Anyway, if we run it will help warm you."

"All ri'. Come on," said Sadie, with deep disgust, but she started on a heavy trot towards the block on which her heart had been set. And when they rounded the corner and came before the little shop window, Sadie stopped with a gasp of amazement.

Freshly varnished cases, and counter, and drawers, and all were in the store just as she had dreamed of them. There were mirrors, too, and in the window little forms on which to set up the trimmed hats and one big, pink-cheeked, dolly-looking wax bust, with a great ma.s.s of tow-colored hair piled high in the very latest mode, on which was to be set the very finest hat to be evolved in that particular East Side shop.