"Bless my soul!" said Mrs. Hargrave again. "Go on!"

"That's all," said Helen. "I don't see what else I can do except teach some children of my own about it, do you, Mrs. Hargrave?"

"I think that would be the finest thing you could do," said the childless old lady. "Quite the finest! Are you going to college?"

"I want to," said Helen, "if we can afford it. We are saving up for it all the time."

"How do you save?" asked Mrs. Hargrave. She was certainly a curious old lady.

"Well," said Helen, "I wear my hair docked, and that saves a lot in hair ribbons, only this fall mother says I must let it grow. When mother takes me to buy a coat, we look at _two_ good ones that will last two winters, but perhaps one has pretty braid or something on it, that makes it cost more. Then if one of us looks as though we wanted it the other one whispers, 'Rah rah rah, college ah,' which is our own college yell, and we take the _plain_ one.

"Lots of ways it looks to be harder on mother than it is on me. I know she goes without so many things she would love--lectures and concerts and all that. I just _hate_ that part!"

"I am glad you do," said Mrs. Hargrave.

"Helen and I are hoping that we can go to college together," said Rosanna.

"Rosanna is so dear," said Helen. "She wants to help me save, but of course that won't do."

"I don't see why not," said Rosanna. They had talked this over many times. "Do you see, Mrs. Hargrave? I never spend my allowance."

"No," said Mrs. Hargrave, "it wouldn't do at all. In the first place Helen is earning her education in a lovely way, and your allowance is given you. It is no effort for you to get it, so it does not benefit you, my little dear. Helen must go on herself. Her help could only come from a fairy G.o.dmother."

"There are no fairy G.o.dmothers," said Rosanna bitterly.

"I was beginning to think there might be," said Mrs. Hargrave.

"No," said Rosanna. "If there was a fairy G.o.dmother, just one in all the world, she would come and make my grandmother let me go out of the garden and know lots of little girls and go to school and be a Girl Scout."

Mrs. Hargrave sat thinking as she tasted her ice. Then she asked, "What are these Girl Scouts?"

"I have all the books," said Helen eagerly. "May I bring them around to show you? Then you can see just why Rosanna wants to be one. I am sure Rosanna could not be hurt by knowing a lot of little girls and learning all the things that are required of the Girl Scouts."

"Why should she be hurt?" said Mrs. Hargrave.

"Why, grandmother thinks I should not go out of my cla.s.s."

"Cla.s.s is all right," said Mrs. Hargrave. "It is very necessary, but what you want to look for, Rosanna, is _worth_. Suppose Helen here was not in your own cla.s.s. Suppose her father was a laboring man of some sort, and she lived away from this part of town, that wouldn't change Helen."

Helen looked up in amazement. "But my father is--"

Mrs. Hargrave interrupted. "I will tell you what I will do, Rosanna, I will talk to your grandmother myself if she makes any objections to your going to school and all the rest." She rose as she spoke, and they wandered out to the rose garden where coffee was served for Mrs.

Hargrave and where the children offered their gifts.

When she went home at last, she put an arm around each child. "This is the happiest birthday I have had. Good-night, and thank you! I will help you all I can, Rosanna, and I feel very sure, Helen, that your savings or the fairy G.o.dmother will take you to college with Rosanna. Two little girls as nice and sweet and well-bred as you ought to be friends all your lives."

She kissed them both and, carrying her presents, went down the steps leaning on the arm of her servant.

"I feel full of a happy sadness," Rosanna sighed. "I don't see why, do you?"

"No," said Helen, "only that she is so perfectly lovely. She is just as though there was two parts to her. The outside pretty, but old and wrinkled and kind of high and grand, while there is somebody just too sweet, and real young and dancy and loving on the inside. And the inside one can never grow old at all, but will go right on understanding how you feel, and when the outside gets too old to last any longer, why, she will just go and be a young, young angel."

"I guess that's it," said Rosanna. "But what a fuss there is about cla.s.s and position and where you were born, isn't there?"

"Yes," said Helen. "When she was talking about workingmen I tried to tell her about my father working for your grandmother."

"Yes, she interrupted you," said Rosanna. "I don't see as it makes any difference what he does. No matter what _any_body thinks, Helen, we are going to be friends? You promised me that."

"Of course," said Helen.

"Well, it was a nice party, wasn't it, Helen? I think Mrs. Hargrave did truly have a good time."

When Helen went home that night she was very quiet. Her mother thought she was tired, but Helen was thinking. She loved Mrs. Hargrave dearly, and she wanted her to know some things that she evidently was all mixed up about.

The following morning she did not go over to see Rosanna. Instead she dressed with even greater care than usual and went slowly around to Mrs.

Hargrave's, where she found her in a bright little morning room, sitting before a large desk.

"I wanted to tell you something," said Helen, "and I am going to get it all mixed up. I sort of have the feeling that _everything_ is mixed up and that I am doing something that is not quite right. So I came over to you. I didn't even tell mother because I was afraid it would worry her.

You see _she_ doesn't understand either."

"Dear me, how mysterious!" said Mrs. Hargrave.

"It is like this," said Helen, plunging into the middle. "You have been so good to me that I want to tell you that I am not one of the Culvers of Lee County or any other county. I am just the plainest sort of a little girl. I have the nicest father and mother in the whole world, but they are poor, and my father does work. He works for Mrs. Horton; he is her chauffeur, and we live in the apartment over the garage.

"What will she say, Mrs. Hargrave, when she knows what a plain little girl I am? I thought I would come and tell you about it. I don't see what difference being poor makes if one tries to be nice inside, do you?"

"No," cried Mrs. Hargrave. "It makes no difference at all. Don't let anyone make you think that. And your coming to tell me this shows me just what sort of a child you are," and she kissed Helen.

"Now, let's get this thing all straight as far as you understand it, my dear, and then I will tell you what I think about it."

So for a long time they sat together, Helen's hand in Mrs. Hargrave's while Helen told all about herself and her friendship with Rosanna, and Mrs. Hargrave chuckled when she thought of her letters to Mrs. Horton and how she had innocently misled her.

CHAPTER XII

Rosanna had just finished her luncheon that very same day, when she heard Minnie talking to someone over the telephone. Minnie, seeing Rosanna behind her, merely said yes and no and hung up as soon as she could.

"What are you planning to do, Miss Rosanna?" she asked.

"This afternoon?" said Rosanna. "Well, Helen is coming over with her mother and we are going to sit on the porch of the playhouse and sew.

Helen and I are going to make a couple of rompers for Baby Christopher.

Helen and her mother went over to see Gwenny the other day, and Mrs.

Culver says that baby actually has nothing to put on. And there is no money to buy anything with because Gwenny has had to have a new brace that cost thirty dollars. Oh, Minnie, will I be rich when I grow up?"

"Yes, you will," said Minnie.