How the time did fly! The days were not long enough for all the two
girls crowded into them.
In a few weeks Helen would be going away to a Scout camp where dozens of
girls would live in tents and row and swim and fish and cook and listen
to wise and sympathetic talks from their leaders. Helen knew all about
it from past trips, and she spent hours while they sat working on their
presents for Mrs. Hargrave, whose birthday was rapidly approaching,
telling Rosanna all about their good times. Rosanna felt that she never
could bear it if she couldn't be a Girl Scout. Helen, not knowing Mrs.
Horton, did not see how any grown person could refuse such a request and
she told Rosanna so.
They had made a great many plans for Mrs. Hargrave's birthday. She was
coming to take dinner with them.
Mrs. Hargrave never looked more beautiful nor more imposing than when
she arrived. The two girls were overcome with pride as they saw their
guest descend from her little carriage and, laying her hand on the arm
of the old colored man who attended her, walk slowly up the steps.
When dinner was served, it was perfectly splendid to hear Mrs. Hargrave
exclaim over the flowers and the favors and everything.
During the meal the children told Mrs. Hargrave what they hoped to be.
Rosanna wanted to be an artist. Helen said she intended to grow up and
marry and be the mother of a family.
"Bless my soul!" said Mrs. Hargrave, staring at her. "What put that in
your head?"
"Something mother learned in college," said Helen simply. "She believes
it, and of course so do I. There was a teacher in college who was very
wise, mother says, and he warned them and warned them against what he
called popular complaints. He said they must always be careful before
they joined anything and promised to uphold it to understand _exactly_
what it was and how far it would lead them. He said it didn't matter
whether they were thinking of going into a nunnery or joining the
Salvation Army or the Suffragets or what else, they wanted to ask
themselves could they lift themselves and help humanity by doing that
thing. And he said in this day and age when there were so many
dissatisfied people everywhere, he thought the most important thing in
the world was to teach everyone, and especially children, the love of
country."
"Wise man," said Mrs. Hargrave, nodding. "What else?"
"He told them that love of country was not boasting about where you came
from, and telling everybody how high the corn grows in New York, or how
blue the grass is in Kentucky or things about places like that. He says
that is nothing but bragging. But he said what people needed was to love
all their country, east and west and south and north, to try to
understand one another and to pull together for the United States.
"And he said that if every one of those girls who married and had
children would teach them this as hard as ever they could, some day the
states would really be united, and wiser laws would be made, and all the
young Americans would love their country and be willing to live for her.
He said it is harder to live faithfully for anything than to die for it
because it takes so much longer."
"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 godmother."
"There are no fairy godmothers," said Rosanna bitterly.
"I was beginning to think there might be," said Mrs. Hargrave.
"No," said Rosanna. "If there was a fairy godmother, 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 class."
"Class 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 class. 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 godmother 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 class
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.