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HELEN GRANT'S SCHOOLDAYS
BOOKS BY AMANDA M. DOUGLAS
THE HELEN GRANT BOOKS
ILLUSTRATED
HELEN GRANT'S SCHOOLDAYS $1.25
HELEN GRANT'S FRIENDS 1.25
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HELEN GRANT, SENIOR 1.25
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HELEN GRANT, TEACHER 1.25
HELEN GRANT'S DECISION 1.25
HELEN GRANT'S HARVEST YEAR 1.25
ALMOST AS GOOD AS A BOY. Illustrated by BERTHA G.
DAVIDSON 1.25
HEROES OF THE CRUSADES. Fifty full-page Illustrations
from GUSTAVE DORE 1.50
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LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
BOSTON
[Illustration: Helen tells her dreams to the old apple tree.
(_Frontispiece._) _Page 6._]
HELEN GRANT'S SCHOOLDAYS
BY
AMANDA M. DOUGLAS
Author of "In the King's Country," "In Trust," "Larry,"
"The Kathie Stories," "Almost as Good
as a Boy," etc.
_ILLUSTRATED BY AMY BROOKS_
[Illustration]
BOSTON
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
Published, August, 1903
COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY LEE AND SHEPARD
_All rights reserved_
HELEN GRANT'S SCHOOLDAYS
Norwood Press
BERWICK & SMITH CO.
Norwood, Mass.
U.S.A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. HELEN, 1
II. AN EXCURSION TO HOPE, 20
III. AIR CASTLES WITH FOUNDATIONS, 41
IV. PLANTING OF SMALL SEEDS, 65
V. A GIRL'S DREAMS, 87
VI. HOW THEY ALL PLANNED, 106
VII. SUCCESSFUL, 127
VIII. MRS. VANDORN'S WINNING HAND, 148
IX. DIFFERENT STANDPOINTS, 169
X. BEGINNING ANEW, 196
XI. SCHOOL IN EARNEST, 218
XII. THE COURAGE OF CONVICTIONS, 238
XIII. A LITTLE SEED SOWN, 263
XIV. AND THORNS SPRANG UP, 284
XV. BETWIXT TWO, 306
XVI. HOPE THROUGH A WIDER OUTLOOK, 328
XVII. IN THE DELIGHTFUL CURRENT, 348
XVIII. WRIT IN AN UNKNOWN TONGUE, 371
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Helen tells her dreams to the old apple-tree.
(_Frontispiece_) 6
Helen put her head down suddenly, and
pressed her lips on the jewelled hand 55
Helen's first day at Aldred House 192
They were winding round into Elm Avenue,
with great bunches of wild flowers and
bright leaves 235
When Helen returned there was a box that
had been sent across the water, with some
pretty laces and a fine neck-chain and
charm 272
He looked like an old picture, but he was a
gentleman, every inch of him 390
Transcriber's note:
In the List of Illustrations there is reference to an ilustration on
page 235. It could not be found.
HELEN GRANT'S SCHOOLDAYS
CHAPTER I
HELEN
It had been a great day for the children at Hope Center the closing day
of school, the last of the term, the last of the week. The larger boys
and girls had spent the morning decorating the "big" room, which was to
be the assembly-room. At the Center they were still quite primitive.
There were many old or rather elderly people very much opposed to
"putting on airs." Boys and girls went to school together, but they
wouldn't have called it co-education. So the main room where various
meetings and occasional entertainments were held, was always known by
the appellation "big."
It was very prettily trimmed with the shining sprays of "bread and
butter," and wild clematis, and the platform was gay with flowers. Seats
were arranged on either hand for the graduating class, and the best
singers in school. There was a very good attendance. Closing day was
held in as high esteem as Washington's Birthday, or Decoration Day.
Christmas was only partly kept, the old Hope settlers being an offshoot
of the Puritans, and the one little Episcopalian chapel had almost to
fight for its Holy days.
The first three seats in the audience-room were full of children in
Sunday attire. The girl graduates were in white, with various colored
ribbons. The boys' habiliments had followed no especial rule. But they
were a bright, happy-looking lot, taking a deep interest in what they
were to do. The boys had an entertaining historical exercise. One began
with a brief account of causes leading to the revolution. Another
followed with the part Boston played, then New York, then Philadelphia,
Virginia, and the surrender of Cornwallis; afterward, two or three
patriotic songs, several recitations--two distinctly humorous--another
song or two, and then Helen Grant's selection, which was "Herve Riel," a
poem she had cut from a paper, that somehow inspired her. Diplomas were
then distributed, and the "Star Spangled Banner," sung by everybody,
finished the exercises.
Helen was fourteen, well-grown and very well-looking, without being
pretty enough to arouse anyone's envy. "A great girl for book-learning,"
her uncle said, while Aunt Jane declared "She didn't see but people got
along just as well without so much of it. It had never done a great deal
for Ad Grant."
Helen had a bright, sunny nature--well, for that matter, she had a good
many sides to her nature, and no girl of fourteen has them all definite
at once. Some get toned down, some flash out here and there, and those
of real worth come to have a steady shining light later on. But she
never could hear Aunt Jane say "Ad Grant" in the peculiar tone she used
without a sharp pang. For Addison Grant was her father, that is if he
was still alive, and when Aunt Jane wanted to be particularly
tormenting, she was sure he was roaming the world somewhere, and
forgetting that he had a child.
Sixteen years before he had come to Hope Center and taught school. A
tall, thin nondescript sort of man, a college graduate, but that didn't
raise him in anyone's estimation. He was queer and always working at
some kind of problems, and doing bits of translating from old Latin and
Greek writers, and spent his money for books that he considered of
great value. Why pretty Kitty Mulford should have married him was a
mystery, but why he should have taken her would have seemed a greater
puzzle to intellectual people. They went to one of the larger cities,
where he taught, then to another, and so on; and when Helen was seven
her mother came back to the Center a hopeless invalid with consumption,
and died. Mr. Grant seemed very much broken. No one knew what a trial
the frivolous, childish wife had been. He _was_ disappointed at not
having a son. He had some peculiar ideas about a boy's education, and he
didn't know what to do with a girl. So he left her with her aunt and
uncle, and for four years sent them two hundred dollars a year for her
keep. Then he went to Europe without so much as coming to say good-by,
and no one had ever heard of him since.
Helen's memories of her mother were not delightful enough to build an
altar to remembrance. She had fretted a good deal. When she was out of
temper she slapped Helen on the shoulder, and said she was "just like
her father." Helen waited on her, changed her slippers, brushed her
hair, and would have made a famous nurse if the end had not come. And
then the life was so different.
The Mulfords were in many respects happy-go-lucky people. Aunt Jane
scolded a good deal, or rather talked in a very scolding tone. But the
children came up without much governing. Once in a while Uncle Jason
struck one of them with his old gray felt hat; Helen didn't remember
ever seeing him have a new one, but he wore a black one on Sunday. There
were five rollicking children, and one daughter grown, who was engaged
to be married at seventeen. Helen ran and played and worked and sewed a
little, which she hated, and studied and read everything she could get
hold of. There were Sunday-school library books, some of them very good,
too; there were books she borrowed, and some old ones up in the garret
belonging to her father. She read these quite on the sly, for she knew
she should hate to hear comments made about them, and Aunt Jane might
burn them up.
Some years before she had a big rag doll that she was very fond of. It
was her confidant, and wonderful stories, complaints, and wishes went
into her deaf ears. 'Reely, the girl next to the two boys, wanted it,
and ran away with it at every opportunity. One day they had a quarrel
about it.
"It's mine!" declared Helen. "I'll hide it away. You have no business
with it."
"What's that?" demanded Aunt Jane sharply. "Helen Grant, you just give
that doll to 'Reely. You're too big for such nonsense! Now, 'Reely, that
doll is yours, and if Helen takes it away, I'll just settle with her in
a way she'll remember one while. You great baby-calf playing with
dolls!"
Helen never troubled the doll after that. There was a crooked old
apple-tree in the orchard, and after she had dipped into mythology she
made a friend and confidant of it, read her stories to it, studied her
lessons with it even in real cold weather. It was a sort of desultory
education, until the last year, when Mr. Warfield came, and then Helen
really found a friend worlds better than the old apple tree, though she
still told it her dreams. And sometimes when the wind soughed through
its branches it seemed as if she could translate what it said.
"Of course you go to the High School next year," Mr. Warfield said a
week or so before school closed. "It would be such a pity for you to
stop here. You have the making of a good scholar, and there is no reason
why you shouldn't be a teacher. You have one admirable quality, you go
so directly to the point, you are so ambitious, so in earnest, and you
acquire knowledge so easily. You will make a broad-minded woman. I must
say the Center people are rather narrow and self-satisfied, except the
few new ones that have come in." And Mr. Warfield smiled.
Helen felt in her inner consciousness that it would be unwise to talk
about the High School. And she was very busy. She was called upon to
help with the ironing now. She darned all the stockings. She washed the
supper dishes because Aunt Jane was tired out, and Jenny wanted to sew
on her wedding outfit.
Everything had gone along very comfortably. Her white frock had a scant
ruffle put on the bottom to lengthen it down, and new sleeves put in.
Uncle Jason was really proud that she had to "speak a piece."
Everybody stopped to talk and discuss the exercises. The singing was
pronounced first-rate. The History talk stirred up some revolutionary
reminiscences among the old folks. Someone praised Helen's share in the
entertainment.
"Well, I didn't just see the sense of it," declared Aunt Jane. "After
all that great thing, savin' of the ships, as one may say, why didn't he
ask for something worth while? Just a day to go off and see some
woman----"
"She was his wife."
"And, I dare say, he had chances enough to see her. You can't tell what
they are driving at in these new-fangled stories. Now there's 'Pity the
sorrows of a poor old man, whose trembling limbs have borne him to your
door,' and 'Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise, The Queen of the world,
and the child of the skies' that children used to speak when I went to
school, and you could sense them."
Mrs. Mulford repeated them as if she was reeling off so much prose, and
paused out of breath. She was getting rather stout now.
"I thought it rather _the_atrical," said Mrs. Keen. "I didn't understand
it a bit. The Searings are going to send Louise to the High School. They
have it all fixed, and she's going to board with her sister through the
week. Marty Pendleton's going, too. Dear me! There wa'n't any High
School in my day, and I guess girls were just as smart."
Helen was with the girls in a merry crowd. Some were going away to aunts
and grandmothers, and the envied one, Ella Graham, was going to the
seaside, as the doctor had recommended that to her ailing mother. So
they walked on, chatting, until paths began to diverge. Two roads ran
through the Center, north and south, east and west. There were South
Hope and North Hope, settlements that had branched out from the Center.
North Hope had grown into quite a thriving town with a railroad station
and several social advantages. The High School for the towns around was
situated here.
"Now," began Aunt Jane, as they neared the gate and said good-by to a
few who were going farther on, "now Helen, you just run in and take off
your frock and that white petticoat. They'll do for Sunday. There's peas
to shell and potatoes to clean, and I have to look after the chickens,
and make some biscuits. After spending 'most all the day it's time you
did something."
Helen drew a long breath. She wanted to go out to the old apple tree to
dream and plan. But Aunt Jane didn't consider anything real work outside
of housekeeping and earning money, though Helen had been up since five
in the morning, and very busy with chores before she went to help adorn
the schoolroom.
Sam, who had been inducted into farming two years before, was out in the
field mowing with father and the man. Nathan, next in age, was most
enthusiastic about the good time they had, only if there'd been a treat
like a Sunday School picnic!
"Do stop!" said his mother, "I'm tired and sick of all this school
stuff. Go out and bring in a good basket of wood, or you won't have any
chicken potpie for supper."
Helen hung up her frock, and put on the faded gingham and a checked
apron, and kept busy right along. 'Reely helped shell peas; Fan and Lou
were out playing.
"It's splendid that there isn't any more school," said Fan. "We can just
play and play and play."
The big girl inside was sorry enough there was no more school. Somehow
Aunt Jane's voice rasped her terribly this afternoon. Two whole months
of it! A shudder ran all over her.
There was a savory fragrance through the house presently. Helen tried to
remember everything that went on the table, though she was repeating
snatches of verses to herself. Then Jenny came up the path, stood her
umbrella in the corner, gave her hat a toss that landed it on a stand
under the glass, that Helen had just cleared up, and dropped into a
rocking chair.
"It's been hot to-day, now I tell you;" she said. "Well, did your
fandango go off to suit, Helen?"
"I shouldn't call it fandango," the girl replied.
"Oh, well, what's in a name! Now I'll bet you can't tell what smart chap
said that!"
"Shakspeare."
"Did he really? I suppose it's always safe to tack his name to
everything;" and Jenny laughed. The word buxom could be justly applied
to her. Her two long walks, and her day in the factory, did not seem to
wear on her. Her color was rather high, her eyes and hair dark, her
voice untrained, and everything about her commonplace.
"Go and blow the horn," said Aunt Jane to Helen.
"Did you go, mother? Was it anything worth while?" asked the daughter.
"Oh, well, so, so. Mr. Warfield seemed very proud of his pupils. Yes,
the singing was good. Harry Lane had the 'Surrender of Cornwallis', and
it was just fine."
Father and Sam and the hired man came in. The two children straggled
along, and Helen had to wash them, but presently they were all ranged
about the table.
"Well, how did it go?" Uncle Jason asked, looking up as Helen finally
took her place after doing Aunt Jane's bidding several times.
"Oh, it was splendid!" A thrill of delight swept over Helen as she met
the good-humored eyes. "And I have a diploma."
"And did you carry the house by storm, or did you forget two lines in
the most important place?" asked Sam, mischievously. "Dan Erlick is
going to the High School in the fall. Are you?"
"O, I wish I could," cried Helen, eagerly, with a beseeching glance at
her uncle. Occasionally he did decide matters.
"Well, I declare!" Aunt Jane threw back her head with her fork poised
half way to her mouth, "And I dare say you'd like to go over to Europe,
too!"
"I just should," said Helen with a good natured accent. "There are a
great many things I should like to do."
"Where's the money coming from to do 'em?"
"I hope to earn it. I should like to teach, and Mr. Warfield thinks I
ought."
"And follow in your father's steps."
Helen's face was scarlet.
"You just won't go to any High School, I can tell you," began her aunt
in an arbitrary tone. "You'd look fine walking in three mile and out
again every day. Who'd keep you in shoes? Or did you think you'd take
the horse and wagon? You're learning enough for the kind of life you're
likely to lead, and there are other things to do."
"And I'll tell you one of them, Nell," said Jenny with a rough comfort
in her tone. "There will be three vacancies in the factory come
September, and you better take one of them. Now I haven't been there but
little more than two years, and take up my twelve dollars every two
weeks. The work isn't hard. I almost think I'm a fool to get married
quite so soon, only Joe does need a housekeeper, and will have the house
all fixed up--and doesn't want to wait;" laughingly.
"Joe's a nice fellow," said her mother, "and well to do. And you didn't
go to any High School, either."
Mrs. Mulford took great pride in her daughter's prospects, though when
Joe Northrup first began to "wait on her," she said: "I don't see how
you'll ever get along with old lady Northrup, and Joe won't leave his
mother."
"I aint in any hurry," returned Jenny. "Joe's a good catch and worth
waiting for."
In March Mrs. Northrup began to clean house and took a bad cold, and a
month later was buried. Quite a sum of ready money came to Joe, and he
built on a parlor room, a new wide porch, papered and painted, and Jenny
felt not a little elated at her good luck. She had been steadily at work
preparing for her new home, improving evenings and odd hours, for she
was an industrious girl, and she declared Mrs. Northrup's old things
would be a "disgrace to the folks on the ridge." These were the poorest
and most inelegant people at the Center, and had somehow herded
together.
"Yes, that will be a good thing for Helen," said Aunt Jane. "She's old
enough to do something to earn her way. And you'll want everything new
this winter, you've grown so. And if you have had any idee of High
Schools and that folderol, you may just get it out of your head at once.
If you'd a fortune it would be more to the purpose, but a girl----"
"It would be too far for her to walk," said Uncle Jason, warding off a
reference to her father as he saw tears in Helen's eyes. "Mother, this
is a tip-top potpie. You do beat the Dutch!"
"And I never went to school a day after I was twelve. I've kept a house
and helped save and had six children of my own and Helen, and none of
'em have gone in rags. And there's Kate Weston, who's secretary of
something over to North Hope, and who paints on chiny, and see what a
house she keeps!"
"You can have lots of learning, and if it isn't of the right sort it
won't do you much good," said Jenny sententiously. "There's a girl in
the factory who was at boarding school two years. She's twenty and she
never earns over four dollars a week, and if I didn't know more than she
does--well I'd go in a convent!"
Some other topics came up, and after dinner Sam went to milk, the hired
man to care for the stock, Aunt Jane took the big rocking chair and
settled herself to a few winks of sleep, as was her custom, and the
walk of to-day had fatigued her more than usual. Helen and 'Reely
cleared the table. Jenny sat down to the sewing machine and hemmed yards
of ruffling for her various purposes. Then Helen put Fan and little Tom
to bed, and sat a while out on the porch, thinking, strangely sore at
heart.
She had not considered the subject seriously. It had been an ardent
desire to go on studying. She had just reached the place where knowledge
was fascinating to a girl of her temperament. Mr. Warfield had roused
the best in her and she had, as it were, skipped over the years and seen
herself just where she would like to be, able to travel, to make
friends, to have books and the pictures she loved. She had not seen many
that she cared for, until one day Mr. Warfield brought a portfolio of
prints _he_ admired, and she was so touched that she sat in a breathless
thrill of joy with her eyes full of tears.
"Oh, I did not know there were such beautiful things in the world," she
said with a sob in her breath. "And that people could really make them!
How wonderful it must be to do something the whole world can enjoy."
He smiled kindly. "The world is large," he replied, "and if only a
little circle commends us, that must satisfy the most of us. And perhaps
you know people who would rather have a bright chromo of fruit or
flowers than all of these."
"Yes," she admitted with a flush.
"But in everything it is worth while to try to come up to the best
within us."
This sentence lingered in her mind. But she was a very busy girl for the
next two weeks, for there was a good deal to do at home. Then she was
not old enough to have outgrown play. Girls really played in country
places round about.
But some new thing was growing up within her. There comes a dividing
line in many lives when the soul awakens and reaches up and seems
suddenly to sweep past the old things, just as the bud pushes out of its
sheath that then becomes a dry husk. So many desires crept up to the
light. Study, languages, histories of men and women, and deeds that had
changed the aspect of the world. Travel, a life of her own in which she
was first, not in any selfish fashion, but to have things peculiarly her
own, the things that appealed to her, not other people's ideas of what
was best for you. She had had some of Jenny's frocks made over for her,
and had been wearing Jenny's coat all winter. Aurelia was too small to
make these changes economical, and Mrs. Mulford was one of the thrifty
kind that believed in putting everything to the best use. Yet Helen
longed for the time when second-hand clothes and ideas were no longer
forced upon you, but you could come into some of your very own.
She thought she would go up to her own room and have a good cry. Just as
she reached the door Aunt Jane said: "Yes, she's old enough now to go to
work. It's a good idea."
"I'll speak to Mr. Brown and engage the place for her. After a
fortnight, if she pays any sort of attention she'll get three dollars a
week, for she's quick to see into things."
"Yes, if she settles her mind to them. Dear me! I hope she won't turn
out trifling and inefficient like her father. She's got his eyes, only
they're more wide awake. And when a girl has to do for herself, the
sooner she begins the better. I'd reckoned on setting her to do
something this fall, for there's 'Reely to work in the odds and ends; I
always did say I wouldn't bring up a lot of shiftless girls, and I'll
do my duty by her if she isn't altogether mine."
Helen went round to the side entrance and slipped upstairs. Fan and
'Reely slept in the big bed. There was a jog in the room and Helen's cot
was here. She threw off her clothes and crept into bed, and cried with
her whole soul in revolt. What right had anyone to order another's life,
to put one in hard and distasteful places! She had never thought of the
factory before, indeed she had never thought much of the future. For
most healthy energetic girls the present is sufficient, and to Aunt Jane
it was everything. Children were to do to-day's work, there was no fear
but there would be enough to fill up to-morrow when it came.
To go in the factory when Mr. Warfield had said she could make a
teacher! To miss three years in the High School, three splendid
satisfying years, to miss the wonderful knowledges of the wide,
beautiful world when she had just come to know what a few leaves of them
were like. No wonder she cried with a girl's passionate disappointment.
No wonder she saw possibilities in the enchanted future and was
confident of reaching them if she could be allowed.