success. But she admired good work, and was
quick to see that Helen was a hard student, and to respect her for it.
Although so unlike in disposition, as well as position, a warm regard had
sprung up between them, and Toinette spent many hours watching Helen work
away at her drawing. The girl's ambition was to illustrate, and there was
hardly a girl in the school who had not posed for her, and the drawings in
her sketch-book were excellent.

Toinette had never been taught to think much about others, and so it is
not surprising that, while she admired Helen, and wished that she could
have those things she so longed for, it never occurred to her that perhaps
there were other and more fortunate girls who might have helped a trifle
if they chose to do so. That she, herself, had it within her power to do
it never entered her head till the girls began to talk about their new
dresses, and what put it there then would be hard to tell. Nevertheless,
come it did, and when she heard Helen speak so composedly of wearing to
the school dance, _the_ event of the season, in their eyes, the same dress
which had done service for many a little entertainment given through the
winter, and which gave unmistakable signs of having done so, she realized
for the first time what it must mean to be deprived of those things which
she had always accepted as a matter of course.

Still, no definite plans took shape in her head regarding it, and it is
quite possible that none might ever have done so had not something
occurred within a short time which seemed to be the hinge upon which her
whole after-life swung.

As the girls were in the midst of their chatter about the new gowns a tap
came at the door, and Fraulein Palme looked in to ask:

"Haf anyone seen my umbrel? I haf hunt eferywhere for him, and can't see
him anywhere."

"No, Fraulein, we haven't seen it," answered several voices.

"Where did you last have it?" asked Ruth.

"Right away in my room a little while before I am ready to go out. I go
down to the post-office and must get wet without him."

Two or three of the girls went into the hall to look for the missing
umbrella, and others went back to Fraulein's room with her to make a more
exhaustive search. But without success.

"Have you more than one?" asked Edith.

"No, it is but one I haf got. It is very funnee," and poor Fraulein looked
sorely perplexed.

"Take mine, Fraulein. Yours will turn up when you least expect it," said