set up a museum of art without any help
from me."

"I think so," I rejoined: "this house is so filled with wonderful
things. But Helen--"

"Don't talk about me, please," cried a voice from behind the acacias,
"for I am here;" and the little girl came through the drooping branches
covered with their plumy canary-colored blossoms, and advanced toward us
with that wonderful princess-like gait of hers. She was smiling
demurely. "Listeners hear no good of themselves, they say," she
observed, throwing a laughing glance at me.

"I was only about to remark that you seemed tolerably indifferent to
your possessions."

"The fact is," said Mr. Floyd teasingly, "since Helen found that the
moon and the sea did not belong to her, she gave up, and has not
believed she is so very rich, after all;" and while he laughed and Helen
blushed, and half hid herself, I heard how the child, when she was six
years old, had taken her new nursery-governess around the place, saying,
"This is my pony," "These are my dogs," "This is my conservatory," and
"These are my greenhouses:" then, when she had exhausted the inventory
of her wealth, she had affirmed, "That is my moon" and "That is my
water;" and when it was explained to her that the crescent over the pine
trees in the west belonged alike to all the children on the wide earth,
and that the fickle sea too paid its homage at a thousand shores, she
was quite inconsolable, and nothing could make up to her for her loss.

A very quiet, demure little woman was Helen now-a-days. I deplored the
necessity for the graceful French governess who was polishing her into a
conventional manner and preparing her for the dull routine which other
girls must follow. I never analyzed my impressions of Helen then, but I
am sure I considered her far above any commonplace educational needs,
for I knew that she was so wise, so disciplined, so true to all her
duties, that she was altogether a woman, and not a little girl at all.
It gave me a positive shock to discover that she was ciphering in vulgar
fractions and that her spelling was, to say the least, crude. Not but
that she was childish enough in many things, and so exquisitely docile
with her father that he often scolded her for her over-careful
obedience. I could understand well enough myself how she liked to be led
by the strong man who loved her, and whom she so dearly loved, because
when she was alone with her grandfather she needed to govern, holding a
drear