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 thi