I've been
studying the sunset and wishing I could paint a picture of it. I've come
to wish so many things of late," laughing at herself. "And I like the
teachers. I don't know many of the seniors, and I am in junior B."

"I am taking some private lessons," hesitatingly.

Poor girl! She could not even have passed a junior B examination.

"There's such a pretty girl at your table. Her hair is the color one
sometimes gets in a sunset, a bright gold, and yet it isn't the color so
much as the curious waviness and stir all about it. It seems alive. And
her complexion is beautiful, her eyes fairly laugh."

"That is Miss Mays. She isn't really in our class. She's an 'A' scholar.
Every month someone new is elected for hostess. You are at the head of
the table. You see that everything is served, that no one is--well, not
exactly rude or awkward, but not up to the mark. And you keep a certain
order."

"I spilled my coffee this morning. My spoon was in my cup and I just
touched it with my cuff. I wish I could have gone through the floor or
run away. But one has to learn all these nice things if one means
to--to be anybody."

"I learned some of them in the summer. I was with a friend," and Helen
flushed without quite knowing why. "I was a regular country girl--on a
farm."

"I was too. I begin to think I ought not have come here, but I did not
want to go where there were one or two hundred girls, and I did want to
learn nice ways," hesitatingly.

"Then this is the very place to come."

"Only I did not imagine they were all rich girls; that is, society
people," awkwardly.

"Oh, they are not. Two of the seniors mean to teach next year, so they
cannot be rich. And one girl is going to an art school and means to work
her way through. Of course most of them have fathers to care for them."

"I have never had anyone to care in that way. And it is curious, but on
my father's side I have not a single near relative, perhaps none at all.
And my mother was an only child."

"I have neither father or mother," returned Helen. "But I have some very
kind relatives on my mother's side."

"It is dreadful to be all alone, and to think----"

Miss Craven paused and compressed her lips, looked indeed as if she
would cry, but winked very hard. And then Helen noticed that she had
lovely long lashes, much darker than her hair and that her upper eyelids
were thin, almost transparent. It was queer how she was beginning to see
these little poin