nearly the whole book of the world for
Helen. "But if you liked to try me. I should be true, I can answer for
that," and the trustiness rang in her voice.

"I've really had no one but Mrs. Davis, and I haven't been drawn to her,
although she has been very kind. Yet she is so different from Mrs.
Aldred, and I can't tell which is nearer right. Only I _do_ enjoy it
better here. It is more like the harmony in music. Then I am confused in
a big city, and I really couldn't go into society."

"How did you come to live so much alone?" inquired Helen, feeling as if
she was unraveling a story.

"Father died when Arthur and I were very little, and mother went home to
his father's. It's a queer, curious place with great mountainous ridges
on one side, and on the other, to the south, stretches of land, good for
nothing much, being iron fields, a sort of dreary waste, not considered
good enough in ore to be worked much. Grandfather had bought it twenty
or thirty years before in a great speculating time, then it had dropped
down. I suppose the misfortunes soured him. He had a small farm beside,
kept a cow, and an old nag, and pigs and chickens. Mother was his
daughter-in-law. The house up in the mountainside was old and forlorn,
but as grandfather said, 'It didn't leak and it couldn't blow over.' The
little town was more than a mile away. I used to go in to school when
the weather wasn't too bad. Arthur died soon after we went there. He was
older than I. Grandfather had not really cared for me, he was queer and
morose, and that disappointed him. Girls were of very little account
except to keep house and mend old clothes. I did love school and study.

"When I was about thirteen there was a very hard winter, and mother took
a cold. I suppose it was consumption. She just grew weaker and thinner,
and really didn't give up until a few weeks before she died. She was a
good deal troubled about me. I've seen that plainer since than I did
then. And she kept saying, 'If any good ever comes to you, any money or
any time, get an education. And don't marry any man until you have
acquired that.'

"It was very lonely when she was gone, and I had the house to keep.
Oxford village wasn't very much, three or four hundred people, and
mostly farms, just one little spot with a church, schoolhouse, country
store and post-office. I couldn't go to school any more, grandfather
always went to town with butter and eggs and the produce he could spare.
I los