at the girl who flushed with the praise.

She wanted to be read to sleep that night, just as she had been the
night before, and chose Tennyson.

"Well, I do hope we will have a nice week to come," Mrs. Dayton said
when they were alone. "Old lady Van Dorn _has_ been trying. Helen, you
have kept your temper excellently. What are you smiling about?"

"I guess I have been trained to keep my temper."

"Because your aunt doesn't let anyone fly out but herself? That's in the
Cummings blood. And you haven't any of that. Sometimes your voice has
the sound of your father's. You are more Grant than Mulford."

"You knew my father----" Helen paused and glanced up wondering whether
it was much or little.

"Well--yes," slowly. "And not so very much either. You see I was beyond
my school days," and Mrs. Dayton gave a retrospective smile. "Your
mother went to school to him the first year he taught. I never could
understand----" and she wrinkled her brow a little.

"I suppose he was very much in love with her?" Helen colored vividly as
if she was peering into a secret. The love stories she had been reading
were taking effect in a certain fashion. She was beginning to weave
romances about people. Aunt Jane blamed her father for a good many
things, and especially the marriage. But she never had a good word for
him.

"Oh, what nonsense for children like you to think about love! Well,"
rather reluctantly, "he must have been pleased with her, she was bright
and pretty, but it wasn't wise for either of them, and it did surprise
everybody. She was one of the butterfly kind with lots of beaus. Dan
Erlick's father waited on her considerably, he was pretty gay, and
people thought she liked him a good deal. Then he married a Waterbury
girl, and not long after she married your father. There were others she
could have had--we all thought more suitable. He was a good deal older,
and cared mostly for books and study. Then he began with some queer
notions, at least the Center people thought so--that the world had stood
thousands of years we knew nothing about, and that the Mosaic account
wasn't--well then people hadn't heard so much about science and all
that, and were a little worried lest their children should turn out
infidels. And he found a place in some college at the West, but it
seemed as if they made a good many changes until she came home to die.
But she always appeared to think he had been kind and taken good care of
her. If he hadn