But there did not seem so much difference between her age and Miss
Craven's as the years confessed. Helen knew a great deal more about the
real world. She was likely to make a good logician. Her short experience
at Mrs. Dayton's had given her the key to the larger world. Those women
with their different qualities were reproduced here in the school, here
in Westchester, and were no doubt repeated elsewhere. But Miss Craven
knew nothing and was afraid to judge, to have decided opinions, to
compare one with another. Her solitary life had taken her into the very
heart of nature, of a certain kind of dreaming, and longing for
knowledge, but that was widely different from the every day knowledge of
general living. Helen had not been lonely, her mind was too active, and
there had always been people about her. She wanted her knowledge to
enable her to go out in the world and conquer it; girls of fourteen and
older do have such dreams. Miss Craven wanted hers largely for herself
alone.
Helen had pitied her, been very sympathetic, assisted her over rough
places, and really advised. Was not this some of the work preached about
on Sunday in the churches, helping the weaker brethren? She had hardly
thought of religion up to this period of her life as having any duties
in a practical sense, but Mrs. Aldred gave the school that tone, and
Miss Grace was interested in the broader Christian life, not merely
church-going.
So Miss Craven, curiously enough, had looked like a duty to Helen. She
and Daisy did their brief reading every night, but since Christmas so
many verses had pointed to the weaker brother. The stronger, wiser girls
in school did not want anything of her, at least she thought she had
nothing to give them, since they did not ask, and the word was "everyone
that asketh." Miss Craven had asked by a glance of the eye, a pressure
of the hand, a quiver of the wordless lips that hesitated to frame the
desire into speech. Yes, she did love her if charity and kindliness were
love, and--oh, there _was_ something deeper, wider, higher.
She had not settled the question when she fell asleep, rather late for
her and so she did not wake until Daisy touched her. Daisy Bell had half
a mind to let her oversleep and lose a mark, then she really did love
her too well.
"Oh, dear!" sighed Helen ruefully. "And I wanted to finish my Latin
translation this morning."
There could be no thought of anything but hurrying downstairs. Miss
Craven was in her place and glanced up with a certain eagerness in her
eyes. All through breakfast time Daisy made herself uncomfortable,
watching.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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