"Not this winter. I should like to be 'only a girl' ever so long," and Helen smiled dreamily. "It seems as if I had been only a very little girl thirteen years or so, and now I want to be just a big girl. Womanhood looks so strange and mysterious to me. There are so many things to be decided then, and now you can hover about the edge, just slip into the surf of that river called the future and then draw back. You don't have to cross it. But some day you must, and shoulder its responsibilities." "How queer and solemn that sounds. And I am a whole year older, and I ought to be ever so much ahead of you." "You are in Latin and French. I studied up some. I met a delightful woman,--well I saw her last summer, and oddly enough she remembered me from the books I read,--that I never should have known about but for Mrs. Van Dorn. She is the librarian. And we have had such a nice time. She is a college graduate, and she has inspired me with a longing to go. But then I want everything. Travel and music and churches and ruins and histories of nations that have been swept away, and to climb the pyramids, and to ask the Sphinx her mighty question----" "_Your_ mighty question as to what secret is in her ponderous brain?" Both girls laughed heartily, merrily. "Well, I must say, Helen Grant, your wishes comprise enough for a lifetime! And you have left out Paris, and that quaint, delightful, clean, watery Holland, and Moscow, and India." "There is too much for one lifetime. I wonder if we _do_ come back and take some of the pleasures in the life afterward? But then we don't remember what has gone before, so where is the benefit?" "There are ever so many new girls," said Daisy presently. "I wonder if we haven't a small share of duty towards them," remarked Helen, considering. "I thought it lovely of you girls to come and welcome me when I was a stranger." "Roxy was splendid at that. I am not sure but there was some curiosity in it. She liked to get down to the bottom of a girl's soul and life and know all that had happened to her. And she was very amusing with her bright comments and comparisons. I was desperately in love with her at first," and Daisy colored warmly. "Then she said little things about other girls that I didn't like. And you were so upright, so generous in your criticisms, so ready to make allowance. And after all that mistake about Miss Craven she was very unwilling to own she had been wrong. Wasn't I fearfully jealous? Didn't I act like a fiend?" There were tears in Daisy's eyes. Helen gave a vague smile. "I can see now that it was somewhat due to Roxy's influence. She kept saying you were so bewitched about her, and that you were on the lookout for new sensations, that you tried on friendships and then cast them off. I think that was what _she_ did. What a foolishly miserable girl I was, but I _did_ love you. And I do, I shall." Helen kissed her fondly.