"Well?" said Uncle Jason inquiringly. "She was here, but I haven't just made up my mind. She'll be here Wednesday." "Whew!" ejaculated Uncle Jason. She went down the garden path to meet Jenny, who took the shortest way across lots. "I'm goin' to sleep on it," she said, after she had told Jenny. "But you'll let her go! Why, it would be foolish!" "I s'pose I shall. But I'll keep her on tenter hooks to-night. Right down to the bottom I don't approve of it. She'll be planning all summer to get to that High School. Three years is too much to throw away when you're dependent on other folks." So Helen had to go to bed unsatisfied, for Uncle Jason wouldn't be waylaid. "I've cut you a frock out of that striped muslin of Jenny's," Aunt Jane announced, the next morning. "Sew up the seams, and put in the hem, and then I'll fix the waist." Aunt Jane was "handy," as many country women have to be. "You were mighty close about that business of Sat'day afternoon," Aunt Jane flung out when she could no longer contain herself. "I s'pose it don't make much difference whether you go or not?" "Oh, I should like to go." Helen's voice was unsteady. "But Mrs. Dayton told Uncle Jason to talk it over with you, and then she would come and see you, and he said--that it would be as--as--and it seemed as if I hadn't much to do with it until----" "Well, I've decided to let you go and try. They may not like you. Rich old women are generally queer and finicky, and don't keep one mind hardly a week at a time. So it's doubtful if you stay. Then it is a good deal like being a servant, and none of the Mulfords ever lived out, as far as I've heard." Helen colored. She had not thought of that aspect. Neither had she considered that her dream might come to an untimely end. "And it seems a shame to waste the whole summer when there's so much to do." "But if they had wanted me in the shop you would have let me go, wouldn't you?" Helen said in a tone that she tried hard to keep from being pert. "That would have been different. A steady job for years, and getting higher wages all the time. I've told Jenny to engage the chance." Years in a shop, doing one thing over and over! She recalled a sentence she had heard Mr. Warfield quote several times from an English writer, "But that one man should die ignorant who had a capacity for knowledge, this I call tragedy!" She was not very clear in her own mind as to what tragedy really was, but if one had a capacity for wider knowledge, would it not be tragedy to spend years doing what one loathed? She hated the smells of the shoe shop, the common air that seemed to envelop everyone, the loud voices and boisterous laughs. And she wouldn't mind helping someone for her board, and going to the High School. Why, she did a great deal of work here, but it seemed nothing to Aunt Jane.