"Mrs. Dayton said you were fond of reading aloud," began Mrs. Van Dorn. "Your voice is nice and smooth." "Your voice is like your father's, Helen! I had not remarked it before. Only it is a girl's voice," Mrs. Dayton commented. "I am glad it suggests his," exclaimed Helen with a pleasurable thrill. "Where is your father?" asked Mrs. Van Dorn. "He is dead," said Mrs. Dayton. "Both father and mother are dead." "I was an orphan, too," continued Mrs. Van Dorn. "And I had no near relatives. It is a sorrowful lot." "Helen has had good friends, relatives." "That's a comfort. I heard, we all did, that you were one of the best speakers at the closing of school. It was in the paper." "Oh, was it?" Helen's eyes glowed with gratification. "Yes. So Mrs. Dayton suggested you might be as good as some grown-up body. That was Robert Browning's poem you recited." "It is a splendid poem," cried Helen enthusiastically. "You can see it all; the squadron--what was left of it after the battle--and the 'brief and bitter debate,' and the order to blow up the vessels on the beach. And then Hervé Riel, just a sailor, stepping out and making his daring proposal, and going 'safe through shoal and rock!' Oh, how the captain must have stood breathless! And the English coming too late! I'm glad someone put it in stirring verse." Helen paused with a scarlet face. She never talked this way to anyone except Mr. Warfield. "Yes," said Mrs. Van Dorn, "I have seen the man who wrote it, talked with him and his lovely wife, who wrote verses quite as beautiful. I think you like stirring poems," in a half inquiry. "Yes, I do," she replied tremulously, and in her girlish enthusiasm she thought she could have fallen down at the feet of the man who wrote Hervé Riel. She never had thought of his being an actual living man. "And do you know Macaulay's 'Horatius'?" "Oh, I don't know very much--only the poems in the reading books, and a few that Mr. Warfield had. I know most of Longfellow." "The Center is rather behind the towns around, although it is the oldest part; settled more than a hundred years ago. But it is largely farms. The railroad passed it by some fifteen years ago, and the stations have improved rapidly. Why, we have quite a library here, and the High School for more than a half the county," explained Mrs. Dayton. "It's not as pretty as this Hope. And the range of hills to the northeast--I suppose you call them mountains--and the river, add so much to it." [Illustration: Helen put her head down suddenly, and pressed her lips on the jewelled hand.--_Page 55._] "And we have only a little creek that empties into Piqua River, and a pond in a low place, that we skate on in the winter," said Helen rather mirthfully. "I can't help wondering what the ocean is like, and the great lakes, and Niagara Falls, and the Mississippi River with all its mouths emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. And the Amazon, and the Andes."