"No. They shall serve me without knowing it. I will be beholden to them for my bread and butter and shelter--for a time. Let them hate and despise me. What I have to do I will do. Then I'll 'pay the shot,' as Big Hen would say, and walk out and leave them." It was a bold determination, but not one that is to be praised. Yet, Helen had provocation for the course she proposed to pursue. She finally unlocked her trunk and hung up the common dresses and other garments she had brought with her. She had intended to ask her cousins to take her shopping right away, and she, like any other girl of her age, longed for new frocks and pretty hats. But there was a lot of force in Helen's character. She would go without anything pretty unless her cousins offered to buy it themselves. She would bide her time. One thing she hid far back in her closet under the other things--her riding habit. She knew it would give the lie to her supposed poverty. She had sent to Chicago for that, and it had cost a hundred dollars. "But I don't suppose there'd be a chance to ride in this big town," she thought, with a sigh. "Unless it is hobby-horses in the park. Well! I can get on for a time without the Rose pony, or any other critter on four legs, to love me." But she was hungry for the companionship of the animals whom she had seen daily on the ranch. "Why, even the yip of a coyote would be sweet," she mused, putting her head out of the window and scanning nothing but chimneys and tin roofs, with bare little yards far below. Finally she heard a Japanese gong's mellow note, and presumed it must announce luncheon. It was already two o'clock. People who breakfasted at nine or ten, of course did not need a midday meal. "I expect they don't have supper till bedtime," thought Helen. First she hid her wallet in the bottom of her trunk, locked the trunk and set it up on end in the closet. Then she locked the closet door and took out the key, hiding the latter under the edge of the carpet. "I'm getting as bad as the rest of 'em," she muttered. "I won't trust anybody, either. Now for meeting my dear cousins at lunch." She had slipped into one of the simple house dresses she had worn at the ranch. She had noticed that forenoon that both Belle and Hortense Starkweather were dressed in the most modish of gowns--as elaborate as those of fashionable ladies. With no mother to say them nay, these young girls aped every new fashion as they pleased. Helen started downstairs at first with her usual light step. Then she bethought herself, stumbled on a stair, slipped part of the way, and continued to the very bottom of the last flight with a noise and clatter which must have announced her coming long in advance of her actual presence. "I don't want to play eavesdropper again," she told herself, grimly. "I always understood that listeners hear no good of themselves, and now I know it to be a fact."