The Girl from Sunset Ranch by AMY BELL MARLOWE (best ereader for manga .TXT) 📖

on for the Stones' dinner party.

"They will just about fit you. I'm a mite taller, but that won't matter," said the languid Hortense. "And really, Helen, I am just as sorry as I can be for the mean way you have been treated while you have been here. You have been so good-natured, too, in helping a chap. Hope you won't hold it against me--and do wear the dresses, dear."

"I will put on this one for the afternoon," said Helen, smiling. "But I do not need the evening dress. I never wore one quite--quite like that, you see," as she noted the straps over the shoulders and the low corsage. "But I thank you just the same."

Later Belle said to her airily: "Dear Cousin Helen! I have spoken to Gustaf about taking you to the Stones' in the limousine to-night. And he will call for you at any hour you say."

"I cannot avail myself of that privilege, Belle," responded Helen, quietly. "Jess will send for me at half-past six. She has already arranged to do so. Thank you."

There was so much going on above stairs that day that Helen was able to escape most of the oppressive attentions of her cousins. Great baskets of flowers were sent in by some of the young people who remembered and loved Mary Boyle, and Helen helped to arrange them in the little old lady's rooms.

Tea things for a score of people came in, too. And cookies and cakes from the caterer's. At three o'clock, or a little after, the callers began to arrive. Belle, and Hortense, and Flossie received them in the reception hall, had them remove their cloaks below stairs, and otherwise tried to make it appear that the function was really of their own planning.

But nobody invited either of the Starkweather girls upstairs to Mary Boyle's rooms. Perhaps it was an oversight. But it certainly did look as though they had been forgotten.

But the party on the attic floor was certainly a success. How pretty the little old lady looked, sitting in state with all the young and blooming faces about her! Here were growing up into womanhood and manhood (for some of the boys had not been ashamed to come) the children whom she had tended and played with and sung to.

And she sung to them again--verses of forgotten songs, lullabies she had crooned over some of their cradles when they were ill, little broken chants that had sent many of them, many times, to sleep.

Altogether it was a most enjoyable afternoon, and Nurse Boyle was promised that it should not be the last tea-party she would have. "If you are 'way up here in the top of the house, you shall no more be forgotten," they told her.

Helen was the object next in interest to Nurse Boyle. May Van Ramsden had told about the Starkweathers' little "Cinderella Cousin"; and although none of these girls and boys who had gathered knew the truth about Helen's wealth and her position in life, they all treated her cordially.

When they trooped away and left the little old lady to lie down to recuperate after the excitement, Helen went to her own room, and remained closely shut up for the rest of the day.

At half-past six she came downstairs, bag in hand. She descended the servants' staircase, told Mr. Lawdor that her trunk, packed and locked, was ready for the expressman when he came, and so stole out of the area door. She escaped any interview with her uncle, or with the girls. She could not bid them good-by, yet she was determined not to go back to Sunset Ranch on the morrow, nor would she remain another night under her uncle's roof.

CHAPTER XXVIII (A STATEMENT OF FACT)

 

Dud Stone had that very day seen the fixtures put into the little millinery store downtown, and it was ready for Sadie Goronsky to take charge; there being a fund of two hundred dollars to Sadie's credit at a nearby bank, with which she could buy stock and pay her running expenses for the first few weeks.

Yet Sadie didn't know a thing about it.

This last was the reason Helen went downtown early in the morning following the little dinner party at the Stones'. At that party Helen had met the uncle, aunt, and cousins of Dud and Jess Stone, with whom the orphaned brother and sister lived, and she had found them a most charming family.

Jess had invited Helen to bring her trunk and remain with her as long as she contemplated staying in New York, and this Helen was determined to do. Even if the Starkweathers would not let the expressman have her trunk, she was prepared to blossom out now in a butterfly outfit, and take the place in society that was rightfully hers.

But Helen hadn't time to go shopping as yet. She was too eager to tell Sadie of her good fortune. Sadie was to be found--cold as the day was--pacing the walk before Finkelstein's shop, on the sharp lookout for a customer. But there were a few flakes of snow in the air, the wind from the river was very raw, and it did seem to Helen as though the Russian girl was endangering her health.

"But what can poor folks do?" demanded Sadie, hoarsely, for she already had a heavy cold. "There is nothing for me to do inside the store. If I catch a customer I make somet'ings yet. Well, we must all work!"

"Some other kind of work would be easier," suggested Helen.

"But not so much money, maybe."

"If you only had your millinery store."

"Don't make me laugh! Me lip's cracked," grumbled Sadie. "Have a heart, Helen! I ain't never goin' to git a store like I showed you."

Sadie was evidently short of hope on this cold day. Helen seized her arm. "Let's go up and look at that store again," she urged.

"Have a heart, I tell ye!" exclaimed Sadie Goronsky. "Whaddeyer wanter rub it in for?"

"Anyway, if we run it will help warm you."

"All ri'. Come on," said Sadie, with deep disgust, but she started on a heavy trot towards the block on which her heart had been set. And when they rounded the corner and came before the little shop window, Sadie stopped with a gasp of amazement.

Freshly varnished cases, and counter, and drawers, and all were in the store just as she had dreamed of them. There were mirrors, too, and in the window little forms on which to set up the trimmed hats and one big, pink-cheeked, dolly-looking wax bust, with a great mass of tow-colored hair piled high in the very latest mode, on which was to be set the very finest hat to be evolved in that particular East Side shop.

"Wha--wha--what----"

"Let's go in and look at it," said Helen, eagerly, seizing her friend's arm again.

"No, no, no!" gasped Sadie. "We can't. It ain't open. Oh, oh, oh! Somebody's got my shop!"

Helen produced the key and opened the door. She fairly pushed the amazed Russian girl inside, and then closed the door. It was nice and warm. There were chairs. There was a half-length partition at the rear to separate the workroom from the showroom. And behind that partition were low sewing chairs to work in, and a long work-table.

Helen led the dazed Sadie into this rear room and sat her down in one of the chairs. Then she took one facing her and said:

"Now, you sit right there and make up in your mind the very prettiest hat for me that you can possibly invent. The first hat you trim in this store must be for me."

"Helen! Helen!" cried Sadie, almost wildly. "You're crazy yet--or is it me? I don't know what you mean----"

"Yes, you do, dear," replied Helen, putting her arms about the other girl's neck. "You were kind to me when I was lost in this city. You were kind to me just for nothing--when I appeared poor and forlorn and--and a greenie! Now, I am sorry that it seemed best for me to let your mistake stand. I did not tell my uncle and cousins either, that I was not as poor and helpless as I appeared."

"And you're rich?" shrieked Sadie. "You're doing this yourself? This is your store?"

"No, it is your store," returned Helen, firmly. "Of course, by and by, when you are established and are making lots of money, if you can ever afford to pay me back, you may do so. The money is yours without interest until that time."

"I got to cry, Helen! I got to cry!" sobbed Sadie Goronsky. "If an angel right down out of heaven had done it like you done it, I'd worship him on my knees. And you're a rich girl--not a poor one?"

Helen then told her all about herself, and all about her adventures since coming alone to New York. But after that Sadie wanted to keep telling her how thankful she was for the store, and that Helen must come home and see mommer, and that mommer must be brought to see the shop, too. So Helen ran away. She could not bear any more gratitude from Sadie. Her heart was too full.

She went over to poor Lurcher's lodgings and climbed the dark stairs to his rooms. She had something to tell him, as well.

The purblind old man knew her step, although she had been there but a few times.

"Come in, Miss. Yours are angel's visits, although they are more frequent than angel's visits are supposed to be," he cried.

"I do hope you are keeping off the street this weather, Mr. Lurcher," she said. "If you can mend shoes I have heard of a place where they will send work to you, and call for it, and you can afford to have a warmer and lighter room than this one."

"Ah, my dear Miss! that is good of you--that is good of you," mumbled the old man. "And why you should take such an interest in me----?"

"I feel sure that you would be interested in me, if I were poor and unhappy and you were rich and able to get about. Isn't that so?" she said, laughing.

"Aye. Truly. And you are rich, my dear Miss?"

"Very rich, indeed. Father was one of the big cattle kings of Montana, and Prince Morrell's Sunset Ranch, they tell me, is one of the great properties of the West."

The old man turned to look at her with some eagerness. "That name?" he whispered. "Who did you say?"

"Why--my father, Prince Morrell."

"Your father? Prince Morrell your father?" gasped the old man, and sat down suddenly, shaking in every limb.

The girl instantly became excited, too. She stepped quickly to him and laid her hand upon his shoulder.

"Did you ever know my father?" she asked him.

"I--I once knew a Mr. Prince Morrell."

"Was it here in New York you knew him?"

"Yes. It was years ago. He--he was a good man. I--I had not heard of him for years. I was away from the city myself for ten years--in New Orleans. I went there suddenly to take the position of head bookkeeper in a shipping firm. Then the firm failed, my health was broken by the climate, and I returned here."

Helen was staring at him in wonder and almost in