"Oh, come, come, my dear child--"

"Will you promise?"

"But just think how--"

"I _am_ thinking!" choked Helen. "But _you_ don't seem to be. _Can't_ you see how I want to stay here? I've got a chance, maybe, to be like you and your sister, and all the rest of Burke's swell--I mean, like Burke's friends," she corrected, with a hot blush. "And, anyhow, Betty's got a chance. We've made a start. We've begun. And here you want to go and tip it all over by telling Burke. And there can't anything good happen, if Burke knows. Besides, didn't he say himself that we _needed_ to have a vacation from each other? Now, won't you promise, please?"

With a despairing cry the doctor threw up his hands.

"Oh, good Heavens, yes! Of course I'll promise," he groaned. "I suspect you could make me promise to shave my head and dance the tango barefooted down Washington Street, if you set out to. Oh, yes, I'll promise. But I can tell you right now that I shall wake up in the dead of night and pinch myself to make sure I _have_ promised," he finished with wrathful emphasis.

Helen laughed light-heartedly. She even tossed the doctor a playful glance as she turned to go.

"All right! I don't care a mite how much you pinch yourself," she declared. "You've promised--and that's all I care for!" And she left the room with buoyant step.

"You see," observed Mrs. Thayer significantly, as the door closed behind her.

"Yes, I see--so far," nodded Dr. Frank Gleason with a sigh. "But I do wish I could see--what the end is going to be."

"It isn't given to us to see ends," responded Mrs. Thayer sententiously.

"We can only attend to the beginnings and make them right."

"Humph!" grunted her brother, with some asperity. "I'm not saying I like the beginning, in this case. Honestly, to speak plainly, my dear Edith, I consider this thing one big fool business, from beginning to end."

There was a moment's pause; then very quietly Mrs. Thayer asked:--

"Can you suggest, dear, all things considered, anything else for us to do than what we _are_ doing?"

"No--confound it! And that's what's the matter," groaned Frank Gleason.

"But that isn't saying that I _like_ to play the fool."

"Well, I shouldn't worry. I'm not worrying," replied his sister, with an enigmatic smile.

"Maybe not. But I'm glad I'm going on that Arctic trip, and that it's just next month. I'd as soon not see much of the Denbys just now. Feel too much like the evil-eyed, double-dyed villain in a dime movie,"

growled the doctor, getting to his feet, and striding from the room.

CHAPTER XIV

AN UNDERSTUDY

Soon after the doctor started on his trip to the North the Thayers closed their Beacon Street home and went to their North Sh.o.r.e cottage.

The move was made a little earlier than usual this year, a fact which pleased the children not a little and delighted Helen Denby especially.

"You see, I'm always so afraid in Boston," she explained to Mrs. Thayer, as the train pulled out of the North Station.

"Afraid?"

"That somewhere--on the street, or somewhere--I'll meet some one from Dalton, or somebody that knew--my husband."

Mrs. Thayer frowned slightly.

"Yes, I know. And there was danger, of course! But--Helen, that brings up exactly the subject that I'd been intending to speak to you about.

Thus far--and advisedly, I know--we have kept you carefully in the background, my dear. But this isn't going to do forever, you know."

"Why not? I--I like it."

Mrs. Thayer smiled, but she frowned again thoughtfully.

"I know, dear; but if you are to learn this--this--" Mrs. Thayer stumbled and paused as she always stumbled and paused when she tried to reduce to words her present extraordinary mission. "You will have to--to learn to meet people and mingle with them easily and naturally."

The earnest look of the eager student came at once to Helen Denby's face.

"You mean, I'll have to meet and mingle with swell people if I, too, am-- Oh, that horrid word again! Mrs. Thayer, _why_ can't I learn to stop using it? But you mean-- I know what you mean. You mean I'll have to meet and mingle with--with ladies and gentlemen if I'm to be one myself. Isn't that it?"

"Y-yes, of course; only--the very words 'lady' and 'gentleman' have been so abused that we--we--Oh, Helen, Helen, you do put things so baldly, and it sounds so--so-- Don't you see, dear? It's all just as I've told you lots of times. The minute you begin to talk about it, you lose it.

It's something that comes to you by absorption and intuition."

"But there are things I have to learn, Mrs. Thayer,--real things, like holding your fork, and clothes, and finger nails, and not speaking so loud, and not talking about 'folks' being 'swell' and 'tony,' and--"

"Yes, yes, I know," interrupted Mrs. Thayer, with a touch of desperation. "But, after all, it's all so--so impossible! And--" She stopped abruptly at the look of terrified dismay that always leaped to Helen Denby's eyes in response to such a word. "No, no, I don't mean that. But, really, Helen," she went on hurriedly, "the time has come when you must be seen more. And it will be quite safe at the sh.o.r.e, I am sure. You'll meet no one who ever saw you in Dalton; that is certain."

"Then, of course, if you say I'll have to--I'll have to. That's all."

"I do say it."

"My, but I dread it!" Helen drew in her breath and bit her lip.

"All the more reason why you should do it then," smiled Mrs. Thayer briskly. "You're to learn _not_ to dread it. See? And it'll be easier than you think. There are some very pleasant people coming down. The Gillespies, Mrs. Reynolds and her little Gladys,--about Betty's age, by the way,--and next month there'll be the Drew girls and Mr. Donald Estey and his brother John. Later there will be others--the Chandlers, and Mr.

Eric Shaw. And I'm going to begin immediately to have them see you, and have you see them."

"They'll know me as 'Mrs. Darling'?"

"Of course--a friend of mine."

"But I want to--to help in some way."

"You do help. You help with the children--your companionship."

"But that's the way I've learned--so many things, Mrs. Thayer."

"Of course. And that's the way you'll learn--many other things. But there are others--still others--that you can learn in no way as well as by a.s.sociation with the sort of well-bred men and women you will meet this summer. I don't mean that you are _always_ to be with them, my dear; but I do mean that you must be with them enough so that it is a matter of supreme indifference to you whether you are with them or not.

Do you understand? You must learn to be at ease with--anybody. See?"

Helen sighed and nodded her head slowly.