The Awakening of Helena Richie

But Mr. Wright's cause was aided by some one stronger than Dr.

Lavendar. Helena's attention was so fixed on the visitor who was

coming to the Stuffed Animal House that Sam's conversation ceased to

amuse her. Those little night-drawers on which she pricked her fingers

interested her a thousand times more than did his dramatic visions.

They interested her so much that sometimes she could almost forget

that Lloyd Pryor's visit was delayed. For though it was the first of

May, he had not come again. "I am so busy," he wrote; "it is

impossible for me to get away. I suppose David will have his sling all

ready for me when I do arrive?"

Helena was sitting on the porch with her clumsy needlework when Sarah

brought her the letter, and after she had read it, she tore it up

angrily. "He was in Mercer a week ago; I know he was, because there is

always that directors' meeting on the last Thursday in April, so he

must have been there. And he wouldn't come!" Down in the orchard the

apple-trees were in blossom, and when the wind stirred, the petals

fell in sudden warm white showers; across the sky, from west to east,

was a path of mackerel clouds. It was a pastel of spring--a dappled

sky, apple blossoms, clover, and the river's sheen of gray-blue. All

about her were the beginnings of summer--the first exquisite green of

young leaves; oaks, still white and crumpled from their furry sheaths;

horse-chestnuts, each leaf drooping from its stem like a hand bending

at the wrist; a thin flicker of elm buds, still distrustful of the

sun. Later, this delicate dance of foliage would thicken so that the

house would be in shadow, and the grass under the locusts on either

side of the front door fade into thin, mossy growth. But just now it

was overflowing with May sunshine. "Oh, he would enjoy it if he

would only come," she thought. Well, anyhow, David would like it; and

she began to fell her seam with painstaking unaccustomed fingers.

The child was to come that day. Half a dozen times she dropped her

work to run to the gate, and shielding her eyes with her hand looked

down the road to Old Chester, but there was no sign of the jogging

hood of the buggy. Had anything happened? Was he sick? Had Dr.

Lavendar changed his mind? Her heart stood still at that. She

debated whether or not she should go down to the Rectory and find out

what the delay meant? Then she called to one of the servants who was

crossing the hall, that she wondered why the little boy who was to

visit her, did not come. Her face cleared at the reminder that the

child went to school in the morning.