“You poor thing!” said Helen.  “You are starving to death.  What shall I get for you?  I have influence in the kitchens.  Does marmalade, to spread your muffins, present any attractions? or shall I beg for rusks? or what do you say to doughnuts? there are doughnuts in this closet; crullers and milk are nice for breakfast.”

And in a few minutes Helen had rifled a shelf of sufficient temptations to overcome Mrs. Laudersdale’s abstinence.

“After all,” said she then, “you didn’t answer my question.”

“What question?”

“If it weren’t odd to meet Mr. Raleigh here.”

“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Laudersdale.

“Dear!  Mary Purcell takes as much interest.  She said he was impertinent, made her talk too much, and made fun of her.”

“Very likely.”

“You are as aggravating as he!  If you had anything to do except to look divinely, we’d quarrel.  I thought I had a nice bit of entertaining news for you.”

“Is that your trouble?  I should be sorry to oppress you with it longer.  Pray, tell it.”

“Will it entertain you?”

“It won’t bore you.”

“I don’t know that I will tell it on such terms.  However, I—­must talk.  Well, then.  I have not been dreaming by daylight, but up and improving my opportunities.  Partly from himself, and partly from Kate, and partly from the matron here, I have made the following discoveries.  Mr. Roger Raleigh has left some very gay cities, and crossed some parallels of latitude, to exile himself in this wilderness of ice and snow,—­that’s what you and I vote it, whether the trees are green and the sun shines, or not; and I don’t see what bewitched mother to adopt such a suicidal plan as coming here to be buried alive.  He, that is, Mr. Raleigh, to join my ends, has lived here for five years; and as he came when he was twenty, he is consequently about my age now,—­I shouldn’t wonder if a trifle older than you.  He came here because an immense estate was bequeathed him on the condition that he should occupy this corner of it during one-half of every year from his twenty-first to his thirty-first He has chosen to occupy it during the entire year, running down now and then to have a little music or see a little painting.  Sometimes a parcel of his friends,—­he never was at college, hasn’t any chums, and has educated himself by all manner of out-of-the-way dodges,—­sometimes these friends, odd specimens, old music-masters, rambling artists, seedy tutors, fencers, boxers, hunters, clowns, all light down together, and then the neighborhood rings with this precious covey:  the rest of the year, may-be, he don’t see an individual.  One result of this isolation is, that freaks which would be very strange escapades in other people with him are mere commonplaces.  Sometimes he goes over to the city there, and roams round like a lost soul seeking for its body; sometimes he goes up a hundred miles or two, takes a guide and handles the mountains; and, except in the accidents at such times, he hasn’t seen a woman since he came.”