“Oh, dear, dear!” cried Helen, half hysterically; “I can’t stand that, Aunt Polly.  I’ll do anything, only let me alone!  My head is aching to split, and I don’t know where I am.”

“And you will never find another chance like it, Helen,” went on the other, with sledge-hammer remorselessness.  “For if you behave in this perfectly insane way and lose this opportunity, I shall simply give you up in despair at your perversity.”

“But I haven’t said I was going to lose it,” the girl exclaimed.  “He won’t be any the less in love with me if I make him wait, Aunt Polly!—­”

“Mr. Harrison was going back to Cincinnati in a day or two,” put in Mrs. Roberts, swiftly.

“He will stay if I wish him to,” was the girl’s reply.  “There is no need for so much worry; one would think I was getting old.”

“Old!” laughed the other.  “You are so beautiful this morning, Helen, that I could fall in love with you myself.”  She turned the girl towards her, seeing that her toilet was finished.”  I haven’t a thought in the world, dear, but to keep you so beautiful,” she said; “I hate to see you tormenting yourself and making yourself so pale; why will you not take my advice and fling all these worries aside and let yourself be happy?  That is all I want you to do, and it is so easy!  Why is it that you do not want to be happy?  I like to see you smile, Helen!” And Helen, who was tired of struggling, made a wry attempt to oblige her, and then broke into a laugh at herself.  Meanwhile the other picked a rose from a great bunch of them that lay upon the bureau, and pinned it upon her dress.

“There, child,” she, said, “he can never resist you now, I know!”

Helen kissed her excitedly upon the cheek, and darted quickly out of the door, singing, in a brave attempt to bring back her old, merry self:—­

“The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la-la, Have nothing to do with the case.”

A moment later, however, she recollected Mr. Howard and his misfortune, and her heart sank; she ran quickly down the steps to get the thought of him from her mind.

It was easy enough to forget him and all other troubles as well when she was once outside upon the piazza; for there were plenty of happy people, and everyone crowded about her to bid her good-by.  There too was Mr. Harrison standing upon the steps waiting for her, and there was his driving-cart with two magnificent black horses, alert and eager for the sport.  Helen was not much of a judge of horses, having never had one of her own to drive, but she had the eye of a person of aristocratic tastes for what was in good form, and she saw that Mr. Harrison’s turnout was all of that, with another attraction for her, that it was daring; for the horses were lithe, restless creatures, thoroughbreds, both of them; and it looked as if they had not been out of the stable in a week.  They were giving the groom who held them all that he could do.