Читать книгу Helen Ford - Alger Horatio Jr., Thomas Chandler Haliburton - Страница 2

The light of a June morning lent a warm and cheerful look to the broad streets, and under its influence even the dingy lanes and alleys looked a little less gloomy than usual. The spell which had lain upon the city during the night season was broken. Here and there might be seen a vegetable cart or a milk wagon rumbling through the streets, of late so silent and deserted. Sleepy clerks unlocked the shops and warehouses, and swept them in readiness for the business of the day. Hackmen betook themselves to the steamboat landings in the hope of obtaining a fare before breakfast. Creeping out from beneath old wagons and stray corners where they had been able to procure shelter and lodging, came the newsboys, those useful adjuncts to our modern civilization. Little time wasted they on the duties of the toilet, but shook themselves wide awake, and with the keen instinct of trade, hurried to the newspaper offices to secure their pile of merchandise.

Morning found no sluggards at Mrs. Morton’s boarding-house. With the first flush of dawn she was astir, ordering about her servants, and superintending the preparations for breakfast. This must be ready at an early hour, since her boarders were, for the most part, engaged in some daily avocation which required their early attention.

With the early sun Helen rose. Her father was still sleeping. From the nail on which it hung she took down her bonnet, and, with a tin pail depending from her arm, she left the room with softened tread, lest she might awaken her father. Betaking herself to a baker’s near by, she bought a couple of loaves of bread, and stopping a milkman, had her pail filled with milk. A half-pound of butter purchased at a grocery completed her simple marketing, and she hastened home.

When she entered the boarding-house, her cheeks were flushed with exercise, her eyes sparkled with a pleasant light, and her rare beauty, despite her plain attire, appeared to unusual advantage. She returned just in time to meet the boarders descending to breakfast. Her childish beauty did not fail to attract attention. Conscious of being observed, Helen blushed a deeper crimson, which added to the charm of her beauty.

“Hey! What have we here?” exclaimed Alphonso Eustace, the dashing young clerk, fixing a glance of undisguised admiration upon her embarrassed face. “A very Peri, by Jove! Deign to inform me, fair maid, by what name thou art known.”

So saying, he purposely placed himself directly in her path.

“Will you let me pass, sir?” said Helen, uneasily. “My father is waiting for me.”

“Your father! Then you live here. I am glad of that. We shall be well acquainted before long, I hope. Won’t you tell me your name?”

“My name is Helen Ford,” said the child, rather reluctantly, for the clerk did not impress her favorably.

“And mine is Alphonso Eustace. Let us shake hands to our better acquaintance.”

“I have both hands full,” returned Helen, who did not much relish the freedom of her new acquaintance.

“Then I will await another opportunity. But you don’t seem gracious, my dear. You must be very tired, carrying that heavy pail. Allow me to carry it for you.”

“I am not at all tired, and I would much rather carry it myself.”

Helen managed to slip by, much to her relief, and somewhat to the discomfiture of the young clerk, who could not conceal from himself that his overtures had met with a decided rebuff.

“Never mind,” thought he; “we shall be better acquainted by and by.”

“By the way, Mrs. Morton,” he inquired, “tell me something about the little fairy I met on the stairs. I tried to scrape acquaintance with her, but she gave me very short answers.”

“I suppose it was Helen Ford,” returned the landlady. “She is a little fairy, as you say. Is your coffee right, M’lle Fanchette?”

“Quite right,” replied that lady, sipping it. “What room do the little girl and her father occupy?”

“The fourth story back.”

“Ah, indeed!” said M’lle Fanchette, elevating her eyebrows. It was easy to see that lodging in the fourth story back was sufficient in her eyes to stamp Helen as one whose acquaintance it was quite beneath her dignity to cultivate.

“She has a very sweet, attractive face,” said Martha Grey.

“Beautiful! angelic!” exclaimed Mr. Eustace, with enthusiasm.

“I don’t see anything very beautiful or angelic about her,” remarked M’lle Fanchette, who would much prefer to have had her dashing neighbor’s admiration bestowed upon herself.

“You should have seen the beautiful flush upon her cheeks.”

“So I did.”

“And did you not admire it?”

“I happened to look into the kitchen yesterday,” returned M’lle Fanchette, passing her plate for some toast, “and I saw Bridget who had been over the hot stove all day, with just such a pair of red cheeks. Did I admire her?”

There was a momentary silence. All who had seen Helen, felt the injustice of the comparison.

“There is no accounting for tastes,” interrupted the landlady, somewhat indignantly. “If you had seen the tenderness with which she waits upon her father, who, poor man, seems quite incapable of taking care of himself, you would find that she has a heart as beautiful as her face. Her beauty is not her only attraction.”

“What does her father do?”

“That is more than I can tell. Helen says that he is an inventor, and that he has made some discovery which is going to make them rich.”

“After all,” thought M’lle Fanchette, “it may be well to notice her. But they are poor now?” she said aloud.

“Yes. They seem to have little baggage, and dress quite plainly. They cannot have much property.”

Meanwhile, Helen, quite unconscious that she had been a subject of discussion among the boarders, drew out the table into the middle of the room, and spread over it a neat white cloth. She then placed upon it two bowls of different sizes into which she poured the milk. Several slices were cut from one of the loaves and laid on a plate. Near by stood the butter. These simple preparations being concluded, she called upon her father to partake.

“You are a good girl, Helen,” said he, rousing for the moment from his fit of abstraction. “You are a good girl, and I don’t know how I should get along without you.”

“And I am sure I could not get along without you, papa,” was her reply, accompanied with a glance of affection.

“Have you not always cared for me, Helen, and given up the society of those of your own age in order to minister to my comfort? But it shall not always be so. Some day I shall be rich–”

“When you have completed your invention, papa.”

“Yes, when that is completed,” said her father, earnestly. “Then we shall be rich and honored, and my Helen shall be dressed in silks, and ride in a carriage of her own.”

“You are quite sure you shall succeed, papa?”

“I am sure of it,” he answered, in a tone of quiet conviction. “I only fear that some one will be beforehand with me, and snatch away the honor for which I am toiling. To me it seems passing strange that mankind should have been content for so many years to grope about upon the earth and never striven to rise into the nobler element of the air, while the sea, which presents difficulties as great, is traversed in every part. For me,” he continued, assuming a loftier mien, and pacing the small room proudly,—“for me it remains to open a new highway to the world. What compared with this will be the proudest triumphs of modern science? How like a snail shall we regard the locomotive, which now seems a miracle of swiftness! Borne aloft by the appliances which I shall furnish, man will emulate the proud flight of the eagle. He will skim over land and sea, and in his airy flight look down upon the monuments of human skill and industry flitting before him, like the shifting scenes of a panorama.”

“It will be a glorious destiny,” said the child, “and how proud I shall feel of you who have done all this!”

“While we are speaking, time passes,” said the father. “I should be at work even now. I must bring hither my implements without delay. Every moment wasted before I attain my object, is not my loss, only, but the world’s.”

“Wait till I have cleared away the table, papa, and I will go with you.”

This was speedily done, and the two descended the stairs, and went forth into the busy streets hand in hand. Helen diligently cared for the safety of her father, who, plunged into his usual abstraction, would more than once have been run over by some passing vehicle but for her guardianship.