Hope Benham Part 29

Had she heard aright? Yes, she had heard aright, for presently there was Mrs. Sibley saying in answer to some questioner,--

"It's her father, yes; he's the great inventor, you know. He came on unexpectedly, and is to take Hope back with him to spend the summer in the north of France."

And presently, again, Dorothea saw Miss Marr and the Van Der Bergs and the Sibleys and--yes, the Armitages, looking up and listening with the most admiring interest to this man who was once a locomotive engineer!

What would Dorothea have thought, how would she have felt, if she had heard Mrs. Armitage say to one of her acquaintances a little later,--

"There must be something fine and good, after all, in this Dorothea Dering, to attract to herself and make a friend of such a girl as Mr.

Benham's daughter; and certainly she has shown a very refined taste in her manner of playing. I wonder if she hasn't been improved all round by Miss Benham's influence?"

And what would she have thought if she had heard Miss Marr talking in somewhat the same strain to Mr. Benham,--telling him what a restraining, refining influence his dear little daughter had had over one of the most difficult of all her charges; and what would she have felt if she could have known all Mr. Benham's thoughts on this subject as he listened there with that rather grave smile of his?

But Dorothea heard and knew nothing of all this. She only heard and felt the warmth of appreciation that had followed her violin performance. She only saw that the little world that had turned away from her was now turning toward her, and her spirits began to rise once more. But they did not overflow all reasonable bounds as before. There was a new reserve in her demeanor that certainly did not rob her of her attractiveness, if one could judge from the kindly looks cast upon her by some of the older people, as she helped in the tea-table hospitalities.

Some of the younger people too seemed not to be blind to this new attractiveness. But it remained for Peter Van Loon to express the real effect produced, and he did it fully, as he suddenly turned to Hope from a long observation of Dorothea at her tea-table duties,--turned and said in that odd way of his,--

"I say, now, she'll get to be an awfully nice girl by and by, won't she, if she keeps on--on this track?"

Hope felt a little startled, though she couldn't help being amused at this queer remark of Peter's; but she quite agreed with it, and told him so; and then Peter said in the same emphatic way,--

"I've heard all about it--how you've stuck to her--from Kate--Kate Van der Berg; and I'd--I'd like to say, if you don't mind, that you're a trump, Miss Benham; and the other fellows think so too."

THE END.