Helen Ford. Alger Horatio Jr.
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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.
CHAPTER III.
A HALF RECOGNITION
The character of Robert Ford may be divined without much difficulty from the glimpses which have already been given. He was an amiable man, but strikingly deficient in those practical traits which usually mark our countrymen and command success even under the most unpromising circumstances. He was not a man to succeed in business, nor suited for the rough jostling with the world which business men must expect. He ought rather to have been a quiet scholar, and dreamed away long days in his library,—“the world forgetting, by the world forgot.” Such would have been his choice if his circumstances had been easy. Under the pressure of necessity he had turned aside from the ordinary paths of money-making to devote himself to a chimerical plan by which he hoped to attain wealth and distinction.
No man of a well balanced mind would have labored with such sanguine expectations of success on a project so uncertain as the invention of a flying machine. But Mr. Ford had not a well balanced mind. He was much given to theorizing, and, like many amiable but obstinate persons, it was as difficult to dislodge from his mind a purpose which had once gained entrance there as to convert him by some miraculous transformation into a sharp man of the world. Had he lived in the middle ages it is very probable that his tastes and the habits of his mind would have led him to devote himself to alchemy, or some other recondite science, which would have consumed his time and money without any adequate return.
We will now suppose three months to have elapsed since the events recorded in our first chapter; three months in which the flowers of June had been exchanged for the fruits of September, and the mellow beauty of autumn had succeeded the glory of early summer.
During this time Helen has become an established favorite with all the inmates except M’lle Fanchette, who yet, finding the tide of general opinion against her, is content with privately stigmatizing the child as an “upstart,” and a “forward hussy,” though in truth it would be difficult to imagine anything more modest or retiring than her conduct. She and her father still occupy the little room in the fourth story back. Nothing has come of Mr. Ford’s invention yet, though he has filled the room with strange, out-of-the-way appliances, wheels, and bits of machinery, on which he labors day after day in the construction of his proposed flying machine. His repeated failures have little effect in damping his spirits. He has the true spirit of a discoverer, and is as sanguine as ever of ultimate success. He has learned the difficult lesson of patience.
“With such an end in view,” he sometimes exclaims with enthusiasm, half to himself, half to Helen, “what matter a few months or years! Rome was not built in a day, nor is it to be expected that a discovery which is to affect the whole world in its consequences, should be the result of a few hours’ or days’ labor.”
Helen, whose veneration for her father is unbounded, listens with the fullest confidence, to his repeated assurances. It pains her to find that others are more skeptical. Even Mother Morton who, though some find her rough, is invariably kind to Helen, looks upon the father as a visionary, since she has discovered the nature of his labors. She one day intimated this to Helen. It was some time before the latter could understand that a doubt was entertained as to her father’s success, and when the conviction came slowly, it brought such an expression of pain to her face, that the landlady resolved never in future to venture upon an allusion which should grieve the child, whom she could not but love the better for her filial trust and confidence.
Meanwhile the rent of the apartment which they occupy, and the cost of living, simple as is their fare, have sensibly diminished their scanty supply of money. This Helen, who is the steward and treasurer, cannot help seeing, and she succeeds in obtaining work from the slop-shops. Her father does not at first discover this. One day, however, he said abruptly, as if the idea had for the first time occurred to him, “Helen, you always seem to be sewing, lately.”
The child cast down her eyes in some embarrassment.
“You cannot be sewing so much for yourself,” continued her father. “Why, what is this?” taking a boy’s vest from her reluctant fingers. “Surely, this is not yours.”
“No, papa,” answered Helen, laughing; “you don’t think I have turned Bloomer, do you?”
“Then what does it mean?” questioned her father, in real perplexity.
“Only this, papa, that being quite tired of sitting idle, and having done all my own sewing, I thought I might as well fill up the time, and earn some money at the same time by working for other people. Is that satisfactory?” she concluded, playfully.
“Surely this was not necessary,” said Mr. Ford, with pain. “Are we then so poor?”
“Do not be troubled, papa,” said Helen, cheerfully. “We could get along very well without it; but I wanted something to do, and it gives me some pocket-money for myself. You must know that I am getting extravagant.”
“Is that all?” said her father, in a tone of relief, the shadow passing from his face. “I am glad of it. I could not bear to think of my little Helen being compelled to work. Some day,” passing his hands fondly over her luxuriant curls; “some day she shall have plenty of money.”
This thought incited him to fresh activity, and with new zeal he turned to the odd jumble of machinery in the corner.
The evening meal was studiously simple and frugal, though Helen could not resist the temptation of now and then purchasing some little delicacy for her father. He was so abstracted that he gave little heed to what was set before him, and never noticed