In the Land of the Long White Cloud

with a good-looking viscount or baronet through his manor house’s park. But there was no way George could have noticed that.
    George shrugged. “Well, miss, you’re always reading marriage adverts,” he said cheekily, indicating the church leaflet with a conciliatory grin. Helen berated herself for leaving it lying open next to her lectern. Naturally, a bored George would steal a glance at it while she was helping William put his thoughts in order.
    “And you’re very pretty, miss,” George tried sweet-talking her. “Why shouldn’t you marry a baronet?”
    Helen rolled her eyes. She knew that she should chide George, but she couldn’t help but be amused. If the boy kept it up, he’d go far; at least with the ladies, and in the business world people would appreciate his talent for flattery too. But would it help him at Cambridge? Besides, Helen believed herself immune to such silly compliments. She knew she wasn’t beautiful in the classical sense. Though her features were symmetrical, they were rather ordinary; her mouth was a bit too thin, her nose too pointy, and her calm, gray eyes gazed too critically on the world to arouse the interest of a rich, young bon vivant. Helen’s most attractive feature was her long, straight, silky brown hair, tinged with red, which fell to her waist. Perhaps she could have turned heads with it if she had let it blow freely in the breeze, as some girls did at the picnics and garden parties that Helen attended with the Greenwoods. The more brazen among the young ladies might declare all of a sudden while strolling with their admirers that it was too hot and remove their hats. Or they pretended that the wind blewtheir little hats away while a young man was rowing them across the pond in Hyde Park. Then they would shake down their hair, freeing it as though by accident from the constraints of bands and barrettes and letting the men marvel at their luxurious tresses.
    Helen could never bring herself to do that. As the daughter of a pastor, she had been raised strictly and worn her hair braided and pinned up since she was a little girl. She had had to grow up early, as her mother had died when she was twelve and her father had placed Helen in charge of keeping house and raising her three younger siblings. Reverend Davenport had not concerned himself with problems in the kitchen and the nursery. Instead, he had immersed himself in his parish work and the translation and interpretation of religious texts. He had paid attention to Helen only when she kept him company while he worked—only by fleeing into her father’s attic study could she escape the chaotic tumult of the family’s apartment. Which was why Helen could already read the Bible in Greek when her brothers were still sloughing their way through their first reading primers. In her beautiful, needle-sharp handwriting, she transcribed her father’s sermons and copied his article submissions for the diocese of Liverpool’s newsletter. There was little time for diversions. While Susan, Helen’s younger sister, took advantage of charity bazaars and church picnics to get to know the parish’s young notables, Helen helped with the selling of goods, baked cakes, and poured tea. Unsurprisingly, Susan married a well-known doctor’s son as soon as she turned seventeen, while Helen had been forced to take a position as a household tutor after her father died. Furthermore, with her earnings she supported her two brothers’ law and medical studies. Their inheritance from their father had not been sufficient to finance a proper education for the boys—nor were they making much effort to complete their studies in a timely manner. With a flash of anger, Helen recalled how her brother had barely scraped through yet another exam just last week.
    “Baronets normally marry baronesses,” she finally replied curtly to George’s question. “And as for this…” she pointed to the church leaflet, “I was reading the article, not the advertisement.”
    George said nothing but grinned knowingly. The article was about applying heat to arthritis, surely of interest to the older members of the parish, but Miss Davenport clearly did not suffer from joint pain.
    Nevertheless, his teacher looked at the clock and decided to end the afternoon lesson after all. While George needed only five minutes to comb his hair and change for dinner, and Helen hardly more than that, it always took quite a bit longer to get William out of his