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Page 44
But the young person in the rusty overcoat, with the dark-blue serge Eton
jacket under it, which might have come from Wanamaker's two years ago, who
yet wore a leather belt with gleaming pistols under the Eton jacket, was a
new species. Mrs. Brady was taken off her guard; else Elizabeth might have
found entrance to her grandmother's home as difficult as she had found
entrance to the finishing school of Madame Janeway.
"Are you Mrs. Brady?" asked the girl. She was searching the forbidding
face before her for some sign of likeness to her mother, but found none.
The cares of Elizabeth Brady's daughter had outweighed those of the
mother, or else they sat upon a nature more sensitive.
"I am," said Mrs. Brady, imposingly.
"Grandmother, I am the baby you talked about in that letter," she
announced, handing Mrs. Brady the letter she had written nearly eighteen
years before.
The woman took the envelope gingerly in the wet thumb and finger that
still grasped a bit of the gingham apron. She held it at arm's length, and
squinted up her eyes, trying to read it without her glasses. It was some
new kind of beggar, of course. She hated to touch these dirty envelopes,
and this one looked old and worn. She stepped back to the parlor table
where her glasses were lying, and, adjusting them, began to read the
letter.
"For the land sakes! Where'd you find this?" she said, looking up
suspiciously. "It's against the law to open letters that ain't your own.
Didn't me daughter ever get it? I wrote it to her meself. How come you by
it?"
"Mother read it to me long ago when I was little," answered the girl, the
slow hope fading from her lips as she spoke. Was every one, was even her
grandmother, going to be cold and harsh with her? "Our Father, hide me!"
her heart murmured, because it had become a habit; and her listening
thought caught the answer, "Let not your heart be troubled."
"Well, who are you?" said the uncordial grandmother, still puzzled. "You
ain't Bessie, me Bessie. Fer one thing, you're 'bout as young as she was
when she went off 'n' got married, against me 'dvice, to that drunken,
lazy dude." Her brow was lowering, and she proceeded to finish her letter.
"I am Elizabeth," said the girl with a trembling voice, "the baby you
talked about in that letter. But please don't call father that. He wasn't
ever bad to us. He was always good to mother, even when he was drunk. If
you talk like that about him, I shall have to go away."
"Fer the land sakes! You don't say," said Mrs. Brady, sitting down hard in
astonishment on the biscuit upholstery of her best parlor chair. "Now you
ain't Bessie's child! Well, I _am clear_ beat. And growed up so big! You
look strong, but you're kind of thin. What makes your skin so black? Your
ma never was dark, ner your pa, neither."
"I've been riding a long way in the wind and sun and rain."
"Fer the land sakes!" as she looked through the window to the street. "Not
on a horse?"
"Yes."
"H'm! What was your ma thinkin' about to let you do that?"
"My mother is dead. There was no one left to care what I did. I had to
come. There were dreadful people out there, and I was afraid."
"Fer the land sakes!" That seemed the only remark that the capable Mrs.
Brady could make. She looked at her new granddaughter in bewilderment, as
if a strange sort of creature had suddenly laid claim to relationship.
"Well, I'm right glad to see you," she said stiffly, wiping her hand again
on her apron and putting it out formally for a greeting.
Elizabeth accepted her reception gravely, and sat down. She sat down
suddenly, as if her strength had given way and a great strain was at an
end. As she sat down, she drooped her head back against the wall; and a
gray look spread about her lips.
"You're tired," said the grandmother, energetically. "Come far this
morning?"
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