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Page 55
"I am Elizabeth Bailey," said the girl quietly, as if she would break a
piece of hard news gently. "My father was your son John."
"The idea!" said the new grandmother, and promptly fell back upon her
pillows with her hand upon her heart. "John, John, my little John. No one
has mentioned his name to me for years and years. He never writes to me."
She put up a lace-trimmed handkerchief, and sobbed.
"Father died five years ago," said Elizabeth.
"You wicked girl!" said the maid. "Can't you see that Madam can't bear
such talk? Go right out of the room!" The maid rushed up with
smelling-salts and a glass of water, and Elizabeth in distress came and
stood by the bed.
"I'm sorry I made you feel bad, grandmother," she said when she saw that
the fragile, childish creature on the bed was recovering somewhat.
"What right have you to call me that? Grandmother, indeed! I'm not so old
as that. Besides, how do I know you belong to me? If John is dead, your
mother better look after you. I'm sure I'm not responsible for you. It's
her business. She wheedled John away from his home, and carried him off to
that awful West, and never let him write to me. She has done it all, and
now she may bear the consequences. I suppose she has sent you here to beg,
but she has made a mistake. I shall not have a thing to do with her of her
children."
"Grandmother!" Elizabeth's eyes flashed as they had done to the other
grandmother a few hours before. "You must not talk so. I won't hear it. I
wouldn't let Grandmother Brady talk about my father, and you can't talk so
about mother. She was my mother, and I loved her, and so did father love
her; and she worked hard to keep him and take care of him when he drank
years and years, and didn't have any money to help her. Mother was only
eighteen when she married father, and you ought not to blame her. She
didn't have a nice home like this. But she was good and dear, and now she
is dead. Father and mother are both dead, and all the other children. A
man killed my brother, and then as soon as he was buried he came and
wanted me to go with him. He was an awful man, and I was afraid, and took
my brother's horse and ran away. I rode all this long way because I was
afraid of that man, and I wanted to get to some of my own folks, who would
love me, and let me work for them, and let me go to school and learn
something. But I wish now I had stayed out there and died. I could have
lain down in the sage-brush, and a wild beast would have killed me
perhaps, and that would be a great deal better than this; for Grandmother
Brady does not understand, and you do not want me; but in my Father's
house in heaven there are many mansions, and He went to prepare a place
for me; so I guess I will go back to the desert, and perhaps He will send
for me. Good-by, grandmother."
Then before the astonished woman in the bed could recover her senses from
this remarkable speech Elizabeth turned and walked majestically from the
room. She was slight and not very tall, but in the strength of her pride
and purity she looked almost majestic to the awestruck maid and the
bewildered woman.
* * * * *
Down the stairs walked the girl, feeling that all the wide world was
against her. She would never again try to get a friend. She had not met a
friend except in the desert. One man had been good to her, and she had let
him go away; but he belonged to another woman, and she might not let him
stay. There was just one thing to be thankful for. She had knowledge of
her Father in heaven, and she knew what Christian Endeavor meant. She
could take that with her out into the desert, and no one could take it
from her. One wish she had, but maybe that was too much to hope for. If
she could have had a Bible of her own! She had no money left. Nothing but
her mother's wedding-ring, the papers, and the envelope that had contained
the money the man had given her when he left. She could not part with
them, unless perhaps some one would take the ring and keep it until she
could buy it back. But she would wait and hope.
She walked by the old butler with her hand on her pistol. She did not
intend to let any one detain her now. He bowed pleasantly, and opened the
door for her, however; and she marched down the steps to her horse. But
just as she was about to mount and ride away into the unknown where no
grandmother, be she Brady or Bailey, would ever be able to search her out,
no matter how hard she tried, the door suddenly opened again, and there
was a great commotion. The maid and the old butler both flew out, and laid
hands upon her. She dropped the bridle, and seized her pistol, covering
them both with its black, forbidding nozzle.
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