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Page 61
So passed three beautiful years in peace and quietness. Every month
Elizabeth went to see her Grandmother Brady, and to take some charming
little gifts; and every summer she and her Grandmother Bailey spent at
some of the fashionable watering-places or in the Catskills, the girl
always dressed in most exquisite taste, and as sweetly indifferent to her
clothes as a bird of the air or a flower of the field.
The first pocket-money she had been given she saved up, and before long
had enough to send the forty dollars to the address the man in the
wilderness had given her. But with it she sent no word. It was like her to
think she had no right.
She went out more and more with her grandmother among the fashionable old
families in Philadelphia society, though as yet she was not supposed to be
"out," being still in school; but in all her goings she neither saw nor
heard of George Trescott Benedict.
Often she looked about upon the beautiful women that came to her
grandmother's house, who smiled and talked to her, and wondered which of
them might be the lady to whom his heart was bound. She fancied she must
be most sweet and lovely in every way, else such as he could not care for
her; so she would pick out this one and that one; and then, as some
disagreeableness or glaring fault would appear, she would drop that one
for another. There were only a few, after all, that she felt were good
enough for the man who had become her ideal.
But sometimes in her dreams he would come and talk with her, and smile as
he used to do when they rode together; and he would lay his hand on the
mane of her horse--there were always the horses in her dreams. She liked
to think of it when she rode in the park, and to think how pleasant it
would be if he could be riding there beside her, and they might talk of a
great many things that had happened since he left her alone. She felt she
would like to tell him of how she had found a friend in Jesus Christ. He
would be glad to know about it, she was sure. He seemed to be one who was
interested in such things, not like other people who were all engaged in
the world.
Sometimes she felt afraid something had happened to him. He might have
been thrown from that terrible train and killed, perhaps; and no one know
anything about it. But as her experience grew wider, and she travelled on
the trains herself, of course this fear grew less. She came to understand
that the world was wide, and many things might have taken him away from
his home.
Perhaps the money she had sent reached him safely, but she had put in no
address. It had not seemed right that she should. It would seem to draw
his attention to her, and she felt "the lady" would not like that. Perhaps
they were married by this time, and had gone far away to some charmed land
to live. Perhaps--a great many things. Only this fact remained; he never
came any more into the horizon of her life; and therefore she must try to
forget him, and be glad that God had given her a friend in him for her
time of need. Some day in the eternal home perhaps she would meet him and
thank him for his kindness to her, and then they might tell each other all
about the journey through the great wilderness of earth after they had
parted. The links in Elizabeth's theology had been well supplied by this
time, and her belief in the hereafter was strong and simple like a
child's.
She had one great longing, however, that he, her friend, who had in a way
been the first to help her toward higher things, and to save her from the
wilderness, might know Jesus Christ as he had not known Him when they were
together. And so in her daily prayer she often talked with her heavenly
Father about him, until she came to have an abiding faith that some day,
somehow, he would learn the truth about his Christ.
During the third season of Elizabeth's life in Philadelphia her
grandmother decided that it was high time to bring out this bud of
promise, who was by this time developing into a more beautiful girl than
even her fondest hopes had pictured.
So Elizabeth "came out," and Grandmother Brady read her doings and sayings
in the society columns with her morning coffee and an air of deep
satisfaction. Aunt Nan listened with her nose in the air. She could never
understand why Elizabeth should have privileges beyond her Lizzie. It was
the Bailey in her, of course, and mother ought not to think well of it.
But Grandmother Brady felt that, while Elizabeth's success was doubtless
due in large part to the Bailey in her, still, she was a Brady, and the
Brady had not hindered her. It was a step upward for the Bradys.
Lizzie listened, and with pride retailed at the ten-cent store the doings
of "my cousin, Elizabeth Bailey," and the other girls listened with awe.
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