She would not even wait till her aunt and Lizzie came home. She would go
now, at once.

Mrs. Brady sat down in her rocking-chair in despair for full five minutes
after she had watched the reprehensible girl go down the street. She had
not been so completely beaten since the day when her own Bessie left the
house and went away to a wild West to die in her own time and way. The
grandmother shed a few tears. This girl was like her own Bessie, and she
could not help loving her, though there was a streak of something else
about her that made her seem above them all; and that was hard to bear. It
must be the Bailey streak, of course. Mrs. Brady did not admire the
Baileys, but she was obliged to reverence them.

If she had watched or followed Elizabeth, she would have been still more
horrified. The girl went straight to the corner grocery, and demanded her
own horse, handing back to the man the dollar he had paid her last
Saturday night, and saying she had need of the horse at once. After some
parley, in which she showed her ability to stand her own ground, the boy
unhitched the horse from the wagon, and got her own old saddle for her
from the stable. Then Elizabeth mounted her horse and rode away to
Rittenhouse Square.




CHAPTER XIII

ANOTHER GRANDMOTHER