presumed to talk to me.  She said Bessie was a designing snip, and a bad girl, and a whole lot of things.  Said she was leading her son astray, and would come to no good end, and a whole lot of stuff; and told me to look after her.  It wasn’t so.  Bess got John Bailey to quit smoking fer a whole week at a time, and he said if she’d marry him he’d quit drinking too.  His ma couldn’t ‘a’ got him to promise that.  She wouldn’t even believe he got drunk.  I told her a few things about her precious son, but she curled her fine, aristocratic lip up, and said, ‘Gentlemen never get drunk.’  Humph!  Gentlemen!  That’s all she knowed about it.  He got drunk all right, and stayed drunk, too.  So after that, when I tried to keep Bess at home, she slipped away one night; said she was going to church; and she did too; went to the minister’s study in a strange church, and got married, her and John; and then they up and off West.  John, he’d sold his watch and his fine diamond stud his ma had give him; and he borrowed some money from some friends of his father’s, and he off with three hundred dollars and Bess; and that’s all I ever saw more of me Bessie.”

The poor woman sat down in her chair, and wept into her apron regardless for once of the soap-suds that rolled down her red, wet arms.

“Is my grandmother living yet?” asked Elizabeth.  She was sorry for this grandmother, but did not know what to say.  She was afraid to comfort her lest she take it for yielding.

“Yes, they say she is,” said Mrs. Brady, sitting up with a show of interest.  She was always ready for a bit of gossip.  “Her husband’s dead, and her other son’s dead, and she’s all alone.  She lives in a big house on Rittenhouse Square.  If she was any ’count, she’d ought to provide fer you.  I never thought about it.  But I don’t suppose it would be any use to try.  You might ask her.  Perhaps she’d help you go to school.  You’ve got a claim on her.  She ought to give you her son’s share of his father’s property, though I’ve heard she disowned him when he married our Bess.  You might fix up in some of Lizzie’s best things, and go up there and try.  She might give you some money.”

“I don’t want her money,” said Elizabeth stiffly.  “I guess there’s work somewhere in the world I can do without begging even of grandmothers.  But I think I ought to go and see her.  She might want to know about father.”

Mrs. Brady looked at her granddaughter wonderingly.  This was a view of things she had never taken.

“Well,” said she resignedly, “go your own gait.  I don’t know where you’ll come up at.  All I say is, ef you’re going through the world with such high and mighty fine notions, you’ll have a hard time.  You can’t pick out roses and cream and a bed of down every day.  You have to put up with life as you find it.”

Elizabeth went to her room, the room she shared with Lizzie.  She wanted to get away from her grandmother’s disapproval.  It lay on her heart like lead.  Was there no refuge in the world?  If grandmothers were not refuges, where should one flee?  The old lady in Chicago had understood; why had not Grandmother Brady?