Mrs. Brady was much disturbed in mind when Elizabeth came down-stairs.  She exclaimed in horror, and tried to force the girl to go back, telling her it was a shame and disgrace to go in such garments into the sacred precincts of Rittenhouse Square; but the girl was not to be turned back.  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

Elizabeth’s idea in taking the horse along with her was to have all her armor on, as a warrior goes out to meet the foe.  If this grandmother proved impossible, why, then so long as she had life and breath and a horse she could flee.  The world was wide, and the West was still open to her.  She could flee back to the wilderness that gave her breath.

The old horse stopped gravely and disappointedly before the tall, aristocratic house in Rittenhouse Square.  He had hoped that city life was now to end, and that he and his dear mistress were to travel back to their beloved prairies.  No amount of oats could ever make up to him for his freedom, and the quiet, and the hills.  He had a feeling that he should like to go back home and die.  He had seen enough of the world.

She fastened the halter to a ring in the sidewalk, which surprised him.  The grocer’s boy never fastened him.  He looked up questioningly at the house, but saw no reason why his mistress should go in there.  It was not familiar ground.  Koffee and Sons never came up this way.