“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.

* * * * *