"What do you want?" she asked abruptly when she returned to the bedroom.

"Don't you know that's a disrespectful way to speak?" asked the woman

querulously. "What did you have to get into a temper for, and go off like

that without telling me anything about my son? Sit down, and tell me all

about it."

"I'm sorry, grandmother," said Elizabeth, sitting down. "I thought you

didn't want me and I better go."

"Well, the next time wait until I send you. What kind of a thing have you

got on, anyway? That's a queer sort of a hat for a girl to wear. Take it

off. You look like a rough boy with that on. You make me think of John

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when he had been out disobeying me."

Elizabeth took off the offending headgear, and revealed her smoothly

parted, thick brown hair in its long braid down her back.

"Why, you're rather a pretty girl if you were fixed up," said the old

lady, sitting up with interest now. "I can't remember your mother, but I

don't think she had fine features like that."

"They said I looked like father," said Elizabeth.

"Did they? Well, I believe it's true," with satisfaction. "I couldn't

bear you if you looked like those lowdown ----"

"Grandmother!" Elizabeth stood up, and flashed her Bailey eyes.

"You needn't 'grandmother' me all the time," said the lady petulantly.

"But you look quite handsome when you say it. Take off that ill-fitting

coat. It isn't thick enough for winter, anyway. What in the world have you

got round your waist? A belt? Why, that's a man's belt! And what have you

got in it? Pistols? Horrors! Marie, take them away quick! I shall faint! I

never could bear to be in a room with one. My husband used to have one on

his closet shelf, and I never went near it, and always locked the room

when he was out. You must put them out in the hall. I cannot breathe where

pistols are. Now sit down and tell me all about it, how old you are, and

how you got here."

Elizabeth surrendered her pistols with hesitation. She felt that she must

obey her grandmother, but was not altogether certain whether it was safe

for her to be weaponless until she was sure this was friendly ground.

At the demand she began back as far as she could remember, and told the

story of her life, pathetically, simply, without a single claim to pity,

yet so earnestly and vividly that the grandmother, lying with her eyes

closed, forgot herself completely, and let the tears trickle unbidden and

unheeded down her well-preserved cheeks.

When Elizabeth came to the graves in the moonlight, she gasped, and

sobbed: "O, Johnny, Johnny, my little Johnny! Why did you always be such a

bad, bad boy?" and when the ride in the desert was described, and the man

from whom she fled, the grandmother held her breath, and said, "O, how

fearful!" Her interest in the girl was growing, and kept at white heat

during the whole of the story.




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