d felt hat from the closet, and tried to fasten it
on; but the pompadour interfered. Relentlessly she pulled down the work of
art that Lizzie had created, and brushed and combed her long, thick hair
into subjection again, and put it in its long braid down her back. Her
grandmother should see her just as she was. She should know what kind of a
girl belonged to her. Then, if she chose to be a real grandmother, well
and good.

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 h