When Elizabeth lay down to rest that night, with Lizzie still chattering
by her side, she found that there was one source of intense pleasure in
anticipation, and that was the prospect of going to God's house to
Christian Endeavor. Now perhaps she would be able to find out what it all
had meant, and whether it were true that God took care of people and hid
them in time of trouble. She felt almost certain in her own little
experience that He had cared for her, and she wanted to be quite sure, so
that she might grasp this precious truth to her heart and keep it forever.
No one could be quite alone in the world if there was a God who cared and
loved and hid.
The aunt and the grandmother were up betimes the next morning, looking
over some meagre stores of old clothing, and there was found an old dress
which it was thought could be furbished over for Elizabeth. They were
hard-working people with little money to spare, and everything had to be
utilized; but they made a great deal of appearance, and Lizzie was proud
as a young peacock. She would not take Elizabeth to the store to face the
head man without having her fixed up according to the most approved style.
So the aunt cut and fitted before she went off for the day, and Elizabeth
was ordered to sew while she was gone. The grandmother presided at the
rattling old sewing-machine, and in two or three days Elizabeth was
pronounced to be fixed up enough to do for the present till she could
earn some new clothes. With her fine hair snarled into a cushion and
puffed out into an enormous pompadour that did not suit her face in the
least, and with an old hat and jacket of Lizzie's which did not become her
nor fit her exactly, she started out to make her way in the world as a
saleswoman. Lizzie had already secured her a place if she suited.
The store was a maze of wonder to the girl from the mountains--so many
bright, bewildering things, ribbons and tin pans, glassware and toys,
cheap jewelry and candies. She looked about with the dazed eyes of a
creature from another world.
But the manager looked upon her with eyes of favor. He saw that her eyes
were bright and keen. He was used to judging faces. He saw that she was as
yet unspoiled, with a face of refinement far beyond the general run of the
girls who applied to him for positions. And he was not beyond a friendly
flirtation with a pretty new girl himself; so she was engaged at once, and
put on duty at the notion-counter.
The girls flocked around her during the intervals of custom. Lizzie had
told of her cousin's long ride, embellished, wherever her knowledge
failed, by her extremely wild notions of Western life. She had told how
Elizabeth arrived wearing a belt with two pistols, and this gave Elizabeth
standing at once among all the people in the store. A girl who could
shoot, and who wore pistols in a belt like a real cowboy, had a social
distinction all her own.