"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
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.