Perhaps the money she had sent reached him safely, but she had put in no address.  It had not seemed right that she should.  It would seem to draw his attention to her, and she felt “the lady” would not like that.  Perhaps they were married by this time, and had gone far away to some charmed land to live.  Perhaps—­a great many things.  Only this fact remained; he never came any more into the horizon of her life; and therefore she must try to forget him, and be glad that God had given her a friend in him for her time of need.  Some day in the eternal home perhaps she would meet him and thank him for his kindness to her, and then they might tell each other all about the journey through the great wilderness of earth after they had parted.  The links in Elizabeth’s theology had been well supplied by this time, and her belief in the hereafter was strong and simple like a child’s.

She had one great longing, however, that he, her friend, who had in a way been the first to help her toward higher things, and to save her from the wilderness, might know Jesus Christ as he had not known Him when they were together.  And so in her daily prayer she often talked with her heavenly Father about him, until she came to have an abiding faith that some day, somehow, he would learn the truth about his Christ.

During the third season of Elizabeth’s life in Philadelphia her grandmother decided that it was high time to bring out this bud of promise, who was by this time developing into a more beautiful girl than even her fondest hopes had pictured.

So Elizabeth “came out,” and Grandmother Brady read her doings and sayings in the society columns with her morning coffee and an air of deep satisfaction.  Aunt Nan listened with her nose in the air.  She could never understand why Elizabeth should have privileges beyond her Lizzie.  It was the Bailey in her, of course, and mother ought not to think well of it.  But Grandmother Brady felt that, while Elizabeth’s success was doubtless due in large part to the Bailey in her, still, she was a Brady, and the Brady had not hindered her.  It was a step upward for the Bradys.

Lizzie listened, and with pride retailed at the ten-cent store the doings of “my cousin, Elizabeth Bailey,” and the other girls listened with awe.

And so it came on to be the springtime of the third year that Elizabeth had spent in Philadelphia.

CHAPTER XV

AN EVENTFUL PICNIC

It was summer and it was June.  There was to be a picnic, and Elizabeth was going.

Grandmother Brady had managed it.  It seemed to her that, if Elizabeth could go, her cup of pride would be full to overflowing; so after much argument, pro and con, with her daughter and Lizzie, she set herself down to pen the invitation.  Aunt Nan was decidedly against it.  She did not wish to have Lizzie outshone.  She had been working nights for two weeks on an elaborate organdie, with pink