TGFM Is Still, Uh, TGFM
Also who is reading these? Anyone? Nobody is cool, I just want to know if I should put them on DW to start.
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.
Not many put their armor on to run away. I think Elizabeth's train of thought is a wee bit pretzeled here.
The world was wide, and the West was still open to her. She could flee back to the wilderness that gave her breath.
If she's really upset, she'll get all the way to California before she stops her horse. Yeah, this bit is glum, and in fact risks being downright tearjerking:
The old horse stopped gravely and disappointedly before the tall, aristocratic house in Rittenhouse Square. He had hoped that city life was now to end, and that he and his dear mistress were to travel back to their beloved prairies. No amount of oats could ever make up to him for his freedom, and the quiet, and the hills. He had a feeling that he should like to go back home and die. He had seen enough of the world.
HOLY CRAP. Robin went right into Eeyore, but more tragic. Hey, notice how the romance in this book is literally still out West? HELLO! was with her in the West but parted ways, and now that she is East all the good stuff is out West. Meanwhile, even the horse thinks that the east totally sucks and the only decency in life is to be found a few states' jog away.
Elizabeth, as she crossed the sidewalk and mounted the steps before the formidable carved doors, felt that here was the last hope of finding an earthly habitation. If this failed her, then there was the desert, and starvation, and a long, long sleep.
I still don't understand how TGFM is supposed to ride for half a year just to starve to death, or why she would. She's young, she's strong, she's capable of working, her skills are enough to keep someone from starving on a farm even if she is a spinster, and she can catch fish on no net or line and eat bird that's been spoiling all day. Woman can live off catching coyotes and over-bold kit foxes with her teeth, is all I'm sayin'.
How sweet that was! Then, even if she died on the desert, there was a home prepared for her. So much she had learned in Christian Endeavor meeting.
SHE IS NOT GOING TO DIE OF SINGLE-LADY-DOM. I'm starting to feel like HELLO! over there, charging after the narration yapping good sense.
So the butler lets her in, thinking she's an errand-girl from a modiste, whatever that is... a seamstress? IDK, and I'm not stopping to Google, I have a novel to talk sense to. She is told to wait in these new rich surroundings.
On through another open doorway she caught a glimpse of a painting on the wall. It was a man as large as life, sitting in a chair; and the face and attitude were her father's-her father at his best. She was fairly startled. Who was it? Could it be her father? And how had they made this picture of him? He must be changed in those twenty years he had been gone from home.
So she asks the butler. Yep, it's him all right.
Like a flash came the quick contrast of the home in which he had died, and a great wave of reverence for her father rolled over her. From such a home and such surroundings it would not have been strange if he had grown weary of the rough life out West, and deserted his wife, who was beneath him in station. But he had not. He had stayed by her all the years. True, he had not been of much use to her, and much of the time had been but a burden and anxiety; but he had stayed and loved her-when he was sober. She forgave him his many trying ways, his faultfindings with her mother's many little blunders-no wonder, when he came from this place.
It's pretty interesting that Bess is just shrugging off her father's nitpicky ways as a result of his upbringing when he kept his whole family out there in the mountains, teaching them like he wouldn't let their mother teach them and not doing anything useful and never being anything but a burden and not even giving up and trying to reconcile with his mother his own damn self and thereby provide for his family before his desperate sons fall in with desperadoes and get themselves murdered trying to defend their sister.
Oh well, at least Bess used her good godgiven influence to prevent HELLO! from ever drinking again, so at least he can't drag her right out of her saddle. Now Elizabeth meets her other grandmother:
"Elizabeth? Elizabeth who? I don't see why she sent another girl. Are you sure you will understand the directions? They're very particular, for I want my frock ready for to-night without fail." The woman sat up, leaning on one elbow. Her lace nightgown and pale-blue silk dressing-sack fell away from a round white arm that did not look as if it belonged to a very old lady. Her gray hair was becomingly arranged, and she was extremely pretty, with small features. Elizabeth looked and marvelled. Like a flash came the vision of the other grandmother at the wash-tub. The contrast was startling.
I can't figure out how much "rich people are USELESS!" subtext here is GLH poking a little fun and how much is just me. Occupy Wall Street in our bonnets and pinafores!
"I am Elizabeth Bailey," said the girl quietly, as if she would break a piece of hard news gently. "My father was your son John."
"The idea!" said the new grandmother, and promptly fell back upon her pillows with her hand upon her heart. "John, John, my little John. No one has mentioned his name to me for years and years. He never writes to me." She put up a lace-trimmed handkerchief, and sobbed.
"Father died five years ago," said Elizabeth.
"You wicked girl!" said the maid. "Can't you see that Madam can't bear such talk? Go right out of the room!" The maid rushed up with smelling-salts and a glass of water, and Elizabeth in distress came and stood by the bed.
"I'm sorry I made you feel bad, grandmother," she said when she saw that the fragile, childish creature on the bed was recovering somewhat.
Woah lord, the drama. Elizabeth had better come up with a better plan than "and then she and her horse moldered away on the plains" sharpish, because it looks like she's back with her bootstraps. Also remember that dead dude on the plains? Why doesn't she? I thought that was going to be a plot point.
"What right have you to call me that? Grandmother, indeed! I'm not so old as that. Besides, how do I know you belong to me? If John is dead, your mother better look after you. I'm sure I'm not responsible for you. It's her business. She wheedled John away from his home, and carried him off to that awful West, and never let him write to me. She has done it all, and now she may bear the consequences. I suppose she has sent you here to beg, but she has made a mistake. I shall not have a thing to do with her of her children."
Again: the spoiled rich boy, while not providing for his kids, never tried to mend bridges with the one person who could have pulled the whole family out of their "whoops, we are all dying" trend. Peachy. And when I say "peachy" Elizabeth hears "speechy" because she wallops us with a big ole' wall of text. GLH must have been depressed because she talks about just lying down and dying again, which is so against the Bess we have been reading so far that I don't know what to think anymore. Electric lights a little too strong, maybe?
Elizabeth turned and walked majestically from the room. She was slight and not very tall, but in the strength of her pride and purity she looked almost majestic to the awestruck maid and the bewildered woman.
Which is really something considering that for the first time in the book she has no purpose. None whatsoever. She is now down to her plan, and it is not at all majestic, so whatevs.
Down the stairs walked the girl, feeling that all the wide world was against her. She would never again try to get a friend. She had not met a friend except in the desert. One man had been good to her, and she had let him go away; but he belonged to another woman, and she might not let him stay.
Uh, Bess, the last thing he said about her was "HANG THE WOMAN!" so I think the field is wide open as the prairies.
She had no money left. Nothing but her mother's wedding-ring, the papers, and the envelope that had contained the money the man had given her when he left.
Hey, HEY! What about the mines? The mines? Those papers? Wasn't that going to be a plot point too? Oh, the plot points, they flurry away like lost leaves and the book is left so thin and bereft. Where is the Girl From Montana we've been reading about? You know, the NRA paragon?
But just as she was about to mount and ride away into the unknown where no grandmother, be she Brady or Bailey, would ever be able to search her out, no matter how hard she tried, the door suddenly opened again, and there was a great commotion. The maid and the old butler both flew out, and laid hands upon her.
Egad! Why-
She dropped the bridle, and seized her pistol, covering them both with its black, forbidding nozzle.
There she is!
"Madam wants you to come back. She didn't understand. She wants to see you and ask about her son. You must come, or you will kill her. She has heart trouble, and you must not excite her."
Elizabeth put the pistol back into its holster and, picking up the bridle again, fastened it in the ring, saying simply, "I will come back."
"What do you want?" she asked abruptly when she returned to the bedroom.
Goodness! After all her talk all through the book, suddenly correct speech and manners go right out the window. Oh well, grandma's just lucky they weren't preceded by a chair.
"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."
I wonder if there was anyone who thought the guy wasn't a pain in the neck.
"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.
She does that a lot. They didn't need a telegram. They just stood Elizabeth in the window at night and had her flash her eyes in coded messages at a lookout on a nearby mountain.
"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..."
Aww, man, this story always gets less fun when Elizabeth can't single-handedly double the list of near-death experiences caused by a romance heroine. Also I like that this woman locks up guns so they can't get out.
There was one part of her experience, however, that Elizabeth passed over lightly, and that was the meeting with George Trescott Benedict. Instinctively she felt that this experience would not find a sympathetic listener.
I can't think of many people who would be sympathetic to the part where George Trescott Benedict shows up.
When Elizabeth came to her Chicago experience, her grandmother clasped her hands as if a serpent had been mentioned, and said: "How degrading! You certainly would have been justified in shooting the whole company. I wonder such places are allowed to exist!" But Marie sat with large eyes of wonder, and retailed the story over again in the kitchen afterwards for the benefit of the cook and the butler, so that Elizabeth became henceforth a heroine among them.
Uh, hey, I like it and all, but she didn't tell a single policemen about her actual imprisonment, so nobody has any more evidence or testimonial that would help shut the place down.
"I've never been a grandmother," said the little woman of the world reflectively, "but I don't know but it would be rather nice. I'd like to make you into a pretty girl, and take you out into society."
You knew it was coming, I knew it was coming, we both thought she would be Mrs. Benedict already. Joke's on us!
You seem to speak correctly, but John always was particular about his speech. He had a tutor when he was little who tripped him up every mistake he made. That was the only thing that tutor was good for; he was a linguist. We found out afterwards he was terribly wild, and drank. He did John more harm than good,
Damned linguists! And wait a minute, they let the hard-drinking, hard-living linguistics tutor shape their child's development into an adult? Is that the inference there?
already rolling in all the luxuries of a horse of the aristocracy, and congratulating himself on the good taste of his mistress to select such a stopping-place. For his part he was now satisfied not to move further. This was better than the wilderness any day. Oats like these, and hay such as this, were not to be found on the plains.
I hate to consider my life and realize that I am the kind of person to be bothered when an author is not consistent about her characterization of the internal life of a horse, but we have gone from:
No amount of oats could ever make up to him for his freedom, and the quiet, and the hills. He had a feeling that he should like to go back home and die.
To:
This was better than the wilderness any day. Oats like these, and hay such as this, were not to be found on the plains.
Emo horse was just hungry I guess. It's still annoying to feel that GLH was doing all that for pathos.
"Mrs. Merrill Wilton Bailey sends word that her granddaughter, Miss Elizabeth, has reached her home safely, and will remain with her. Miss Elizabeth will come sometime to see Mrs. Brady, and thank her for her kindness during her stay with her."
The butler bowed, and turned away with relief. His dignity and social standing had not been so taxed by the family demands in years. He was glad he might shake off the dust of Flora Street forever. He felt for the coachman. He would probably have to drive the young lady down here sometime, according to that message.
Elizabeth doesn't write a letter. Her other grandmother doesn't write a letter. They just shove the butler down there to pass on a thank-you and that's pretty much it. Well, I guess they don't have a phone. The aunt and grandmother and Lizzie talk things over. Lizzie says, among other things:
"It's awful queer, her looking like that, too, in that crazy rig! Well, I'm glad she's gone, fer she was so awful queer it was jest fierce. She talked religion a lot to the girls, and then they laughed at her behind her back; and they kep' a telling me I'd be a missionary 'fore long if she stayed with us."
She's not as bad as Finley, but GLH does put a little pressure on the reader to come off as a wee eccentric. The reader is blithely ignoring her and, even eighty years ago, was still reading through this eagerly waiting for Elizabeth to take aim at some new erring soul, so I guess she can if she wants. Lizzie wraps up:
"I'm just glad she's out of the way. She wasn't like the rest of us."
And we reach chapter end with:
Said Mrs. Brady: "It's the Bailey in her. But she said she'd come back and see me, didn't she?" and the grandmother in her meditated over that fact for several minutes.
Not liking the trend we have taken. The romance is still left out West, the dead dude in the desert and the mines subplots seem to have withered away, and Elizabeth is without her guns in her grandmother's house. Her immediate goal of survival is met so she can work on the school one, at least, and that seems to be about her only drive left.
C'mon, Grace! Don't let me down now!
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.
Not many put their armor on to run away. I think Elizabeth's train of thought is a wee bit pretzeled here.
The world was wide, and the West was still open to her. She could flee back to the wilderness that gave her breath.
If she's really upset, she'll get all the way to California before she stops her horse. Yeah, this bit is glum, and in fact risks being downright tearjerking:
The old horse stopped gravely and disappointedly before the tall, aristocratic house in Rittenhouse Square. He had hoped that city life was now to end, and that he and his dear mistress were to travel back to their beloved prairies. No amount of oats could ever make up to him for his freedom, and the quiet, and the hills. He had a feeling that he should like to go back home and die. He had seen enough of the world.
HOLY CRAP. Robin went right into Eeyore, but more tragic. Hey, notice how the romance in this book is literally still out West? HELLO! was with her in the West but parted ways, and now that she is East all the good stuff is out West. Meanwhile, even the horse thinks that the east totally sucks and the only decency in life is to be found a few states' jog away.
Elizabeth, as she crossed the sidewalk and mounted the steps before the formidable carved doors, felt that here was the last hope of finding an earthly habitation. If this failed her, then there was the desert, and starvation, and a long, long sleep.
I still don't understand how TGFM is supposed to ride for half a year just to starve to death, or why she would. She's young, she's strong, she's capable of working, her skills are enough to keep someone from starving on a farm even if she is a spinster, and she can catch fish on no net or line and eat bird that's been spoiling all day. Woman can live off catching coyotes and over-bold kit foxes with her teeth, is all I'm sayin'.
How sweet that was! Then, even if she died on the desert, there was a home prepared for her. So much she had learned in Christian Endeavor meeting.
SHE IS NOT GOING TO DIE OF SINGLE-LADY-DOM. I'm starting to feel like HELLO! over there, charging after the narration yapping good sense.
So the butler lets her in, thinking she's an errand-girl from a modiste, whatever that is... a seamstress? IDK, and I'm not stopping to Google, I have a novel to talk sense to. She is told to wait in these new rich surroundings.
On through another open doorway she caught a glimpse of a painting on the wall. It was a man as large as life, sitting in a chair; and the face and attitude were her father's-her father at his best. She was fairly startled. Who was it? Could it be her father? And how had they made this picture of him? He must be changed in those twenty years he had been gone from home.
So she asks the butler. Yep, it's him all right.
Like a flash came the quick contrast of the home in which he had died, and a great wave of reverence for her father rolled over her. From such a home and such surroundings it would not have been strange if he had grown weary of the rough life out West, and deserted his wife, who was beneath him in station. But he had not. He had stayed by her all the years. True, he had not been of much use to her, and much of the time had been but a burden and anxiety; but he had stayed and loved her-when he was sober. She forgave him his many trying ways, his faultfindings with her mother's many little blunders-no wonder, when he came from this place.
It's pretty interesting that Bess is just shrugging off her father's nitpicky ways as a result of his upbringing when he kept his whole family out there in the mountains, teaching them like he wouldn't let their mother teach them and not doing anything useful and never being anything but a burden and not even giving up and trying to reconcile with his mother his own damn self and thereby provide for his family before his desperate sons fall in with desperadoes and get themselves murdered trying to defend their sister.
Oh well, at least Bess used her good godgiven influence to prevent HELLO! from ever drinking again, so at least he can't drag her right out of her saddle. Now Elizabeth meets her other grandmother:
"Elizabeth? Elizabeth who? I don't see why she sent another girl. Are you sure you will understand the directions? They're very particular, for I want my frock ready for to-night without fail." The woman sat up, leaning on one elbow. Her lace nightgown and pale-blue silk dressing-sack fell away from a round white arm that did not look as if it belonged to a very old lady. Her gray hair was becomingly arranged, and she was extremely pretty, with small features. Elizabeth looked and marvelled. Like a flash came the vision of the other grandmother at the wash-tub. The contrast was startling.
I can't figure out how much "rich people are USELESS!" subtext here is GLH poking a little fun and how much is just me. Occupy Wall Street in our bonnets and pinafores!
"I am Elizabeth Bailey," said the girl quietly, as if she would break a piece of hard news gently. "My father was your son John."
"The idea!" said the new grandmother, and promptly fell back upon her pillows with her hand upon her heart. "John, John, my little John. No one has mentioned his name to me for years and years. He never writes to me." She put up a lace-trimmed handkerchief, and sobbed.
"Father died five years ago," said Elizabeth.
"You wicked girl!" said the maid. "Can't you see that Madam can't bear such talk? Go right out of the room!" The maid rushed up with smelling-salts and a glass of water, and Elizabeth in distress came and stood by the bed.
"I'm sorry I made you feel bad, grandmother," she said when she saw that the fragile, childish creature on the bed was recovering somewhat.
Woah lord, the drama. Elizabeth had better come up with a better plan than "and then she and her horse moldered away on the plains" sharpish, because it looks like she's back with her bootstraps. Also remember that dead dude on the plains? Why doesn't she? I thought that was going to be a plot point.
"What right have you to call me that? Grandmother, indeed! I'm not so old as that. Besides, how do I know you belong to me? If John is dead, your mother better look after you. I'm sure I'm not responsible for you. It's her business. She wheedled John away from his home, and carried him off to that awful West, and never let him write to me. She has done it all, and now she may bear the consequences. I suppose she has sent you here to beg, but she has made a mistake. I shall not have a thing to do with her of her children."
Again: the spoiled rich boy, while not providing for his kids, never tried to mend bridges with the one person who could have pulled the whole family out of their "whoops, we are all dying" trend. Peachy. And when I say "peachy" Elizabeth hears "speechy" because she wallops us with a big ole' wall of text. GLH must have been depressed because she talks about just lying down and dying again, which is so against the Bess we have been reading so far that I don't know what to think anymore. Electric lights a little too strong, maybe?
Elizabeth turned and walked majestically from the room. She was slight and not very tall, but in the strength of her pride and purity she looked almost majestic to the awestruck maid and the bewildered woman.
Which is really something considering that for the first time in the book she has no purpose. None whatsoever. She is now down to her plan, and it is not at all majestic, so whatevs.
Down the stairs walked the girl, feeling that all the wide world was against her. She would never again try to get a friend. She had not met a friend except in the desert. One man had been good to her, and she had let him go away; but he belonged to another woman, and she might not let him stay.
Uh, Bess, the last thing he said about her was "HANG THE WOMAN!" so I think the field is wide open as the prairies.
She had no money left. Nothing but her mother's wedding-ring, the papers, and the envelope that had contained the money the man had given her when he left.
Hey, HEY! What about the mines? The mines? Those papers? Wasn't that going to be a plot point too? Oh, the plot points, they flurry away like lost leaves and the book is left so thin and bereft. Where is the Girl From Montana we've been reading about? You know, the NRA paragon?
But just as she was about to mount and ride away into the unknown where no grandmother, be she Brady or Bailey, would ever be able to search her out, no matter how hard she tried, the door suddenly opened again, and there was a great commotion. The maid and the old butler both flew out, and laid hands upon her.
Egad! Why-
She dropped the bridle, and seized her pistol, covering them both with its black, forbidding nozzle.
There she is!
"Madam wants you to come back. She didn't understand. She wants to see you and ask about her son. You must come, or you will kill her. She has heart trouble, and you must not excite her."
Elizabeth put the pistol back into its holster and, picking up the bridle again, fastened it in the ring, saying simply, "I will come back."
"What do you want?" she asked abruptly when she returned to the bedroom.
Goodness! After all her talk all through the book, suddenly correct speech and manners go right out the window. Oh well, grandma's just lucky they weren't preceded by a chair.
"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."
I wonder if there was anyone who thought the guy wasn't a pain in the neck.
"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.
She does that a lot. They didn't need a telegram. They just stood Elizabeth in the window at night and had her flash her eyes in coded messages at a lookout on a nearby mountain.
"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..."
Aww, man, this story always gets less fun when Elizabeth can't single-handedly double the list of near-death experiences caused by a romance heroine. Also I like that this woman locks up guns so they can't get out.
There was one part of her experience, however, that Elizabeth passed over lightly, and that was the meeting with George Trescott Benedict. Instinctively she felt that this experience would not find a sympathetic listener.
I can't think of many people who would be sympathetic to the part where George Trescott Benedict shows up.
When Elizabeth came to her Chicago experience, her grandmother clasped her hands as if a serpent had been mentioned, and said: "How degrading! You certainly would have been justified in shooting the whole company. I wonder such places are allowed to exist!" But Marie sat with large eyes of wonder, and retailed the story over again in the kitchen afterwards for the benefit of the cook and the butler, so that Elizabeth became henceforth a heroine among them.
Uh, hey, I like it and all, but she didn't tell a single policemen about her actual imprisonment, so nobody has any more evidence or testimonial that would help shut the place down.
"I've never been a grandmother," said the little woman of the world reflectively, "but I don't know but it would be rather nice. I'd like to make you into a pretty girl, and take you out into society."
You knew it was coming, I knew it was coming, we both thought she would be Mrs. Benedict already. Joke's on us!
You seem to speak correctly, but John always was particular about his speech. He had a tutor when he was little who tripped him up every mistake he made. That was the only thing that tutor was good for; he was a linguist. We found out afterwards he was terribly wild, and drank. He did John more harm than good,
Damned linguists! And wait a minute, they let the hard-drinking, hard-living linguistics tutor shape their child's development into an adult? Is that the inference there?
already rolling in all the luxuries of a horse of the aristocracy, and congratulating himself on the good taste of his mistress to select such a stopping-place. For his part he was now satisfied not to move further. This was better than the wilderness any day. Oats like these, and hay such as this, were not to be found on the plains.
I hate to consider my life and realize that I am the kind of person to be bothered when an author is not consistent about her characterization of the internal life of a horse, but we have gone from:
No amount of oats could ever make up to him for his freedom, and the quiet, and the hills. He had a feeling that he should like to go back home and die.
To:
This was better than the wilderness any day. Oats like these, and hay such as this, were not to be found on the plains.
Emo horse was just hungry I guess. It's still annoying to feel that GLH was doing all that for pathos.
"Mrs. Merrill Wilton Bailey sends word that her granddaughter, Miss Elizabeth, has reached her home safely, and will remain with her. Miss Elizabeth will come sometime to see Mrs. Brady, and thank her for her kindness during her stay with her."
The butler bowed, and turned away with relief. His dignity and social standing had not been so taxed by the family demands in years. He was glad he might shake off the dust of Flora Street forever. He felt for the coachman. He would probably have to drive the young lady down here sometime, according to that message.
Elizabeth doesn't write a letter. Her other grandmother doesn't write a letter. They just shove the butler down there to pass on a thank-you and that's pretty much it. Well, I guess they don't have a phone. The aunt and grandmother and Lizzie talk things over. Lizzie says, among other things:
"It's awful queer, her looking like that, too, in that crazy rig! Well, I'm glad she's gone, fer she was so awful queer it was jest fierce. She talked religion a lot to the girls, and then they laughed at her behind her back; and they kep' a telling me I'd be a missionary 'fore long if she stayed with us."
She's not as bad as Finley, but GLH does put a little pressure on the reader to come off as a wee eccentric. The reader is blithely ignoring her and, even eighty years ago, was still reading through this eagerly waiting for Elizabeth to take aim at some new erring soul, so I guess she can if she wants. Lizzie wraps up:
"I'm just glad she's out of the way. She wasn't like the rest of us."
And we reach chapter end with:
Said Mrs. Brady: "It's the Bailey in her. But she said she'd come back and see me, didn't she?" and the grandmother in her meditated over that fact for several minutes.
Not liking the trend we have taken. The romance is still left out West, the dead dude in the desert and the mines subplots seem to have withered away, and Elizabeth is without her guns in her grandmother's house. Her immediate goal of survival is met so she can work on the school one, at least, and that seems to be about her only drive left.
C'mon, Grace! Don't let me down now!