"Your loving grandmother,

ELIZABETH BRADY."

Elizabeth laughed and cried over this note. It pleased her to have her

grandmother show kindness to her. She felt that whatever she did for

Grandmother Brady was in a sense showing her love to her own mother; so

she brushed aside several engagements, much to the annoyance of her

Grandmother Bailey, who could not understand why she wanted to go down to

Flora Street for two days and a night just in the beginning of warm

weather. True, there was not much going on just now between seasons, and

Elizabeth could do as she pleased; but she might get a fever in such a

crowded neighborhood. It wasn't in the least wise. However, if she must,

she must. Grandmother Bailey was on the whole lenient. Elizabeth was too

much of a success, and too willing to please her in all things, for her to

care to cross her wishes. So Elizabeth wrote on her fine note-paper

bearing the Bailey crest in silver: "Dear Grandmother: I shall be delighted to go to the picnic

with you, and I'll bring a nice big box of candy, Huyler's best.

I'm sure you'll think it's the best you ever tasted. Don't get

Lizzie a parasol; I'm going to bring her one to surprise her.

I'll be at the house by eight o'clock.

"Your loving granddaughter,

ELIZABETH."

Mrs. Brady read this note with satisfaction and handed it over to her

daughter to read with a gleam of triumph in her eyes at the supper-table.

She knew the gift of the pink parasol would go far toward reconciling Aunt

Nan to the addition to their party. Elizabeth never did things by halves,

and the parasol would be all that could possibly be desired without

straining the family pocketbook any further.

So Elizabeth went to the picnic in a cool white dimity, plainly made, with

tiny frills of itself, edged with narrow lace that did not shout to the

unknowing multitude, "I am real!" but was content with being so; and with

a white Panama hat adorned with only a white silken scarf, but whose

texture was possible only at a fabulous price. The shape reminded

Elizabeth of the old felt hat belonging to her brother, which she had worn

on her long trip across the continent. She had put it on in the hat-store

one day; and her grandmother, when she found how exquisite a piece of

weaving the hat was, at once purchased it for her. It was stylish to wear

those soft hats in all sorts of odd shapes. Madam Bailey thought it would

be just the thing for the seashore.

Her hair was worn in a low coil in her neck, making the general appearance

and contour of her head much as it had been three years before. She wore

no jewelry, save the unobtrusive gold buckle at her belt and the plain

gold hatpin which fastened her hat. There was nothing about her which

marked her as one of the "four hundred." She did not even wear her gloves,

but carried them in her hand, and threw them carelessly upon the table

when she arrived in Flora Street. Long, soft white ones, they lay there in

their costly elegance beside Lizzie's post-card album that the

livery-stable man gave her on her birthday, all the long day while

Elizabeth was at Willow Grove, and Lizzie sweltered around under her pink

parasol in long white silk gloves.




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