"O, please, please, won't you let me stay here a few minutes, and tell me
what to do? I am so tired, and I have had such a dreadful, awful time!"
"Why, dearie me!" said the old lady. "Of course I will. Poor child; sit
right down in this rocking-chair, and have a good cry. I'll get you a
glass of water and something to eat, and then you shall tell me all about
it."
She brought the water, and a tray with nice broad slices of brown bread
and butter, a generous piece of apple pie, some cheese, and a glass
pitcher of creamy milk.
Elizabeth drank the water, but before she could eat she told the terrible
tale of her last adventure. It seemed awful for her to believe, and she
felt she must have help somewhere. She had heard there were bad people in
the world. In fact, she had seen men who were bad, and once a woman had
passed their ranch whose character was said to be questionable. She wore a
hard face, and could drink and swear like the men. But that sin should be
in this form, with pretty girls and pleasant, wheedling women for agents,
she had never dreamed; and this in the great, civilized East! Almost
better would it have been to remain in the desert alone, and risk the
pursuit of that awful man, than to come all this way to find the world
gone wrong.
The old lady was horrified, too. She had heard more than the girl of
licensed evil; but she had read it in the paper as she had read about the
evils of the slave-traffic in Africa, and it had never really seemed true
to her. Now she lifted up her hands in horror, and looked at the beautiful
girl before her with something akin to awe that she had been in one of
those dens of iniquity and escaped. Over and over she made the girl tell
what was said, and how it looked, and how she pointed her pistol, and how
she got out; and then she exclaimed in wonder, and called her escape a
miracle.
They were both weary from excitement when the tale was told. Elizabeth ate
her lunch; then the old lady showed her where to put the horse, and made
her go to bed. It was only a wee little room with a cot-bed white as snow
where she put her; but the roses peeped in at the window, and the box
covered with an old white curtain contained a large pitcher of fresh
water and a bowl and soap and towels. The old lady brought her a clean
white nightgown, coarse and mended in many places, but smelling of rose
leaves; and in the morning she tapped at the door quite early before the
girl was up, and came in with an armful of clothes.