The Girl from Montana

"Grandmother!" said Elizabeth. "Don't! I can never go back to that awful

place and that man. I would rather go back to Montana. I would rather be

dead."

"Hoity-toity!" said the easy-going grandmother, sitting down to her task,

for she perceived some wholesome discipline was necessary. "You can't talk

that way, Bess. You got to go to your work. We ain't got money to keep you

in idleness, and land knows where you'd get another place as good's this

one. Ef you stay home all day, you might make him awful mad; and then it

would be no use goin' back, and you might lose Lizzie her place too."

But, though the grandmother talked and argued and soothed by turns,

Elizabeth was firm. She would not go back. She would never go back. She

would go to Montana if her grandmother said any more about it.

With a sigh at last Mrs. Brady gave up. She had given up once before

nearly twenty years ago. Bessie, her oldest daughter, had a will like

that, and tastes far above her station. Mrs. Brady wondered where she got

them.

"You're fer all the world like yer ma," she said as she thumped the

clothes in the wash-tub. "She was jest that way, when she would marry your

pa. She could 'a' had Jim Stokes, the groceryman, or Lodge, the milkman,

or her choice of three railroad men, all of 'em doing well, and ready to

let her walk over 'em; but she would have your pa, the drunken,

good-for-nothing, slippery dude. The only thing I'm surprised at was that

he ever married her. I never expected it. I s'posed they'd run off, and

he'd leave her when he got tired of her; but it seems he stuck to her.

It's the only good thing he ever done, and I'm not sure but she'd 'a' been

better off ef he hadn't 'a' done that."

"Grandmother!" Elizabeth's face blazed.

"Yes, gran'mother!" snapped Mrs. Brady. "It's all true, and you might's

well face it. He met her in church. She used to go reg'lar. Some boys used

to come and set in the back seat behind the girls, and then go home with

them. They was all nice enough boys 'cept him. I never had a bit a use fer

him. He belonged to the swells and the stuck-ups; and he knowed it, and

presumed upon it. He jest thought he could wind Bessie round his finger,

and he did. If he said, 'Go,' she went, no matter what I'd do. So, when

his ma found it out, she was hoppin' mad. She jest came driving round here

to me house, and presumed to talk to me. She said Bessie was a designing

snip, and a bad girl, and a whole lot of things. Said she was leading her

son astray, and would come to no good end, and a whole lot of stuff; and

told me to look after her. It wasn't so. Bess got John Bailey to quit

smoking fer a whole week at a time, and he said if she'd marry him he'd

quit drinking too. His ma couldn't 'a' got him to promise that. She

wouldn't even believe he got drunk. I told her a few things about her

precious son, but she curled her fine, aristocratic lip up, and said,

'Gentlemen never get drunk.' Humph! Gentlemen! That's all she knowed about

it. He got drunk all right, and stayed drunk, too. So after that, when I

tried to keep Bess at home, she slipped away one night; said she was going

to church; and she did too; went to the minister's study in a strange

church, and got married, her and John; and then they up and off West.

John, he'd sold his watch and his fine diamond stud his ma had give him;

and he borrowed some money from some friends of his father's, and he off

with three hundred dollars and Bess; and that's all I ever saw more of me

Bessie."