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.
Pages:
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156