The noon train to New York carried in its drawing-room-car Madam Bailey,
her granddaughter, her maid, and her dog, bound for Europe. The society
columns so stated; and so read Grandmother Brady a few days afterward. So
also read George Benedict, but it meant nothing to him.
When he received the note, his mind was almost as much excited as when he
saw the little brown girl and the little brown horse vanishing behind the
little brown station on the prairie. He went to the telephone, and
reflected that he knew no names. He called up his automobile, and tore up
to Flora Street; but in his bewilderment of the night before he had not
noticed which block the house was in, nor which number. He thought he knew
where to find it, but in broad daylight the houses were all alike for
three blocks, and for the life of him he could not remember whether he
had turned up to the right or the left when he came to Flora Street. He
tried both, but saw no sign of the people he had but casually noticed at
Willow Grove.
He could not ask where she lived, for he did not know her name. Nothing
but Elizabeth, and they had called her Bessie. He could not go from house
to house asking for a girl named Bessie. They would think him a fool, as
he was, for not finding out her name, her precious name, at once. How
could he let her slip from him again when he had just found her?
At last he hit upon a bright idea. He asked some children along the street
whether they knew of any young woman named Bessie or Elizabeth living
there, but they all with one accord shook their heads, though one
volunteered the information that "Lizzie Smith lives there.
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