"No. In fact, his one desire was to get away from everybody and everything connected with his former life. He has lived abroad ever since, and I doubt if he ever comes home." "What will he say when he gets my letter?" asked the child. "I don't know, I am sure. You ought never to have written that letter. I don't know what he will say." "Aunt Caroline, would you mind if--if I went up to my room now?" "Not yet. I have not finished. You deserve a severe punishment for prying into that room, Elizabeth. I have not yet decided what it shall be. Your curiosity must be controlled. What difference need it make to you if forty rooms in the house are locked?" "I don't know." "I should think not. That room is connected with the tragedy of my life. I doubt if you ever know about it. Perhaps when you are a woman you may be told of it, but that cannot be decided now. And I ask you never to mention the subject to me again." "No, Aunt Caroline, I won't." "You may go now." "Yes, Aunt Caroline." Elizabeth walked across the large room to the door. Then she paused a moment, and turning abruptly, she flew back to her aunt's side. "Aunt Caroline, you said my father could not bear the sight of me when I was a baby. Perhaps I was not a nice baby; some are not--the Brady baby, for instance. Don't you think--don't you really think, Aunt Caroline, that if my father were to meet me now he might like me just a teeny-weeny bit? Is there nothing nice about me, Aunt Caroline? Val, my own brother, likes me. The Brady girls used to like me, only they don't seem to now. I never know whether you and Aunt Rebecca do or not, but I hope you do. But don't you think, Aunt Caroline, _dear_ Aunt Caroline, that if my father ever does come home he might grow to like me a little?" Her aunt looked at her. Then she stooped and kissed her. "Yes, my dear. Yes, I think he might." "Then I am going to hope more than ever for him to come. Yes, I am going to pray for it. Every night and morning of my life I am going to ask God to send my father home to me, and I really think, Aunt Caroline, that some day he will come." And then she went up to her room and cried for an hour. Valentine returned to Virginia in a few days. He felt sorry for Elizabeth, forced to remain forever in the stiff old house with those stiff old aunts, as he designated them. "And she is not half bad," he said to himself, as he was being whirled rapidly homeward in the train; "she is really a good sort, though she does get herself into such mighty scrapes. She is a plucky one, though. You don't catch her shirking any of the blame. Well, neither would I with anybody but that dragon of an Aunt Caroline. Elizabeth is more used to her, I suppose." And then he gave himself up to thoughts of the coming football match, for which he would get home just in time.