Love stories; Montana -- Fiction; Religious fiction; Western stories
A new world opened before the feet of Elizabeth. School was filled with
wonder and delight. She absorbed knowledge like a sponge in the water, and
rushed eagerly from one study to another, showing marvellous aptitude, and
bringing to every task the enthusiasm of a pleasure-seeker.
Her growing intimacy with Jesus Christ through the influence of the pastor
who knew Him so well caused her joy in life to blossom into loveliness.
The Bible she studied with the zest of a novel-reader, for it was a novel
to her; and daily, as she took her rides in the park on Robin, now groomed
into self-respecting sleekness, and wearing a saddle of the latest
approved style, she marvelled over God's wonderful goodness to her, just a
maid of the wilderness.
So passed three beautiful years in peace and quietness. Every month
Elizabeth went to see her Grandmother Brady, and to take some charming
little gifts; and every summer she and her Grandmother Bailey spent at
some of the fashionable watering-places or in the Catskills, the girl
always dressed in most exquisite taste, and as sweetly indifferent to her
clothes as a bird of the air or a flower of the field.
The first pocket-money she had been given she saved up, and before long
had enough to send the forty dollars to the address the man in the
wilderness had given her. But with it she sent no word. It was like her to
think she had no right.
She went out more and more with her grandmother among the fashionable old
families in Philadelphia society, though as yet she was not supposed to be
"out," being still in school; but in all her goings she neither saw nor
heard of George Trescott Benedict.
Often she looked about upon the beautiful women that came to her
grandmother's house, who smiled and talked to her, and wondered which of
them might be the lady to whom his heart was bound. She fancied she must
be most sweet and lovely in every way, else such as he could not care for
her; so she would pick out this one and that one; and then, as some
disagreeableness or glaring fault would appear, she would drop that one
for another. There were only a few, after all, that she felt were good
enough for the man who had become her ideal.
But sometimes in her dreams he would come and talk with her, and smile as
he used to do when they rode together; and he would lay his hand on the
mane of her horse--there were always the horses in her dreams. She liked
to think of it when she rode in the park, and to think how pleasant it
would be if he could be riding there beside her, and they might talk of a
great many things that had happened since he left her alone. She felt she
would like to tell him of how she had found a friend in Jesus Christ. He
would be glad to know about it, she was sure. He seemed to be one who was
interested in such things, not like other people who were all engaged in
the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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