"That is the way, isn't it?" said Elizabeth. "I just thought I'd have to go there and practically live for weeks. It—it seemed like a bottomless pit."
"There ain't really no such thing as a bottomless pit," Grandmother said, sagely; "there are only pits that we can't plumb the bottom of."
She told the story of Elizabeth's activities to Grandfather that night and this time she did not laugh, even in recapitulating the difficulties the little girl had encountered in relation to Mrs. Steppe's religious convictions and her constant demand for Little Eva. On the contrary, she wiped her eyes quite openly.
"She was calculating to go there," she said, "and take entire charge of that miserable Steppe family without any help from anybody, nurse that sick woman and feed those children for a week and longer if it was required of her. She would have done it, too, if I hadn't put a stop to it. I wish you could have seen that pretty, anxious little face, and those great eyes of hers brim full o' tears but game as a fightin' cock. I do wish you could have seen her, Father."
"I wish I could of," said Grandfather, gravely.
"Just one thought come into my mind as I set there talking to her, and it come so strong I almost up and said it aloud before I caught myself. I was thinking o' that first night she come, and the dejected way you sat in that chair there, after she had gone up to bed, and I said to myself, holding her there in my lap all exhausted and quivering, after a whole forenoon spent doing battle with the slothfulness of the Steppe family, 'Father Swift,' I said to myself, 'what do you think o' John's girl now?' I said."
"Didn't you hear what I spoke up and answered? Well, you couldn't 'a' been listening very hard. When you said that, I had my answer ready to the dot. 'I think a whole lot better of her,' that's what I said, 'and I have been doing so for some time back'."