She went back to the little blue room under the eaves, and began a diagram of arrangement. Standing against the wall was a long, panelled picture in a black frame, that had made its appearance there in her absence. Elizabeth lifted it to the light and disclosed three barefooted ladies in flowing garments of gauze, who were standing on a light turf from which lilies of the valley were springing. One of these ladies was reclining on the breast of another, and the third was standing erect and aloof, with shining eyes.
"'The Christian Graces,'" Elizabeth said. "For goodness' sake!" and beneath, the curious inscription, simulating letters cut into stone, was engraved in a neat, Spencerian hand, "Faith, Hope, and Charity."
"For goodness' sake!" said Elizabeth, again.
She turned the picture around, and found on the board at its back another inscription, written in a round, childish hand, "Helen Swift, aged eleven, hung in my room to help me to remember."
"I guess I'll hang it in my room, to help me to remember," Elizabeth said.
She was a little self-conscious about going down to dinner. She knew that her grandfather had found a good many things to chuckle at in her breakfast-table conversation. She always knew afterward just what things she had said that Grandfather would consider most typical of what he referred to as her "city manner." This time she realized that her allusion to Jean Forsyth's brother-in-law would be the subject of many sly, humorous thrusts for a long time to come. However, when she reached the table again, her grandfather had not yet come in, but he appeared almost instantly, with a tall, freckled girl hanging on his arm—a girl with a turned-up nose and a bronzed pigtail the size of her doubled fist hanging down her back.
"But, Granddaddy Swift," she was saying, earnestly, "don't you see that I can't come and meet a brand-new city granddaughter, and sit down to a respectable person's dinner table, attired in a bloomer suit? Don't you know it isn't done in the circles in which we move? Make him let go of my ear, Grandmummy."
Elizabeth rose shyly, and then she sat down again, but the stranger eluded Grandfather's masterful grip, and slipped around to her side, with a hand out-stretched in greeting.
"Isn't he dreadful?" she said, indicating her tormentor affectionately. "When I heard you were here, I was going back to the cottage, to put on my best bib and tucker and make a proper call upon you, but Granddaddy wouldn't hear of it. He insisted on dragging me hither by the hair. So here I am—Peggy Farraday, at your service, and am very glad to meet you, too."
"I'm glad to meet you," Elizabeth said. "I haven't seen any girls for a long time."