While in Marion, I kept the $500 bills in my silver mesh-bag, as I have already stated. This was, I must say, more money than I had ever received from Mr. Harding at one time, but I had told him that I wanted to buy a coat, and that one item might require a goodly part of one of the $500 bills. I remember one night when I was visiting Annabel Mouser Fairbanks, we had been up well into the morning, and when I retired I very carelessly, though not intentionally so by any means, left my mesh-bag downstairs on the chair where I had been sitting during the evening, “keeping it right with me.” Wilfred Schaffner and John Fairbanks, Annabel’s husband, remained up playing cards long after Annabel and I had retired. The next day John said to me, “Say, you are a fine one to leave a bunch of money around like that? You can see right through that mesh-bag! Don’t you know we never lock our doors? What are you going to do with all that money, anyway?” I explained it was money I was to invest for my brother-in-law in stocks when I reached New York.
About the middle of November I reached New York and stayed two weeks with a girl friend, whose apartment was at the Poinciana at Amsterdam and 120th Street, the apartment where Mr. Harding and I went to spend an afternoon in January of 1919.
Although I did look into the matter of positions while in New York, my enthusiasm about actually taking a position waned with my fading strength, and at the end of two weeks, thinking myself in no physical condition to remain in the East alone, and having consulted a doctor who confirmed my belief and ordered me back to Chicago to complete rest for a month at least, I took the train back to that city.
However, I did buy a squirrel coat and some Christmas gifts for my family and for Mrs. Woodlock and her daughter Ruth and Aunt Emma, which shopping expeditions took all my surplus strength.
It seems to me that Mr. and Mrs. Harding and some friends of theirs went South during the month of December, 1920, to visit the Scobeys, returning to Marion about a month later. Of the Scobeys I have already spoken. Mr. Harding and I had discussed them as possible foster parents for our baby who had not been born when we had entertained such thoughts. About the middle of January Mr. Harding wrote to me from Marion, suggesting that we endeavor to hit upon a suitable plan of action in connection with settling more or less permanently the all-important question of Elizabeth Ann. That question had been paramount in my thoughts. It was probably the main cause of my continued physical weakness; and I agreed with him that something would have to be done.
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The latter part of January Mr. Harding sent for my sister Elizabeth to come to Marion to see him. When she returned to Chicago, she repeated to me his almost desperate concern about a final, permanent arrangement for caring for our child. She told me how they had discussed at length the advisability from many angles of her taking Elizabeth Ann, and how Mr. Harding had paced the floor of his office (the same office in the Christian home where he had sat with Mr. Will Hays when his sister and I had beckoned for him to come out) and said, “My God, Elizabeth, you’ve got to help me!” She told me that he had said to her, “Nan is just a child in many ways and must be guarded and guided,” a statement I think I resented just a little because I felt I had thus far engineered our secret safely. Mr. Harding told Elizabeth, “I would not hesitate a minute to give you and Scott $300 or $400 a month to care for Elizabeth Ann if you would adopt her.”
My sister on this occasion had taken with her a picture of Mr. Harding to him to autograph for her. It was one of those for which he had posed at Moffett’s in June of 1920, after which sittings he had rushed out from Moffett’s to see me, and Elizabeth said that when she showed it to Mr. Harding he said he preferred it to all the others taken at that time. His autograph for Elizabeth is as follows:
“With greetings and good wishes to Mrs. Scott A. Willits, with that high regard which goes to the daughter of a valued friend.
Warren G. Harding.”