"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.
With Elizabeth life went on about as usual. She missed Valentine sadly, and she felt almost jealous of her cousin Marjorie, who would always have the pleasure of his society.
Miss Rice was engaged to stay all day now. It was shown to the child plainly enough that she was not to be trusted. She resented this, although she knew there was reason for it. She did hate to be watched, she said to herself.
For months the child brooded over her lonely existence, and the strange fate of having a father who did not wish to see her, and a brother who did not live with her, and who, she was quite sure, preferred his cousin to his sister.