the letter from Miss Harding in which she seemed to resent any further request for financial assistance.
On April 30th, after having despatched the letter to Tim Slade, I received, upon my return home that evening, a small package from Miss Harding. It contained a bracelet I had left on her dressing-table in Marion, and wrapped around the bracelet were two $20 bills. Having had so much difficulty over the $40 which I did not owe, and the $40 money order which Miss Harding had sent me for railroad fare to Marion and which I had failed to endorse, with the subsequent distress of not being able to cover my $15 check to Tim, I sighed with humorous appreciation when I perceived another $40! But I was indeed grateful for any amount she saw fit to send. Immediately, under the same date, I sent her a letter of thanks. In this letter I quoted liberally from one received from my sister Elizabeth. My sister had written of their own financial difficulties, and how she and her husband planned to be in Chicago that summer, both working. They were not planning upon taking Elizabeth Ann unless I wrote that I myself could not keep her.
Under date of May 7th, I wrote Tim Slade, and shall quote from my letter:
As I look back upon Tim Slade's course of comparative inaction, I wonder why I kept on hoping he would ever be able to accomplish anything for Elizabeth Ann. But it is easy to see that I have had nothing except hope to cling to, and "hope springs eternal."
