The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 60
Before Scott had returned from his Chicago Opera tour, Elizabeth and I had begun to plan for a new apartment. They lived on the South Side in Chicago, which is not generally conceded to be as fashionable or desirable as the North Side, and Elizabeth and I agreed we would prefer to be on the North Side. I was to live with them, of course, and my room and board were included in the amount of money paid to them monthly. This money, Mr. Harding agreed heartily with me, should always be paid to them through me, and it always was, most of the time being all cash, except for a couple of months when I sent them my personal checks from New York. Outside of my board and room, as Mr. Harding stated to Elizabeth during the Marion, Ohio, interview, "I mean, of course, to take care of Nan in the matter of clothes, etc." and he did, too, liberally. With the first payment to the Willitses which he had advanced, handing it to me in Cleveland upon my visit with him in the Hotel Statler, Elizabeth and I chose some additional furniture for the new apartment, and in a short time selected the apartment itself, which was at 901 Lafayette Parkway. It had a sun porch and a back porch, and even a real back yard, which we could share along with the other five families who lived in the apartment house. We thought the yard ideal for Elizabeth Ann to play in.
Mrs. Belle Woodlock shed real tears when we took Elizabeth Ann away in the taxi, never again to return to her. Only once afterward did I see Mrs. Woodlock, and it had then been so long since I had heard myself called "Mrs. Christian" that she had to hail me several times, on the elevated platform downtown, before I realized she was calling to me. The baby had been with her, you see, over a year, and one grows attached to a baby in that length of time even though the parents hover near.
My sister Elizabeth continued for several weeks to play in the theatre where she led the orchestra, but Scott's work permitted him to be home on certain evenings. Scott's father, a hardy farmer, was visiting the Willitses about a week after the baby had arrived to make that her home, and both he and Scott were home one evening when the baby exhibited unusual lung force and much temperament. The reason therefor was doubtless because she had begun to cut her first difficult teeth. I shall never forget how that night she cried herself to sleep in my arms, her cheek, tear-wet, against my cheek, her tiny arms wrapped about my neck. This, of course, excited wonder from Mr. Willits, Sr., who, not knowing of course that I was the mother, marvelled at my "way with babies"!
In the spring of that year, 1921, possibly in April when most people move, we went over to the North Side. Dr. and Mrs. John Wesener, the latter a first cousin of Mr. Harding, also lived on Lafayette Parkway, down the street in an apartment house right on Lake Michigan. I have forgotten how we discovered this; perhaps Daisy Harding told us in a letter after Elizabeth or I wrote to her giving her our new address. Lafayette Parkway is but a block or so long and runs from West to East between Sheridan Road and Lake Michigan. It was at the Wesener's that Daisy Harding visited when she came to Chicago, and it was when she made such a trip—in the summer of 1921, I think—that she first saw her brother Warren's child, her niece, though, of course, not known to her then as such.