The San Francisco call., 1896-02-03
How Young Lizzie Grinter Waits
and Watches and
Hopes.
NOW LOOKING FOR THE LOST.
She Follows Her Brother From Iowa.
When She Arrives There Is No
One to Meet Her.

Lizzie Grinter is shy, pretty girl who
receives the customers in q Market-street
photograph gallery and tells them how
much it will cost to reproduce their faces
and poses.
Her black eyes have wistful expression,
and her voice and manner betoken a
timidity much at variance with the aver
age city product. She is pale and slight
and looks scarcely equal to the battle for
bread. She can tell a story of loneliness
and want and rescue in a strange city that
would furnish valuable material to an en-
terprIsing novelist.
Lizzie is 10 years old, but locks scarcely
16. Her brother and herself have been
orphans almost since their infancy. They
grew somehow, Topsy fashion, and in
time the boys sturdy arm served him well
as a laborer, while the delicate girl gained
meager livelihood as a saleswoman at
their native town in Iowa.
There was not much Joy in their lives,
it is true, but there was measure OF con-
tentment until Roy Glinter chose to seek
his fortune in that wondrous Golden West
OF which he had heard such vague and
marvellous stories. After he came to Cali
fornia he wrote in glowing terms of the
beauties of the State. but deplored his
hard luck. Emplo Jment was scarce and
he had but little money.
After while there were no more letters,
and the lonely, friendless girl felt that she
could no longer endure silence and separa-
tlcn. She would use her little hoard of
savings in journey to California, where
she could surely join her brother.
When she arrived in San Francisco there
was but little money left. not enough to
take her to Redding, where her brother
was when he wrote that last letter. She
found a cheap lodging-house, and the next
morning began her weary search for work.
She could not go out to service in a
home, as her arm, broken when she was a
child. had not mended properly because of
lack of attention. Her very limited edu-
cation closed the doors of some avenues of
employment. She had gone to store after
store without success. Her poor hand
writing and worse spelling had destroyed
her opportunities for securing work
through answering advertisements. Some
one told her that artists paid good wages
to models, and one day when the sum i'll
the little purse had grown pitifully small
she drifted into the studio of one OF San
Francisco's women artists.
The artist smiled little as, she noted
the pinched features and thin arms of her
would-be model, but she did not dismiss
the applicant until she had heard her
story.
There had been 70 answers to the letters
addressed to Roy Grinter at Redding. His
sister was frightened by the terrible un-
known something that threatened her.
What should she do?
There was more of hope in her face and
money in her purse when Lizzie returned
to her dark little room. And the artist
laid aside her brushes and looked with
moist eyes at the Goals in the crate. She
is keen. clever, careless woman of the
world, but this homely little idyl had
touched her. When she rose it was to
write to an official at Redding, whom she
requested to make personal inquiries for
the missing young man and to send per-
sonal appeal to the papers of that town,
asking that Roy communicate with the
dispirited, lonely little sister. Then she
threw on her wraps and hastened to the
photograph gallery of friend and talked
energetically to that busy man for few
minutes.
The result was that the shy, black-eyed
girl has employment and that while she
waits for news of the missing brother her
heart is full of gratitude to the artist, who
says she means to paint her conception of
Fidelity" with Lizzie, brighter, plumper
and happier, as her model.