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Show 11 When the young people parted at the end of the day, it was their plan to spend the evening at the Stakers' home. Anyone who has been or has even known a love-struck adolescent girl can imagine the heartbreak Ellis felt when her mother "would not consent to [her] going out again that evening." The girl probably used every means of persuasion she knew to get permission to be with her friends and thereby see Milford for one last time, but her mother was immovable. By our own calculations, Ellis had barely turned thirteen, and Milford was near his 24th birthday. The potential separation from Milford was attended, for Ellis, by another concern: "I thought when he got back to his old home and friends, he would think no more of his religion and that I should never see him again." It was only a few months after Milford's departure that Ellis's mother passed away. Although the girl still went "into society," she had lost much of her gaiety. Toward the end of the summer when she was 15 she learned, reliably, that Milford was married, storybook style, to a girl he had loved from childhood-a beautiful, well-educated heiress. Ellis tried to put him out of her mind and was helped by such social events in the city as a classic stage play and a party in the Social Hall where she met Zebulon Jacobs. She colorfully compared that party with others she had attended at home in Battle Creek. |