`` I 'll tell you all about it when I get my breath -- I 've been breathless ever since Grandmother Newbury told me of it . There 's only one drawback to my supreme bliss -- the remembrance of how complacently self-sacrificing I felt this morning . It humiliates me wholesomely to remember it ! '' Elizabeth 's Child The Ingelows , of Ingelow Grange , were not a marrying family . Only one of them , Elizabeth , had married , and perhaps it was her `` poor match '' that discouraged the others . At any rate , Ellen and Charlotte and George Ingelow at the Grange were single , and so was Paul down at Greenwood Farm . It was seventeen years since Elizabeth had married James Sheldon in the face of the most decided opposition on the part of her family . Sheldon was a handsome , shiftless ne'er - do-well , without any violent bad habits , but also `` without any backbone , '' as the Ingelows declared . `` There is sometimes hope of a man who is actively bad , '' Charlotte Ingelow had said sententiously , `` but who ever heard of reforming a jellyfish ? '' Elizabeth and her husband had gone west and settled on a prairie farm in Manitoba . She had never been home since . Perhaps her pride kept her away , for she had the Ingelow share of that , and she soon discovered that her family 's estimate of James Sheldon had been the true one . There was no active resentment on either side , and once in a long while letters were exchanged . Still , ever since her marriage , Elizabeth had been practically an outsider and an alien . As the years came and went the Ingelows at home remembered only at long intervals that they had a sister on the western prairies . One of these remembrances came to Charlotte Ingelow on a spring afternoon when the great orchards about the Grange were pink and white with apple and cherry blossoms , and over every hill and field was a delicate , flower-starred green . A soft breeze was blowing loose petals from the August Sweeting through the open door of the wide hall when Charlotte came through it . Ellen and George were standing on the steps outside . `` This kind of a day always makes me think of Elizabeth , '' said Charlotte dreamily . `` It was in apple-blossom time she went away . ''
The Ingelows always spoke of XXXXX 's going away , never of her marrying .
Elizabeth Ellen George Grange Ingelow Paul Sheldon apple-blossom day prairies