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very conscientious people.

 

Elizabeth Ann, however, had no grocer brother. She had, it is true, a

great many relatives, and of course it was settled she should go to some

of them till Aunt Frances could take her back. For the time being, just

now, while everything was so distracted and confused, she was to go to

stay with the Lathrop cousins, who lived in the same city, although it

was very evident that the Lathrops were not perfectly crazy with delight

over the prospect.

 

Still, something had to be done at once, and Aunt Frances was so frantic

with the packing up, and the moving men coming to take the furniture to

storage, and her anxiety over her mother—she had switched to Aunt

Harriet, you see, all the conscientiousness she had lavished on

Elizabeth Ann—nothing much could be extracted from her about Elizabeth

Ann. “Just keep her for the present, Molly!” she said to Cousin Molly

Lathrop. “I’ll do something soon. I’ll write you. I’ll make another

arrangement … but just NOW … .”

 

Her voice was quavering on the edge of tears, and Cousin Molly Lathrop,

who hated scenes, said hastily, “Yes, oh, yes, of course. For the

present …” and went away, thinking that she didn’t see why she should

have ALL the disagreeable things to do. When she had her husband’s

tyrannical old mother to take care of, wasn’t that enough, without

adding to the household such a nervous, spoiled, morbid young one as

Elizabeth Ann!

 

Elizabeth Ann did not of course for a moment dream that Cousin Molly was

thinking any such things about her, but she could not help seeing that

Cousin Molly was not any too enthusiastic about taking her in; and she

was already feeling terribly forlorn about the sudden, unexpected change

in Aunt Frances, who had been SO wrapped up in her and now was just as

much wrapped up in Aunt Harriet. Do you know, I am sorry for Elizabeth

Ann, and, what’s more, I have been ever since this story began.

 

Well, since I promised you that I was not going to tell about more

tears, I won’t say a single word about the day when the two aunts went

away on the train, for there is nothing much but tears to tell about,

except perhaps an absent look in Aunt Frances’s eyes which hurt the

little girl’s feelings dreadfully.

 

And then Cousin Molly took the hand of the sobbing little girl and led

her back to the Lathrop house. But if you think you are now going to

hear about the Lathrops, you are quite mistaken, for just at this moment

old Mrs. Lathrop took a hand in the matter. She was Cousin Molly’s

husband’s mother, and, of course, no relation at all to Elizabeth Ann,

and so was less enthusiastic than anybody else. All that Elizabeth Ann

ever saw of this old lady, who now turned the current of her life again,

was her head, sticking out of a second-story window; and that’s all that

you need to know about her, either. It was a very much agitated old

head, and it bobbed and shook with the intensity with which the

imperative old voice called upon Cousin Molly and Elizabeth Ann to stop

right there where they were on the front walk.

 

“The doctor says that what’s the matter with Bridget is scarlet fever,

and we’ve all got to be quarantined. There’s no earthly sense bringing

that child in to be sick and have it, and be nursed, and make the

quarantine twice as long!”

 

“But, Mother!” called Cousin Molly, “I can’t leave the child in the

middle of the street!”

 

Elizabeth Ann was actually glad to hear her say that, because she was

feeling so awfully unwanted, which is, if you think of it, not a very

cheerful feeling for a little girl who has been the hub round which a

whole household was revolving.

 

“You don’t HAVE to!” shouted old Mrs. Lathrop out of her second-story

window. Although she did not add “You gump!” aloud, you could feel she

was meaning just that. “You don’t have to! You can just send her to the

Putney cousins. All nonsense about her not going there in the first

place. They invited her the minute they heard of Harriet’s being so bad.

They’re the natural ones to take her in. Abigail is her mother’s own

aunt, and Ann is her own first-cousin-once-removed … just as close as

Harriet and Frances are, and MUCH closer than you! And on a farm and

all … just the place for her!”

 

“But how under the sun, Mother!” shouted Cousin Molly back, “can I GET

her to the Putneys’? You can’t send a child of nine a thousand miles

without …”

 

Old Mrs. Lathrop looked again as though she were saying “You gump!” and

said aloud, “Why, there’s James, going to New York on business in a few

days anyhow. He can just go now, and take her along and put her on the

right train at Albany. If he wires from here, they’ll meet her in

Hillsboro.”

 

And that was just what happened. Perhaps you may have guessed by this

time that when old Mrs. Lathrop issued orders they were usually obeyed.

As to who the Bridget was who had the scarlet fever, I know no more than

you. I take it, from the name, she was the cook. Unless, indeed, old

Mrs. Lathrop made her up for the occasion, which I think she would have

been quite capable of doing, don’t you?

 

At any rate, with no more ifs or ands, Elizabeth Ann’s satchel was

packed, and Cousin James Lathrop’s satchel was packed, and the two set

off together, the big, portly, middle-aged man quite as much afraid of

his mother as Elizabeth Ann was. But he was going to New York, and it is

conceivable that he thought once or twice on the trip that there were

good times in New York as well as business engagements, whereas poor

Elizabeth Ann was being sent straight to the one place in the world

where there were no good times at all. Aunt Harriet had said so, ever so

many times. Poor Elizabeth Ann!

CHAPTER II

BETSY HOLDS THE REINS

 

You can imagine, perhaps, the dreadful terror of Elizabeth Ann as the

train carried her along toward Vermont and the horrible Putney Farm! It

had happened so quickly—her satchel packed, the telegram sent, the

train caught—that she had not had time to get her wits together, assert

herself, and say that she would NOT go there! Besides, she had a sinking

notion that perhaps they wouldn’t pay any attention to her if she did.

The world had come to an end now that Aunt Frances wasn’t there to take

care of her! Even in the most familiar air she could only half breathe

without Aunt Frances! And now she was not even being taken to the Putney

Farm! She was being sent!

 

She shrank together in her seat, more and more frightened as the end of

her journey came nearer, and looked out dismally at the winter

landscape, thinking it hideous with its brown bare fields, its brown

bare trees, and the quick-running little streams hurrying along, swollen

with the January thaw which had taken all the snow from the hills. She

had heard her elders say about her so many times that she could not

stand the cold, that she shivered at the very thought of cold weather,

and certainly nothing could look colder than that bleak country into

which the train was now slowly making its way.

 

The engine puffed and puffed with great laboring breaths that shook

Elizabeth Ann’s diaphragm up and down, but the train moved more and more

slowly. Elizabeth Ann could feel under her feet how the floor of the car

was tipped up as it crept along the steep incline. “Pretty stiff grade

here?” said a passenger to the conductor.

 

“You bet!” he assented. “But Hillsboro is the next station and that’s at

the top of the hill. We go down after that to Rutland.” He turned to

Elizabeth Ann—“Say, little girl, didn’t your uncle say you were to get

off at Hillsboro? You’d better be getting your things together.”

 

Poor Elizabeth Ann’s knees knocked against each other with fear of the

strange faces she was to encounter, and when the conductor came to help

her get off, he had to carry the white, trembling child as well as her

satchel. But there was only one strange face there,—not another soul in

sight at the little wooden station. A grim-faced old man in a fur cap

and heavy coat stood by a lumber wagon.

 

“This is her, Mr. Putney,” said the conductor, touching his cap, and

went back to the train, which went away shrieking for a nearby crossing

and setting the echoes ringing from one mountain to another.

 

There was Elizabeth Ann alone with her much-feared Great-uncle Henry. He

nodded to her, and drew out from the bottom of the wagon a warm, large

cape, which he slipped over her shoulders. “The women folks were afraid

you’d git cold drivin’,” he explained. He then lifted her high to the

seat, tossed her satchel into the wagon, climbed up himself, and clucked

to his horses. Elizabeth Ann had always before thought it an essential

part of railway journeys to be much kissed at the end and asked a great

many times how you had “stood the trip.”

 

She sat very still on the high lumber seat, feeling very forlorn and

neglected. Her feet dangled high above the floor of the wagon. She felt

herself to be in the most dangerous place she had ever dreamed of in her

worst dreams. Oh, why wasn’t Aunt Frances there to take care of her! It

was just like one of her bad dreams—yes, it was horrible! She would

fall, she would roll under the wheels and be crushed to … She looked up

at Uncle Henry with the wild, strained eyes of nervous terror which

always brought Aunt Frances to her in a rush to “hear all about it,” to

sympathize, to reassure.

 

Uncle Henry looked down at her soberly, his hard, weather-beaten old

face quite unmoved. “Here, you drive, will you, for a piece?” he said

briefly, putting the reins into her hands, hooking his spectacles over

his ears, and drawing out a stubby pencil and a bit of paper. “I’ve got

some figgering to do. You pull on the left-hand rein to make ‘em go to

the left and t’other way for t’other way, though ‘tain’t likely we’ll

meet any teams.”

 

Elizabeth Ann had been so near one of her wild screams of terror that

now, in spite of her instant absorbed interest in the reins, she gave a

queer little yelp. She was all ready with the explanation, her

conversations with Aunt Frances having made her very fluent in

explanations of her own emotions. She would tell Uncle Henry about how

scared she had been, and how she had just been about to scream and

couldn’t keep back that one little … But Uncle Henry seemed not to have

heard her little howl, or, if he had, didn’t think it worth

conversation, for he … oh, the horses were CERTAINLY going to one side!

She hastily decided which was her right hand (she had never been forced

to know it so quickly before) and pulled furiously on that rein. The

horses turned their hanging heads a little, and, miraculously, there

they were in the middle of the road again.

 

Elizabeth Ann drew a long breath of relief and pride, and looked to

Uncle Henry for praise. But he was busily setting down figures as though

he

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