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Page 13
When Elizabeth Ann finished her breakfast, Cousin Ann made three
suggestions, using exactly the same accent for them all. She said:
"Wouldn't you better wash your dishes up now before they get sticky? And
don't you want one of those red apples from the dish on the side table?
And then maybe you'd like to look around the house so's to know where
you are." Elizabeth Ann had never washed a dish in all her life, and she
had always thought that nobody but poor, ignorant people, who couldn't
afford to hire girls, did such things. And yet (it was odd) she did not
feel like saying this to Cousin Ann, who stood there so straight in her
gingham dress and apron, with her clear, bright eyes and red cheeks.
Besides this feeling, Elizabeth Ann was overcome with embarrassment at
the idea of undertaking a new task in that casual way. How in the world
DID you wash dishes? She stood rooted to the spot, irresolute, horribly
shy, and looking, though she did not know it, very clouded and sullen.
Cousin Ann said briskly, holding an iron up to her cheek to see if it
was hot enough: "Just take them over to the sink there and hold them
under the hot-water faucet. They'll be clean in no time. The dish-towels
are those hanging on the rack over the stove."
Elizabeth Ann moved promptly over to the sink, as though Cousin Ann's
words had shoved her there, and before she knew it, her saucer, cup, and
spoon were clean and she was wiping them on a dry checked towel. "The
spoon goes in the side-table drawer with the other silver, and the
saucer and cup in those shelves there behind the glass doors where the
china belongs," continued Cousin Ann, thumping hard with her iron on a
napkin and not looking up at all, "and don't forget your apple as you go
out. Those Northern Spies are just getting to be good about now. When
they first come off the tree in October you could shoot them through an
oak plank."
Now Elizabeth Ann knew that this was a foolish thing to say, since of
course an apple never could go through a board; but something that had
always been sound asleep in her brain woke up a little, little bit and
opened one eye. For it occurred dimly to Elizabeth Ann that this was a
rather funny way of saying that Northern Spies were very hard when you
first pick them in the autumn. She had to figure it out for herself very
slowly, because it was a new idea to her, and she was halfway through
her tour of inspection of the house before there glimmered on her lips,
in a faint smile, the first recognition of humor in all her life. She
felt a momentary impulse to call down to Cousin Ann that she saw the
point, but before she had taken a single step toward the head of the
stairs she had decided not to do this. Cousin Ann, with her bright, dark
eyes, and her straight back, and her long arms, and her way of speaking
as though it never occurred to her that you wouldn't do just as she
said--Elizabeth Ann was not very sure that she liked Cousin Ann, and she
was very sure that she was afraid of her.
So she went on, walking from one room to another, industriously eating
the red apple, the biggest she had ever seen. It was the best, too, with
its crisp, white flesh and the delicious, sour-sweet juice which made
Elizabeth Ann feel with each mouthful like hurrying to take another. She
did not think much more of the other rooms in the house than she had of
the kitchen. There were no draped "throws" over anything; there were no
lace curtains at the windows, just dotted Swiss like the kitchen; all
the ceilings were very low; the furniture was all of dark wood and very
old-looking; what few rugs there were were of bright-colored rags; the
mirrors were queer and old, with funny old pictures at the top; there
wasn't a brass bed in any of the bedrooms, just old wooden ones with
posts, and curtains round the tops; and there was not a single plush
portiere in the parlor, whereas at Aunt Harriet's there had been two
sets for that one room.
She was relieved at the absence of a piano and secretly rejoiced that
she would not need to practice. In her heart she had not liked her music
lessons at all, but she had never dreamed of not accepting them from
Aunt Frances as she accepted everything else. Also she had liked to hear
Aunt Frances boast about how much better she could play than other
children of her age.
She was downstairs by this time, and, opening a door out of the parlor,
found herself back in the kitchen, the long line of sunny windows and
the bright flowers giving her that quick little thrill again. Cousin Ann
looked up from her ironing, nodded, and said: "All through? You'd better
come in and get warmed up. Those rooms get awfully cold these January
days. Winters we mostly use this room so's to get the good of the
kitchen stove." She added after a moment, during which Elizabeth Ann
stood by the stove, warming her hands: "There's one place you haven't
seen yet--the milk-room. Mother's down there now, churning. That's the
door--the middle one."
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