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Page 5
Grace couldn't go of course, but to everybody's surprise she said she
didn't mind, because she had a bachelor brother, who kept a grocery
store, who had been wanting her for years to go and keep house for him.
She said she had stayed on just out of conscientiousness because she
knew Aunt Harriet couldn't get along without her! And if you notice,
that's the way things often happen to very, 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!"
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