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Page 6
"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."
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