ABOUT ELIZABETH ANN
Uncle Doctor’s eyes began to twinkle in a way that Elizabeth Ann
understood.
“Shall Elizabeth Ann and I come and listen to the letter, Nellie?” he
asked, “or shall Elizabeth Ann be a useful child and help Lyn?”
Elizabeth Ann didn’t want to help Lyn. She wanted to hear the letter.
But she couldn’t help smiling at Uncle Doctor when he smiled at her.
“I’ll have to read it to you, first, Cran,” said kind Cousin Nellie.
“There is something in it I must talk over with you. Come around to
the front of the house and after you have heard the letter, I’ll tell
Elizabeth Ann what Jennie says.”
They went away together and Lyn began to put up the ironing board.
“Time to get lunch,” she announced. “Do you want to help me, Elizabeth
Ann?”
Elizabeth Ann could set the table very nicely, but this noon her mind
was not on her task. She did so wonder what could be in Aunt Jennie’s
letter. Aunt Jennie, when she wrote, usually wrote the kind of a letter
that Cousin Nellie liked to read aloud at the lunch or dinner table.
Aunt Jennie sent messages to everyone--even to Lyn, whom she had never
seen, but had heard of, through Elizabeth Ann and Cousin Nellie.
“I don’t see why Cousin Nellie didn’t read the letter out loud,”
Elizabeth Ann puzzled, carrying in the bread plate.
Lex came up the back steps, his arms filled with books.
“Is it time to eat?” he asked in surprise. “I just brought these books
in to pack them away. I won’t need them again and I hate to leave
everything till the last minute.”
“Tell Miss Nellie lunch is ready,” Lyn called after him as he walked
through the kitchen and on into the rest of the house.
Uncle Doctor and Cousin Nellie came to the dining room at once.
Elizabeth Ann looked at Uncle Doctor closely, for sometimes she could
guess what he was thinking. But not to-day. He pulled back Cousin
Nellie’s chair for her and helped Elizabeth Ann into hers, without
saying a single word. Lex came back and they began to eat, and still no
one mentioned Aunt Jennie’s letter.
Now Elizabeth Ann was a courteous little girl and she knew far more
than some little girls do. Not for worlds would she say “letter,” if
she thought that Cousin Nellie did not wish to talk about it. And
Elizabeth Ann knew that if Cousin Nellie did want to talk of the
letter, she would say something about it--so Miss Elizabeth Ann ate her
luncheon quietly and did not ask questions.
While she is eating her lunch may be a good time to tell you a bit
about her. That is, if you’re not already acquainted. Perhaps you have
read the first book in this series, called “Adventures of Elizabeth
Ann.” Then you know she was a little girl whose parents were traveling
in Japan, and who had been sent to make friends with her relatives who
loved her as soon as they knew her. Elizabeth Ann visited ever so
many aunts in the city, in the country and at the seashore, and she
was lucky enough to find a girl cousin, Doris, almost her own age.
Elizabeth Ann and Doris went to school together and it was during a
vacation from school that Elizabeth Ann went to visit Uncle Doctor who
was her mother’s uncle and her own great-uncle. Cousin Nellie kept
house for Uncle Doctor, whose real name was Doctor Crandall Lewis. And
Elizabeth Ann had such a lovely vacation with Uncle Doctor and helped
him so much that the next summer, when he went South to do some special
work, Uncle Doctor took Elizabeth Ann with him. He took Lex, too, who
was studying to be a doctor, and who ran Uncle Doctor’s car for him,
and of course Cousin Nellie went. And their summer in the country near
the little town of Cally has been told you in the book just before this
one, called “Elizabeth Ann and Uncle Doctor.”
That is why you find them down South now--the summer was over and in a
few days they were going home, Elizabeth Ann to Seabridge, where Doris
Mason and Aunt Jennie and the other Mason cousins lived; Uncle Doctor
and Cousin Nellie and Lyn to the town of Chester where they lived.
But Elizabeth Ann has kept still long enough and it’s time to see what
happens next.
As soon as lunch was finished, Lyn came in to clear the table and Lex
went out to study for another hour. He did most of his studying under
an old apple tree, and sometimes Jaspar came and cropped the grass
around him, just to be sociable, Lex said.
“Come out where it is shady, Elizabeth Ann,” said Uncle Doctor. “I want
to talk to you.”
He and Cousin Nellie and Elizabeth Ann went out doors where there were
some comfortable chairs on the grass near the house. It was shady here
part of the day and Cousin Nellie liked to sit in her easy-chair and
sew.
“Is it about the letter?” asked Elizabeth Ann, perching herself on the
arm of Uncle Doctor’s chair.
“You’ve guessed it exactly,” he answered her. “Your Aunt Jennie has
written a letter to Cousin Nellie--to both of us, rather, because she
wants our advice. And your daddy and mother are so far away she can not
write to them and get an answer in time.”
“Then,” said Elizabeth Ann, beginning to feel excited, “the letter is
about me.”
“Right again,” Uncle Doctor declared. “The letter is about you--about
you and Doris. Poor Doris has been very ill indeed, but she is better
now.”
“But she can’t go back to school,” said Cousin Nellie quietly.
Elizabeth Ann stared, too surprised to speak. Why, she and Doris had
been sent to Aunt Ida’s school because Doris’s mother thought she ought
to go away to school. Doris had an older sister and four brothers and
she was apt to be spoiled with too much attention at home.
“Do I have to go to school all by myself?” gasped Elizabeth Ann.
Uncle Doctor gently pulled her down into his lap.
“Dear me, Doris isn’t the only other girl in school, is she?” he asked
in mock astonishment. “I thought there were dozens of girls there.”
Elizabeth Ann chuckled at that idea.
“Of course there are lots of girls,” she explained. “Only Doris is much
the nicest. We like each other.”
“Cran, I want to tell Elizabeth Ann what is in this letter,” said
Cousin Nellie gently. “How can I tell her if you tease her all the
time? Elizabeth Ann, listen, dear--your Aunt Jennie wants to send Doris
to the country to spend the winter and she wants you to go with her.”
Elizabeth Ann sat up with a jerk, beaming.
“I’ll go,” she announced joyfully. “Where are we going, Cousin Nellie?”
Uncle Doctor and Cousin Nellie looked at each other and laughed.
“My dear child,” said Cousin Nellie, “I haven’t the slightest idea
whether it will be best for you to go. Your Aunt Jennie thinks it would
be fine for Doris to be with you, but she says herself she doesn’t know
whether you ought to leave Aunt Ida’s school.”
“Oh, yes, Cousin Nellie!” Elizabeth Ann pleaded, “It will do me good
not to go to school. I’ve been to school _very_ regularly for years and
years.”
Uncle Doctor’s eyes twinkled at that.
“They have school in the country, you monkey,” he informed Elizabeth
Ann. “Doris’s mother doesn’t expect her to stay out of school; she is
to go to a little country school and so will you, if you are sent to
the country with her. So, Elizabeth Ann, it looks as though you’d be
educated, come what may.”
Elizabeth Ann was silent for a moment.
“Well,” she said presently, “I don’t mind a new school. I like a
change. So does Doris. Perhaps it made her sick to go to the same
school too long.”
“I wish I knew what to do,” Cousin Nellie worried. “I can’t seem to
decide. How do we know what kind of a place the school will be; and
suppose there are heavy snow storms this winter?”
“Elizabeth Ann won’t melt,” said Uncle Doctor cheerfully. “Though she
is sweet enough to be sugar she isn’t--and a snow storm won’t hurt her.
Anyway, you can’t decide, Nellie, till we get to Seabridge and see
what Jennie has to say. I want to look Doris over, too--she may be well
enough to go on as usual to what Elizabeth Ann ungratefully calls ‘the
same school.’”
So that was the way it was left--Cousin Nellie and Uncle Doctor would
decide when they reached Seabridge and talked to Doris’s mother.
Elizabeth Ann, though, kept hoping that she and Doris might go to a new
school. As she told Lyn, it would be more exciting, and perhaps she
could take Antonio, her beautiful white cat with her.
It seemed only a day or two later that the packing was done and all
the good-bys said--Mr. Hawkins and Mr. and Mrs. Hanson and the factory
nurse and Mr. Fitcher, the farmer Elizabeth Ann had made friends with,
and his wife and all the Fitcher children, came to say good-by and tell
how much they would miss Elizabeth Ann. Lyn cried, too, until Cousin
Nellie reminded her that next year she was coming North to pay her a
visit. That made Lyn feel much better.
The trip to Seabridge was long and rather tiresome, for the roads were
dusty in some places and oily in others. Uncle Doctor and Lex took
turns driving and Elizabeth Ann and Muffins rode with Cousin Nellie on
the back seat. They stopped at hotels for two nights and they were all
glad when they came in sight of the beautiful rolling ocean. Elizabeth
Ann spoke for them all when she said, “Going to Cally was fun, because
it was a new road; but coming home was just work because there wasn’t
anything to surprise us.”
The Masons lived in a little brown house close to the beach, and they
were everyone of them at the front door to welcome the travelers.
Elizabeth Ann had to look twice at a little girl with a white face and
two great dark eyes, before she saw that it was Doris.
“Oh my,” thought Elizabeth Ann to herself, kissing her favorite cousin,
“Poor Doris must have been so sick!”