“Emily, my dear child, don’t you know me? This is your Aunt Twice!”
Was it? Emily wondered with a sharp stab of fright. If so, where were the flyaway shining curls and dancing green eyes? Where was the fashionable coat with the nipped-in waist, and where the feathered Paris bonnet? And most important, where was the pink-cheeked face, as pretty as her own Mama’s had been? How could this thin, sunken person be the Aunt Twice she had once known?
The strange woman hesitated, and finally smiled. With the smile, shadows of long-forgotten dimples came to her cheeks. A faint sparkle lit her eyes. She dropped to her knees and held out her arms.
“Aunt Twice!” Emily cried. She ran at last to bury her face in the worn woolen coat.
“My poor little girl!” Tears flowing down her cheeks, Aunt Twice held Emily away to look deeply into her face. “My poor, poor child.”
Then all at once, Aunt Twice jerked sharply. With a sudden twist of her head, she turned toward the granite tower of the train station where a large, dimly lit clock peered through the fog like a pale, timekeeping moon. She stiffened and jumped to her feet.
“We must hurry, Emily! We must hurry! Is this the only travelling bag you’ve brought? Have you any trunks?” Fear made her voice sharp.
“T-t-two, Aunt Twice,” Emily stammered. She was frightened once more by the sudden change in her aunt. It was as if Aunt Twice had turned into a stranger again. “Mrs. Leslie, Mama’s and Papa’s housekeeper, said they had been sent. Haven’t they come yet?”
“No, but never mind. We must hurry now, Emily. Come along! We must not miss the next cablecar. We can’t!” With no word of explanation, Aunt Twice snatched up Emily’s bag and hurried across the sidewalk. Emily stumbled along beside her.
Her mind buried in her own troubled thoughts, Aunt Twice almost stepped off the curb in front of the horses of a tall black cab trotting to a stop in front of them.
“Cab, ma’am? It’s a bad evening out.” The heavyjowled cabman spoke with the glum, disappointed air of having no hope for a fare.
But Aunt Twice looked over her shoulder once more at the station clock, and then opened her worn purse with trembling fingers. Lest she change her mind, the cabman wasted no time. Cape flying out, he leaped down, nimble as a frog, and flung open the cab door.
“Sugar Hill Hall on Pacific Street,” Aunt Twice murmured to him in a voice barely above a whisper, and hurried Emily into the cab.
Tucked into a corner seat, Emily crossed her thin, white-stockinged legs neatly, and gave Aunt Twice a shy glance. Surely, Emily thought hopefully, now that the worry of getting home on time had been solved, she would be hugged once more and comforted for the terrible sudden loss of Mama and Papa in the boating accident at sea. And shouldn’t she be given news of Uncle Twice? Why had he not come in his splendid red phaeton to fetch them at the station?
But Aunt Twice did not enfold Emily in her arms, and she explained nothing. Instead, she perched stiff and silent as a stone wall on the edge of her seat, moving her pale lips wordlessly from time to time. She appeared to have forgotten all about Emily.
Clop! Clop! Clop! Clop! The sound of the horses’ hoofs drummed gloomily on the damp cobbled streets. Deep drifts of fog pressed against the windows, so she could see nothing but the dim flickering of an occasional lonely gaslight. Were they lost? She could not remember that Sugar Hill Hall was such a long ride from the train station. Clop! Clop! Clop! Clop! On and on they rode, horses’ hoofs drumming outside, deadly silence inside, up one hill and down another. It seemed as if they had covered a dozen dark-filled miles before Aunt Twice turned suddenly and took Emily’s hand in her own.
“Dear, darling child, will you promise me that no matter what happens, you will try to be a brave little girl, a very brave little girl?”
Be a brave little girl no matter what happens? What could that foreboding request mean? Emily was too frightened to do more than nod as she felt the chill of Aunt Twice’s hand go through her like an icy needle.
The hand over hers tightened. Aunt Twice threw the cabman a furtive look and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Now there is something else you must promise me. When we enter the parlor of Sugar Hill Hall, you must let me give the replies to whatever questions are asked. Only speak if directly spoken to, and you must then agree with whatever I say. Be as polite as you know how. Please, darling Emily, will you promise all these things, for your sake and—for mine too?” Aunt Twice’s voice broke in a hoarse sob.
Emily was more frightened than ever, and had only time to nod again when the cabman called out, “Sugar Hill Hall, ma’am!”
Aunt Twice gave a sharp gasp. “Please don’t go into the driveway! Stop right here at once!”
The cab lurched to such a sudden stop that Emily was almost catapulted from her seat. She had no time even to peer out the window before Aunt Twice rushed her from the cab. So it was not until her aunt was carefully counting out the coins from her worn purse and placing them in the cabman’s eager hand that she looked up the broad driveway for her first glimpse of Sugar Hill Hall. What she saw made her breath catch in her throat. For unlike Aunt Twice, the great mansion was exactly as Emily remembered it!
Through the fog and the deepening evening dusk it loomed, seeming nearly four times the size of the home she had left. Window after window reached endlessly across it, and the same giant columns held up the lofty portico that greeted a wide, circular driveway. But
