Of course Aunt Frances didn’t let him off as easily as that, you may be sure. She fluttered around him as he tried to go, and she said all sorts of fluttery things to him, like “But, Doctor, she hasn’t gained a pound in three months … and her sleep … and her appetite … and her nerves …”
The doctor said back to her, as he put on his hat, all the things doctors always say under such conditions: “More beefsteak … plenty of fresh air … more sleep … She’ll be all right …” but his voice did not sound as though he thought what he was saying amounted to much. Nor did Elizabeth Ann. She had hoped for some spectacular red pills to be taken every half-hour, like those Grace’s doctor gave her whenever she felt low in her mind.
And just then something happened which changed Elizabeth Ann’s life forever and ever. It was a very small thing, too. Aunt Harriet coughed. Elizabeth Ann did not think it at all a bad-sounding cough in comparison with Grace’s hollow whoop; Aunt Harriet had been coughing like that ever since the cold weather set in, for three or four months now, and nobody had thought anything of it, because they were all so much occupied in taking care of the sensitive, nervous little girl who needed so much care.
And yet, at the sound of that little discreet cough behind Aunt Harriet’s hand, the doctor whirled around and fixed his sharp eyes on her, with all the bored, impatient look gone, the first time Elizabeth Ann had ever seen him look interested. “What’s that? What’s that?” he said, going over quickly to Aunt Harriet. He snatched out of his little bag a shiny thing with two rubber tubes attached, and he put the ends of the tubes in his ears and the shiny thing up against Aunt Harriet, who was saying, “It’s nothing, Doctor … a little teasing cough I’ve had this winter. And I meant to tell you, too, but I forgot it, that that sore spot on my lungs doesn’t go away as it ought to.”
The doctor motioned her very impolitely to stop talking, and listened very hard through his little tubes. Then he turned around and looked at Aunt Frances as though he were angry at her. He said, “Take the child away and then come back here yourself.”
And that was almost all that Elizabeth Ann ever knew of the forces which swept her away from the life which had always gone on, revolving about her small person, exactly the same ever since she could remember.
You have heard so much about tears in the account of Elizabeth Ann’s life so far that I won’t tell you much about the few days which followed, as the family talked over and hurriedly prepared to obey the doctor’s verdict, which was that Aunt Harriet was very, very sick and must go away at once to a warm climate, and Aunt Frances must go, too, but not Elizabeth Ann, for Aunt Frances would need to give all her time to taking care of Aunt Harriet. And anyhow the doctor didn’t think it best, either for Aunt Harriet or for Elizabeth Ann, to have them in the same house.
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
