The sun rose higher and higher, and Elizabeth Ann grew hungrier and hungrier.  Finally it occurred to her that it was not absolutely necessary to have somebody tell her to get up.  She reached for her clothes and began to dress.  When she had finished she went out into the hall, and with a return of her aggrieved, abandoned feeling (you must remember that her stomach was very empty) she began to try to find her way downstairs.  She soon found the steps, went down them one at a time, and pushed open the door at the foot.  Cousin Ann, the brown-haired one, was ironing near the stove.  She nodded and smiled as the child came into the room, and said, “Well, you must feel rested!”

“Oh, I haven’t been asleep!” explained Elizabeth Ann.  “I was waiting for somebody to tell me to get up.”

“Oh,” said Cousin Ann, opening her black eyes a little.  “Were you?” She said no more than this, but Elizabeth Ann decided hastily that she would not add, as she had been about to, that she was also waiting for somebody to help her dress and do her hair.  As a matter of fact, she had greatly enjoyed doing her own hair—­the first time she had ever tried it.  It had never occurred to Aunt Frances that her little baby-girl had grown up enough to be her own hairdresser, nor had it occurred to Elizabeth Ann that this might be possible.  But as she struggled with the snarls she had had a sudden wild idea of doing it a different way from the pretty fashion Aunt Frances always followed.  Elizabeth Ann had always secretly envied a girl in her class whose hair was all tied back from her face, with one big knot in her ribbon at the back of her neck.  It looked so grown-up.  And this morning she had done hers that way, turning her neck till it ached, so that she could see the coveted tight effect at the back.  And still—­aren’t little girls queer?—­although she had enjoyed doing her own hair, she was very much inclined to feel hurt because Cousin Ann had not come to do it for her.

[Illustration:  She had greatly enjoyed doing her own hair.]

Cousin Ann set her iron down with the soft thump which Elizabeth Ann had heard upstairs.  She began folding a napkin, and said:  “Now reach yourself a bowl off the shelf yonder.  The oatmeal’s in that kettle on the stove and the milk is in the blue pitcher.  If you want a piece of bread and butter, here’s a new loaf just out of the oven, and the butter’s in that brown crock.”

Elizabeth Ann followed these instructions and sat down before this quickly assembled breakfast in a very much surprised silence.  At home it took the girl more than half an hour to get breakfast and set the table, and then she had to wait on them besides.  She began to pour the milk out of the pitcher and stopped suddenly.  “Oh, I’m afraid I’ve taken more than my share!” she said apologetically.

Cousin Ann looked up from her rapidly moving iron, and said, in an astonished voice:  “Your share?  What do you mean?”