After dinner Cousin Ann looked up at the clock and said:  “My goodness!  Betsy’ll be late for school if she doesn’t start right off.”  She explained to the child, aghast at this sudden thunderclap, “I let you sleep this morning as long as you wanted to, because you were so tired from your journey.  But of course there’s no reason for missing the afternoon session.”

As Elizabeth Ann continued sitting perfectly still, frozen with alarm, Cousin Ann jumped up briskly, got the little coat and cap, helped her up, and began inserting the child’s arms into the sleeves.  She pulled the cap well down over Elizabeth Ann’s ears, felt in the pocket and pulled out the mittens.  “There,” she said, holding them out, “you’d better put them on before you go out, for it’s a real cold day.”  As she led the stupefied little girl along toward the door Aunt Abigail came after them and put a big sugar-cookie into the child’s hand.  “Maybe you’ll like to eat that for your recess time,” she said.  “I always did when I went to school.”

Elizabeth Ann’s hand closed automatically about the cookie, but she scarcely heard what was said.  She felt herself to be in a bad dream.  Aunt Frances had never, no never, let her go to school alone, and on the first day of the year always took her to the new teacher and introduced her and told the teacher how sensitive she was and how hard to understand; and then she stayed there for an hour or two till Elizabeth Ann got used to things!  She could not face a whole new school all alone—­ oh, she couldn’t, she wouldn’t!  She couldn’t!  Horrors!  Here she was in the front hall—­she was on the porch!  Cousin Ann was saying:  “Now run along, child.  Straight down the road till the first turn to the left, and there in the cross-roads, there you are.”  And now the front door closed behind her, the path stretched before her to the road, and the road led down the hill the way Cousin Ann had pointed.  Elizabeth Ann’s feet began to move forward and carried her down the path, although she was still crying out to herself, “I can’t!  I won’t!  I can’t!”

Are you wondering why Elizabeth Ann didn’t turn right around, open the front door, walk in, and say, “I can’t!  I won’t!  I can’t!” to Cousin Ann?

The answer to that question is that she didn’t do it because Cousin Ann was Cousin Ann.  And there’s more in that than you think!  In fact, there is a mystery in it that nobody has ever solved, not even the greatest scientists and philosophers, although, like all scientists and philosophers, they think they have gone a long way toward explaining something they don’t understand by calling it a long name.  The long name is “personality,” and what it means nobody knows, but it is perhaps the very most important thing in the world for all that.  And yet we know only one or two things about it.  We know that anybody’s personality is made up of the sum total of all the actions and thoughts and desires of his life.  And we know that though there aren’t any words or any figures in any language to set down that sum total accurately, still it is one of the first things that everybody knows about anybody else.  And that is really all we know!