There was one dream, however, that even conscientious Aunt Frances never tried to analyze, because it was too sad.  Elizabeth Ann dreamed sometimes that she was dead and lay in a little white coffin with white roses over her.  Oh, that made Aunt Frances cry, and so did Elizabeth Ann.  It was very touching.  Then, after a long, long time of talk and tears and sobs and hugs, the little girl would begin to get drowsy, and Aunt Frances would rock her to sleep in her arms, and lay her down ever so quietly, and slip away to try to get a little nap herself before it was time to get up.

At a quarter of nine every weekday morning Aunt Frances dropped whatever else she was doing, took Elizabeth Ann’s little, thin, white hand protectingly in hers, and led her through the busy streets to the big brick school-building where the little girl had always gone to school.  It was four stories high, and when all the classes were in session there were six hundred children under that one roof.  You can imagine, perhaps, the noise there was on the playground just before school!  Elizabeth Ann shrank from it with all her soul, and clung more tightly than ever to Aunt Frances’s hand as she was led along through the crowded, shrieking masses of children.  Oh, how glad she was that she had Aunt Frances there to take care of her, though as a matter of fact nobody noticed the little thin girl at all, and her very own classmates would hardly have known whether she came to school or not.  Aunt Frances took her safely through the ordeal of the playground, then up the long, broad stairs, and pigeonholed her carefully in her own schoolroom.  She was in the third grade,—­3A, you understand, which is almost the fourth.

Then at noon Aunt Frances was waiting there, a patient, never-failing figure, to walk home with her little charge; and in the afternoon the same thing happened over again.  On the way to and from school they talked about what had happened in the class.  Aunt Frances believed in sympathizing with a child’s life, so she always asked about every little thing, and remembered to inquire about the continuation of every episode, and sympathized with all her heart over the failure in mental arithmetic, and triumphed over Elizabeth Ann’s beating the Schmidt girl in spelling, and was indignant over the teacher’s having pets.  Sometimes in telling over some very dreadful failure or disappointment Elizabeth Ann would get so wrought up that she would cry.  This always brought the ready tears to Aunt Frances’s kind eyes, and with many soothing words and nervous, tremulous caresses she tried to make life easier for poor little Elizabeth Ann.  The days when they had cried they could neither of them eat much luncheon.

After school and on Saturdays there was always the daily walk, and there were lessons, all kinds of lessons—­piano-lessons of course, and nature-study lessons out of an excellent book Aunt Frances had bought, and painting lessons, and sewing lessons, and even a little French, although Aunt Frances was not very sure about her own pronunciation.  She wanted to give the little girl every possible advantage, you see.  They were really inseparable.  Elizabeth Ann once said to some ladies calling on her aunts that whenever anything happened in school, the first thing she thought of was what Aunt Frances would think of it.