“Why is that?” they asked, looking at Aunt Frances, who was blushing with pleasure.

“Oh, she is so interested in my school work!  And she understands me!” said Elizabeth Ann, repeating the phrases she had heard so often.

Aunt Frances’s eyes filled with happy tears.  She called Elizabeth Ann to her and kissed her and gave her as big a hug as her thin arms could manage.  Elizabeth Ann was growing tall very fast.  One of the visiting ladies said that before long she would be as big as her auntie, and a troublesome young lady.  Aunt Frances said:  “I have had her from the time she was a little baby and there has scarcely been an hour she has been out of my sight.  I’ll always have her confidence.  You’ll always tell Aunt Frances everything, won’t you, darling?” Elizabeth Ann resolved to do this always, even if, as now, she often had to invent things to tell.

Aunt Frances went on, to the callers:  “But I do wish she weren’t so thin and pale and nervous.  I suppose it is the exciting modern life that is so bad for children.  I try to see that she has plenty of fresh air.  I go out with her for a walk every single day.  But we have taken all the walks around here so often that we’re rather tired of them.  It’s often hard to know how to get her out enough.  I think I’ll have to get the doctor to come and see her and perhaps give her a tonic.”  To Elizabeth Ann she added, hastily:  “Now don’t go getting notions in your head, darling.  Aunt Frances doesn’t think there’s anything very much the matter with you.  You’ll be all right again soon if you just take the doctor’s medicine nicely.  Aunt Frances will take care of her precious little girl.  SHE’ll make the bad sickness go away.”  Elizabeth Ann, who had not known before that she was sick, had a picture of herself lying in the little white coffin, all covered over with white. ...  In a few minutes Aunt Frances was obliged to excuse herself from her callers and devote herself entirely to taking care of Elizabeth Ann.

So one day, after this had happened several times, Aunt Frances really did send for the doctor, who came briskly in, just as Elizabeth Ann had always seen him, with his little square black bag smelling of leather, his sharp eyes, and the air of bored impatience which he always wore in that house.  Elizabeth Ann was terribly afraid to see him, for she felt in her bones he would say she had galloping consumption and would die before the leaves cast a shadow.  This was a phrase she had picked up from Grace, whose conversation, perhaps on account of her asthma, was full of references to early graves and quick declines.