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!