Aunt Charlotte, the plump, capable aunt, was housekeeper, and was of a much more practical nature than the other “Granger girls,” as Hambro people knew them. Aunt Cassie actually had an attack of croup while Beth was in the house.
“And if you can beat that in August, I wish you’d tell me!” Molly exclaimed.
Aunt Cassie’s whole existence, it seemed, had been one series of coughs and colds. Aunt Cyril was very kind to Beth, but rather aloof. She could not wholly approve of a girl who did housework for her school tuition. Yet she was too sweet and lovable to snub her niece’s chum.
“They are just the sweetest, lovingest dears that ever lived—all of them!” Beth Baldwin declared to her mother, when she returned from this visit. “And the house is full of cats—both living ones and those Jolly Molly has drawn. The aunts are too tender-hearted to have a single kitten drowned, or to destroy even one of Molly’s attempts at feline portraiture.”
Beth was not in Hudsonvale long this time. The semester would soon open at Rivercliff, and she took the boat again for the twenty-four hour journey up the river.
Beth bade Larry good-bye the evening before she departed for school, and in full family assembled. The heart-high courage and happiness that had attended her first departure for school was lacking when the Water Wagtail left the Hudsonvale landing.
But Beth had many things to think of now that she had not dreamed of the year previous. She was much older, too—much more than a year older! And hers was not a nature that “hugged sorrow to its bosom.” She had too many plans for the future.
She wished to get to Rivercliff, get settled, and put out her “hospital” sign. Molly had painted a new one with an added line:
“First Aid to Lingerie”
She had counted on Mrs. Severn’s work as a solid asset for her school campaign. Arriving at Rivercliff on Friday, Saturday afternoon Beth called at Severn Lodge at her usual hour.