The brown-haired one took a long, strong step or two and swung her up on the porch. “You take her in, Mother,” she said. “I’ll help Father unhitch.”
The fat, rosy, white-haired one took Elizabeth Ann’s skinny, cold little hand in her soft warm fat one, and led her along to the open kitchen door. “I’m your Aunt Abigail,” she said. “Your mother’s aunt, you know. And that’s your Cousin Ann that lifted you down, and it was your Uncle Henry that brought you out from town.” She shut the door and went on, “I don’t know if your Aunt Harriet ever happened to tell you about us, and so ...”
Elizabeth Ann interrupted her hastily, the recollection of all Aunt Harriet’s remarks vividly before her. “Oh yes, oh yes!” she said. “She always talked about you. She talked about you a lot, she ...” The little girl stopped short and bit her lip.
If Aunt Abigail guessed from the expression on Elizabeth Ann’s face what kind of talking Aunt Harriet’s had been, she showed it only by a deepening of the wrinkles all around her eyes. She said, gravely: “Well, that’s a good thing. You know all about us then.” She turned to the stove and took out of the oven a pan of hot baked beans, very brown and crispy on top (Elizabeth Ann detested beans), and said, over her shoulder, “Take your things off, Betsy, and hang ’em on that lowest hook back of the door. That’s your hook.”
The little girl fumbled forlornly with the fastenings of her cape and the buttons of her coat. At home, Aunt Frances or Grace had always taken off her wraps and put them away for her. When, very sorry for herself, she turned away from the hook, Aunt Abigail said: “Now you must be cold. Pull a chair right up here by the stove.” She was stepping around quickly as she put supper on the table. The floor shook under her. She was one of the fattest people Elizabeth Ann had ever seen. After living with Aunt Frances and Aunt Harriet and Grace the little girl could scarcely believe her eyes. She stared and stared.
Aunt Abigail seemed not to notice this. Indeed, she seemed for the moment to have forgotten all about the newcomer. Elizabeth Ann sat on the wooden chair, her feet hanging (she had been taught that it was not manners to put her feet on the rungs), looking about her with miserable, homesick eyes. What an ugly, low-ceilinged room, with only a couple of horrid kerosene lamps for light; and they didn’t keep any girl, evidently; and they were going to eat right in the kitchen like poor people; and nobody spoke to her or looked at her or asked her how she had “stood the trip”; and here she was, millions of miles away from Aunt Frances, without anybody to take care of her. She began to feel the tight place in her throat which, by thinking about hard, she could always turn into tears, and presently her eyes began to water.
Aunt Abigail was not looking at her at all, but she now stopped short in one of her rushes to the table, set down the butter-plate she was carrying, and said “There!” as though she had forgotten something. She stooped—it was perfectly amazing how spry she was—and pulled out from under the stove a half-grown kitten, very sleepy, yawning and stretching, and blinking its eyes. “There, Betsy!” said Aunt Abigail, putting the little yellow and white ball into the child’s lap. “There is one of old Whitey’s kittens that didn’t get given away last summer, and she pesters the life out of me. I’ve got so much to do. When I heard you were coming, I thought maybe you would take care of her for me. If you want to, enough to bother to feed her and all, you can have her for your own.”
Elizabeth Ann bent her thin face over the warm, furry, friendly little animal. She could not speak. She had always wanted a kitten, but Aunt Frances and Aunt Harriet and Grace had always been sure that cats brought diphtheria and tonsilitis and all sorts of dreadful diseases to delicate little girls. She was afraid to move for fear the little thing would jump down and run away, but as she bent cautiously toward it the necktie of her middy blouse fell forward and the kitten in the middle of a yawn struck swiftly at it with a soft paw. Then, still too sleepy to play, it turned its head and began to lick Elizabeth Ann’s hand with a rough little tongue. Perhaps you can imagine how thrilled the little girl was at this!
She held her hand perfectly still until the kitten stopped and began suddenly washing its own face, and then she put her hands under it and very awkwardly lifted it up, burying her face in the soft fur. The kitten yawned again, and from the pink-lined mouth came a fresh, milky breath. “Oh!” said Elizabeth Ann under her breath. “Oh, you darling!” The kitten looked at her with bored, speculative eyes.
Elizabeth Ann looked up now at Aunt Abigail and said, “What is its name, please?” But the old woman was busy turning over a griddle full of pancakes and did not hear. On the train Elizabeth Ann had resolved not to call these hateful relatives by the same name she had for dear Aunt Frances, but she now forgot that resolution and said, again, “Oh, Aunt Abigail, what is its name?”