"Because it isn't fair that I shouldn't have my turn as well as the others--it's disagreeable to all of us. Now you just let me have my way, and say nothing else about it!" declared Elizabeth with authority, and as usual, she was allowed to have her way.
While Cousin Hannah undressed, moving ponderously about the little room, Elizabeth sat on the side of the bed, brushing her long blond hair, watching with critical admiration of the beautiful, the gleams of red and gold the lamplight cast upon its glittering strands, and formulating in her mind a plan to find out the secret of her birth--if secret there was.
She finally decided that plain speech was better than beating about the bush, and spoke in a carefully suppressed tone.
"Cousin Hannah," she said, with whispering decisiveness, "I want to know what you, and Mother and Mary were talking about in her room."
"Why, Libby!" exclaimed Cousin Hannah, plumping down upon the bed in her astonishment, "did you go and listen to what we was sayin'?"
"Indeed I didn't! But I couldn't help hearing you--and I think it's my right to know, if you were talking about me."
"But your Ma--but Jennie said she didn't want you should know," argued the bewildered Cousin Hannah, "land o' livin', girl, ain't you got a home, and people to care for you? Why in tunket can't you be satisfied with that?"
Certainty made Elizabeth calmly triumphant.
"I have felt, for a long time--ever since I can remember, that I was different from the rest of my family, though you didn't give me credit for having sense enough to see it. Of course, I love them all dearly but I can't help feeling that it's my right to know the truth, whatever it is. Cousin Hannah, is or is not my name Spooner?"
"Well," Cousin Hannah evaded the question, "what would you get out of it if your name wasn't Spooner?"