Uncle Doctor’s eyes twinkled at that.
“They have school in the country, you monkey,” he informed Elizabeth Ann. “Doris’s mother doesn’t expect her to stay out of school; she is to go to a little country school and so will you, if you are sent to the country with her. So, Elizabeth Ann, it looks as though you’d be educated, come what may.”
Elizabeth Ann was silent for a moment.
“Well,” she said presently, “I don’t mind a new school. I like a change. So does Doris. Perhaps it made her sick to go to the same school too long.”
“I wish I knew what to do,” Cousin Nellie worried. “I can’t seem to decide. How do we know what kind of a place the school will be; and suppose there are heavy snow storms this winter?”
“Elizabeth Ann won’t melt,” said Uncle Doctor cheerfully. “Though she is sweet enough to be sugar she isn’t—and a snow storm won’t hurt her. Anyway, you can’t decide, Nellie, till we get to Seabridge and see what Jennie has to say. I want to look Doris over, too—she may be well enough to go on as usual to what Elizabeth Ann ungratefully calls ‘the same school.’”
So that was the way it was left—Cousin Nellie and Uncle Doctor would decide when they reached Seabridge and talked to Doris’s mother. Elizabeth Ann, though, kept hoping that she and Doris might go to a new school. As she told Lyn, it would be more exciting, and perhaps she could take Antonio, her beautiful white cat with her.
It seemed only a day or two later that the packing was done and all the good-bys said—Mr. Hawkins and Mr. and Mrs. Hanson and the factory nurse and Mr. Fitcher, the farmer Elizabeth Ann had made friends with, and his wife and all the Fitcher children, came to say good-by and tell how much they would miss Elizabeth Ann. Lyn cried, too, until Cousin Nellie reminded her that next year she was coming North to pay her a visit. That made Lyn feel much better.
The trip to Seabridge was long and rather tiresome, for the roads were dusty in some places and oily in others. Uncle Doctor and Lex took turns driving and Elizabeth Ann and Muffins rode with Cousin Nellie on the back seat. They stopped at hotels for two nights and they were all glad when they came in sight of the beautiful rolling ocean. Elizabeth Ann spoke for them all when she said, “Going to Cally was fun, because it was a new road; but coming home was just work because there wasn’t anything to surprise us.”
The Masons lived in a little brown house close to the beach, and they were everyone of them at the front door to welcome the travelers. Elizabeth Ann had to look twice at a little girl with a white face and two great dark eyes, before she saw that it was Doris.