Aunt Jennie sent a telegram to Uncle Hiram that night and two days later he came. He looked, Elizabeth Ann decided as soon as she saw him, exactly like the kind of a man who would live in a boat. For one thing, he was dressed in dark blue clothes with brass buttons and he wore a cap instead of a hat. Uncle Hiram looked like a sailor.
“He was captain of a ship before he married Aunt Grace,” Doris explained to Elizabeth Ann.
Uncle Hiram talked like a sailor, too. He came to lunch and said he had no idea it was “mess time.” And he talked about the wind, and kept looking at the sky as though it was most important to keep an eye on the weather.
Everyone liked him. He had curly white hair and a curly white beard and a deep voice and the nicest smile. He called his car “a clipper” and said he had had no trouble at all navigating the waters on the way down to Seabridge. Elizabeth Ann made up her mind that it was going to be fun to visit someone who talked about ships and the ocean all the time, even when he was living on the dry land.
Aunt Jennie had packed a trunk for Elizabeth Ann and Doris and this had been sent on ahead by train to Gardner, which was the town nearest to Uncle Hiram’s farm. And, since Gardner was some distance from Seabridge, it was necessary for the two little girls to rise very early the morning after Uncle Hiram came, so that he could make the trip in one day.
“School opens day after to-morrow,” said Uncle Hiram in his deep voice. “Can’t have you absent on the first day, you know. Can’t have the teacher say those girls who come from the Bonnie Susie, are slow about learning their lessons.”
“What is the Bonnie Susie?” Elizabeth Ann whispered to Doris. But Uncle Hiram heard her.
“It’s our house,” he explained. “I named it after my first ship. I wanted to call it the Bonnie Grace, but my wife wouldn’t hear of it; said she didn’t want the whole countryside to know there was a house named after her.”
“I think it is nice to have a house named after you,” said Elizabeth Ann, wondering how it would sound to have a house, or a boat, named “The Elizabeth Ann.”
Uncle Hiram was anxious to be off, and Aunt Jennie hurried everyone through breakfast. Then they all came out to the car to help tuck Elizabeth Ann and Doris in, and to see that Tony was as comfortable as possible in his wicker basket. It can not be said that Tony liked to travel, but Elizabeth Ann hoped he would like his new home when he eventually reached there.