“Well, so this is Elizabeth Ann!” said the woman, stooping to kiss the small girl. “And here’s Doris. I’m Aunt Grace, and I can’t begin to tell you how glad I am to see you both.”
“How did you know which of us were which?” asked Elizabeth Ann, who was perfectly famous for asking questions, as her Uncle Doctor could have testified.
Aunt Grace seemed pleased at the question.
“Why I knew Doris had been ill,” she explained, “and when I saw you bounding ahead and looking the picture of health I knew you couldn’t be a little girl who had been sick recently. If you weren’t Doris, you must be Elizabeth Ann.”
This sounded most reasonable and Elizabeth Ann could understand.
Aunt Grace took them into the house and it was absolutely the nicest house they had ever been in—both Elizabeth Ann and Doris said so. In the first place, there were no stairs—there were ladders. Not the ordinary ladders that you see in barns, to be sure, nor yet the kind of ladder your mother may stand on when she hangs the curtains. No, the stairs in Uncle Hiram’s house were firm enough, but they were ladders for all that—you looked right through the steps as you went up and down. And the kitchen was called a galley, and there were no beds in the bedrooms, but bunks, built against the wall. A bunk is like a box and Elizabeth Ann for once in her life was eager to have bed-time come, so she could have the experience of sleeping in a bunk.
There was so much to see that neither Elizabeth Ann or Doris thought especially about supper, though they had been hungry an hour ago. But as soon as Uncle Hiram came in, after putting the car in the garage—which was a barn Elizabeth Ann discovered the next day—he asked Aunt Grace if supper was ready.
“I planned to get here by four bells,” he said.
Elizabeth Ann stared at him and somewhere in the house a clock struck some hour.
“It’s half-past six,” said Aunt Grace, “and supper is all ready and waiting.”