Part 18 (1/2)

A low, flat rock invited her and she sat down. It was queer how different everything seemed up here. What looked large from below had dwindled amazingly. It took, she decided, a pretty big thing to look big on a hilltop.

She drew Aunt Margaret's letter out of her pocket and read it. It was very nice, but somehow had no tug to it. Phrases from a similar letter of Aunt Jessica's returned to the girl's mind. How stupid she had been not to appreciate that letter!--stupid and incredibly silly.

But hadn't she felt something else in her pocket just now? Conscience p.r.i.c.ked when she saw Elizabeth Royce's handwriting. The seal had not been broken, though the letter had come yesterday. She remembered now.

They were putting up corn and she had tucked it into her pocket for later reading and then had forgotten it completely. Luckily, Bess need never know that. But what would Bess have said to see her friend Elliott, corn to the right of her, corn to the left of her, cobs piled high in the summer kitchen?

Bess's staccato sentences furnished a sufficiently emphatic clue. ”You poor, abused dear! Whenever are you coming home? If I had an aeroplane I'd fly up and carry you off. You must be nearly _crazy_! Those letters you wrote were the most TRAGIC things! I shouldn't have been a bit surprised any time to hear you were sick. _Are_ you sick? Perhaps that's why you don't write or come home. Wire me _the minute you get this_. Oh, Elliott darling, when I think of you marooned in that awful place--”

There was more of it. As Elliott read, she did a strange thing. She began to laugh. But even while she laughed she blushed, too. _Had_ she sounded as desperate as all that? How far away such tragedies seemed now! Suppose she should write, ”Dear Bess, I like it up here and I am going to stay my year out.” Bess would think her crazy; so would all the girls, and Aunt Margaret, too.

And then suddenly an arresting idea came into her head. What difference would it make if they did think her crazy? Elliott Cameron had never had such an idea before; all her life she had in a perfectly nice way thought a great deal about what people thought of her. This idea was so strange it set her gasping. ”But how they would _talk_ about me!” she said. And then her brain clicked back, exactly like another person speaking, ”What if they did? That wouldn't really make you crazy, would it?” ”Why, no, I suppose it wouldn't,” she thought.

”And most likely they'd be all talked out by the time I got back, too.

But even if they weren't, any one would be crazy to think it was crazy to want to stay up here at Uncle Bob's and Aunt Jessica's. Even Stannard has stayed weeks longer than he needed to!”

When she thought of that she opened her eyes wide for a minute. ”Oho!”

she said to herself; ”I guess Stan did get a rise out of me! You were easy game that time, Elliott Cameron.”

She sat on her mossy stone a long time. There wasn't anything in the world, was there, to stand in the way of her staying her year out, the year she had been invited for, except her own silly pride? What a little goose she had been! She sat and smiled at the mountains and felt very happy and fresh and clean-minded, as though her brain had finished a kind of house-cleaning and were now put to rights again, airy and sweet and ready for use.

The postman's wagon flashed by on the road below. She could see the faded gray of the man's coat. He had been to the house and was townward bound now. How late he was! Nothing to hurry down for. There would be a letter, perhaps, but not one from Father. His had come yesterday. She rose after a while and drifted down through the still September warmth, as quiet and lazy and contented as a leaf.

Priscilla's small excited face met her at the door.

”Sidney's sick; we just got the letter. Mother's going to camp to-morrow.”

”Sidney sick! Who wrote? What's the matter?”

”He did. He's not much sick, but he doesn't feel just right. He's in the hospital. I guess he can't be much sick, if he wrote, himself.

Mother wasn't to come, he said, but she's going.”

”Of course.” Nervous fear clutched Elliott's throat, like an icy hand.

Oh, poor Aunt Jessica! Poor Laura!

”Where are they?” she asked.

”In Mumsie's room,” said Priscilla. ”We're all helping.”

Elliott mounted the stairs. She had to force her feet along, for they wished, more than anything else, to run away. What should she say? She tried to think of words. As it turned out, she didn't have to say anything.

Laura was the only person in Aunt Jessica's room when they reached it.

She sat in a low chair by a window, mending a gray blouse.

”Elliott's come to help, too,” announced Priscilla.

”That's good,” said Laura. ”You can put a fresh collar and cuffs in this gray waist of Mother's, Elliott--I'll have it done in a minute--while I go set the crab-apple jelly to drip. And perhaps you can mend this little tear in her skirt. Then I'll press the suit.

There isn't anything very tremendous to do.”