It was a very small thing, too. Aunt Harriet coughed.
Elizabeth Ann did not think it at all a bad-sounding cough in comparison
with Grace's hollow whoop; Aunt Harriet had been coughing like that ever
since the cold weather set in, for three or four months now, and nobody
had thought anything of it, because they were all so much occupied in
taking care of the sensitive, nervous little girl who needed so much
care.
And yet, at the sound of that little discreet cough behind Aunt
Harriet's hand, the doctor whirled around and fixed his sharp eyes on
her, with all the bored, impatient look gone, the first time Elizabeth
Ann had ever seen him look interested. "What's that? What's that?" he
said, going over quickly to Aunt Harriet. He snatched out of his little
bag a shiny thing with two rubber tubes attached, and he put the ends of
the tubes in his ears and the shiny thing up against Aunt Harriet, who
was saying, "It's nothing, Doctor ... a little teasing cough I've had this
winter. And I meant to tell you, too, but I forgot it, that that sore
spot on my lungs doesn't go away as it ought to."
The doctor motioned her very impolitely to stop talking, and listened
very hard through his little tubes. Then he turned around and looked at
Aunt Frances as though he were angry at her. He said, "Take the child
away and then come back here yourself."
And that was almost all that Elizabeth Ann ever knew of the forces which
swept her away from the life which had always gone on, revolving about
her small person, exactly the same ever since she could remember.
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