he had not thought of much--the old
lady. "My Aunt Enticknapp," her mother always called her; a difficult
and ugly name to begin with, and very hard to pronounce. Would she be
pleasant? or would she be cross and full of corners like her name?
Whatever she was, she was a perfect stranger, and Susan felt sure she
should not want to stay with her all the winter. It was certainly a
hard case, and the more she considered it the less she liked it. She
wondered if Nurse and Maria would say anything more, but soon the little
clock on the mantelpiece struck ten, they put away their work and went
down to supper. Then Susan fixed her round brown eyes on the glowing
fire. "Por little thing!" someone seemed to go on saying over and over
again, each time more slowly. At last it got very slow indeed: "Por--
little--" and while she waited for it to say "thing," she fell asleep.

But she remembered it all directly she woke the next morning, and made
up her mind that she must find out more about Aunt Enticknapp than she
had yet done. Amongst other things she must know her Christian name.
It would not be very easy, because just now everyone in the house, and
her mother above all, seemed to have so much to think of that they had
no time to answer questions properly. Susan had never been encouraged
to ask questions, and it would be more than usually difficult at
present, for there was a mysterious bustle going on all over the house,
and nothing was just as usual. She constantly found strange boxes and
packages in different rooms, with her mother and nurse in anxious
consultation over them, and she was allowed to go where she liked and do
as she liked, provided only that she did not get in the way or give
trouble; above all, she knew she must not ask many questions, or say
"why" often, for that worried people more than anything. The governess,
who came every day to teach Susan and Freddie, had given them her last
lesson yesterday, and said "good-bye;" she was not coming again, she
told them, for the whole winter. In this state of things the only
person in the house who seemed always good-tempered and ready to talk
was Maria, the nursery-maid--perhaps she had not so much on her mind.
It was not, however, at all satisfactory to make inquiries of Maria,
for, with the best will in the world, and an eager desire to please, she
was rather stupid, and could seldom give any answer worth having.

So Susan had little hope of learning much