At that first inspection Sidney had felt no particular sense of belonging herself to the suspended grapefruits; the only thought that had held her was how many, many years it had taken all those people to live and what a little minute to read their names. But finding an "Ann Ellis" in a corner of the tree had brought them suddenly close to her. "Ann Ellis Green"--why, that was her mother's name. She and Nancy figured out at once that these were her mother's ancestors--_her_ ancestors. Nancy had supplied the word. Nancy had been deeply impressed by the Tree and the Coat-of-Arms which had come down to these Ellises from a Welsh baron of feudal times. She had urged Sidney to use it on her school papers. But neither the Coat-of-Arms nor the Tree held any especial value to Sidney, brought up as she had been in a state of family isolation, until this moment. Now the little book offered the reasonable possibility that each ancestor recorded therein had had children, just as that Ann Ellis in the round enclosure had had her mother and her mother in turn had had Isolde and Trude and Vick and herself. These children would be cousins--and cousins were what she needed! She remembered certain notations that had been made in a fine script on back pages of the book. In search of cousins she now scanned these carefully, with a shivery feeling of prowling over dead bones--the writing was so queer and faded, the paper crackled and smelled so old. "Charles Ellis, son of James by Mary Martin, second wife. Served in the 102nd Regiment at Gettysburg. Awarded the Congressional Medal for exceptional bravery under fire." "Priscilla Ellis gave her life in the service of nursing through the epidemic of small-pox that swept Boston in the year of 18--" Sidney read this twice with a thrill. That was adventure for you. Small-pox. She wondered if Priscilla had been beautiful like Victoria and whether she had left a sweetheart to mourn her tragic death to the end of his days. She liked to think Priscilla had had such. That one Abner Ellis had been a Selectman for ten years did not interest her--she passed him for the next entry. "Ann Ellis married Jonathan Green, June 10, 1874. To this happy union has been born one precious daughter, our little Ann." Why, this "little Ann" was her own mother, of course. And the Jonathan Green who was her father had written in the book the little notes about all the Ellises so that when the "Little Ann" grew up she would know all about them and be proud--Priscilla who had died of small-pox and the ancestor with the Congressional Medal. Sidney suddenly thought it strange that her mother had cared so little for the family tree that she had left it, dusty and forgotten, in the attic. Probably that was because her mother had been too busy being a poet's wife to bother about dead and gone Ellises.