"Cousin Achsa!" she repeated the name slowly, wondering just how she
ought to pronounce it. She pictured Cousin Achsa living in a square
white cupolaed house of noble dimensions that crowned a rocky eminence
from which a sweeping view of ocean distances might be had.
This picture had no more than shaped itself in her mind than the
resolution formed to communicate at once with Asabel and Achsa. Not a
day must be lost. When one had girded oneself to set forth in quest of
the Gleam one must not dally over any uncertainties.
Sidney climbed on to the box before the high desk and spread the book
before her for reference in spelling her relatives' names. Then she
took out a sheet of writing paper and dipped an old pen into a bottle
of ink.
Her imagination seething, it was not difficult to frame her unusual
letter. Indeed, the writing of it fell into quite easy lines.
"Dear Cousin Achsa:
"You will be very much surprised to get a letter from your second
cousin, Sidney Ellis Romley. But I have heard my mother speak of
you often. (Let it be said in justice to Sidney that she hesitated
over this outrageous fib, then decided it was justified by the
necessity for tact. However, some quick calculation caused her to
amend her statement.) At least my older sisters have told me that
she spoke often of you. You see she died when I was a baby. My
father is dead, too. I live with my sisters in Middletown. I am the
youngest though I am fifteen.
"My sisters have travelled extensively but I have never gone
anywhere. But this summer I am going to have the Egg which is a sum
of money that comes to us each year. (Here Sidney had paused to
consider whether she ought to confess that her father had been a
poet. She decided she need not.) I can spend the Egg any way I want
to. I think I will go somewhere on a train. I came across a family
tree of the New England Ellises which told all about the Greens,
too, and Ezekiel Green who is your father as you know and his good
ship the _Betsy King_ which I think was thrilling and how his soul
is with his Maker and all about you and Cousin Asabel and it was so
interesting, I mean the Greens, not the Ellises, that I have
decided to visit you if it is convenient. I will not be any
trouble. I wish you would write and tell me if I can come. I shall
await your letter with trembling expectancy.
"Your most affectionate and new-found Cousin,
"Sidney Ellis Romley."
Sidney hurried the letter into an envelope, sealed it and addressed it.
For a dreadful moment she wondered if she ought to know a street number
in Provincetown. This Achsa might have married and have another name.
Then she remembered that Isolde always put their own address in one
corner of her envelopes. She printed it on hers in square letters.
"There, it'll come back to me if it doesn't find Cousin Achsa! But, oh,
I hope it does."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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