At first I thought it was going to be so nice, that I'd forget about
everything till Aunty May came back, but by and by, though they were
nice as nice can be, I began to miss Aunty May till it hurt like a
toothache.

I missed Aunty Edith, too, but Aunty May and I had played most together,
and next to Uncle Burt, I loved her best.

The Turners had an old ruined mill on their grounds, and we children
used to hang our bathing-suits in there and use it to dress in when we
went swimming in the creek.

It was very old, and all the machinery, the wheels and things, were made
of wood. Up in the top there was a nice big loft, with a wide window,
where nobody ever went. When I found this out, I took a broom up there
and swept it by the window, and got an old chair, and one of the old
barrels for a table, and when I didn't want to play with Charlotte and
Grace, or when it rained, I used to get a piece of bread or cake, or an
apple, and go off there, all by myself. Sometimes I read, sometimes I
wrote books and drew, and sometimes I just sat and thought about Uncle
Burt and Aunty May, and Aunty Edith. And it got nearer and nearer the
time for Aunty May to come back.

The very day that she was to come home, I was doing this, thinking
about her, I mean--a little harder than usual, because Mr. Turner had
told me at breakfast that after all Aunty May wouldn't be back till
to-morrow, when I heard somebody else breathing in the room. I turned
around, and there was Henry, the Indian boy from the Carlisle School,
sitting crouched on the floor.