Aunt Jennie sent a telegram to Uncle Hiram that night and two days later he came. He looked, Elizabeth Ann decided as soon as she saw him, exactly like the kind of a man who would live in a boat. For one thing, he was dressed in dark blue clothes with brass buttons and he wore a cap instead of a hat. Uncle Hiram looked like a sailor.

“He was captain of a ship before he married Aunt Grace,” Doris explained to Elizabeth Ann.

Uncle Hiram talked like a sailor, too. He came to lunch and said he had no idea it was “mess time.” And he talked about the wind, and kept looking at the sky as though it was most important to keep an eye on the weather.

Everyone liked him. He had curly white hair and a curly white beard and a deep voice and the nicest smile. He called his car “a clipper” and said he had had no trouble at all navigating the waters on the way down to Seabridge. Elizabeth Ann made up her mind that it was going to be fun to visit someone who talked about ships and the ocean all the time, even when he was living on the dry land.

Aunt Jennie had packed a trunk for Elizabeth Ann and Doris and this had been sent on ahead by train to Gardner, which was the town nearest to Uncle Hiram’s farm. And, since Gardner was some distance from Seabridge, it was necessary for the two little girls to rise very early the morning after Uncle Hiram came, so that he could make the trip in one day.

“School opens day after to-morrow,” said Uncle Hiram in his deep voice. “Can’t have you absent on the first day, you know. Can’t have the teacher say those girls who come from the Bonnie Susie, are slow about learning their lessons.”

“What is the Bonnie Susie?” Elizabeth Ann whispered to Doris. But Uncle Hiram heard her.

“It’s our house,” he explained. “I named it after my first ship. I wanted to call it the Bonnie Grace, but my wife wouldn’t hear of it; said she didn’t want the whole countryside to know there was a house named after her.”

“I think it is nice to have a house named after you,” said Elizabeth Ann, wondering how it would sound to have a house, or a boat, named “The Elizabeth Ann.”

Uncle Hiram was anxious to be off, and Aunt Jennie hurried everyone through breakfast. Then they all came out to the car to help tuck Elizabeth Ann and Doris in, and to see that Tony was as comfortable as possible in his wicker basket. It can not be said that Tony liked to travel, but Elizabeth Ann hoped he would like his new home when he eventually reached there.

“Take in the gang plank,” said Uncle Hiram, when his passengers were finally settled.

That, Elizabeth Ann discovered, meant to close the car door. “Full steam ahead,” said Uncle Hiram and started the car.

“Good-by, good-by!” cried all the Masons; and Elizabeth Ann and Doris waved and waved till they could see the little brown house no longer.

Now if Elizabeth Ann had been all alone, or if Doris had been alone, each little girl might have felt a bit homesick at that moment—riding away in a strange car with a strange uncle. But two little girls can’t feel forlorn when they have each other; and besides, as Elizabeth Ann wrote to Uncle Doctor later, it took a great deal of time to understand what Uncle Hiram was saying. Because he talked like a sailor, and neither Elizabeth Ann nor Doris understood sailor talk.

It was a most beautiful September day and the roads were lined with goldenrod. Elizabeth Ann would have liked Tony to enjoy the scenery but she didn’t feel that it would be safe to take him from his basket, and Uncle Hiram said that he agreed with her.

“Cats have to get used to strange ships,” he rumbled in his deep voice. “Wait till we get Tony to the Bonnie Susie and he’ll feel at home in a couple of days.”

Elizabeth Ann, watching the gray road roll out like a piece of ribbon in front of the car, thought often of Uncle Hiram’s house. Doris had said it was like a boat.

“But of course,” said Elizabeth Ann to herself, “it can’t be a real boat. I never saw a real boat on the land. And Uncle Hiram lives on a farm, and you have to live in a house when you live on a farm.”

She was wondering about Uncle Hiram’s house, when his deep voice spoke to her and she jumped a little.

“Well, mess-mate,” said Uncle Hiram pleasantly, “what do you say to stopping at the next place where there is something to eat?”

“I think it would be nice to stop,” Elizabeth Ann declared promptly.

“I’m hungry, too,” announced Doris, and it was a pity her mother couldn’t hear her, for Doris had not been hungry lately.

“Guess we’ll have to coal ship, too,” said Uncle Hiram and Elizabeth Ann looked at Doris helplessly.

“I mean, we need some gas for the car,” Uncle Hiram added. “I forget you haven’t signed up with a ship before. But you’ll learn in time—you’ll learn in time.”

They came to a filling station with a nice, clean-looking restaurant attached and Uncle Hiram drove in. He helped Elizabeth Ann and Doris out and then looked at the basket in which Tony was fastened.

“How do we feed the cat?” he asked.

Elizabeth Ann had traveled with Tony before. She knew how to take care of him.

“If there is a quiet place, I can take him out of the basket,” she explained. “He likes liver and milk, but he won’t eat if there is much noise, or many people looking at him.”

“He’s a cat after my own heart,” declared Uncle Hiram. “I can’t enjoy my food if a crowd has to sit and stare at every mouthful I take. We’ll see what we can do.”

Well, what Uncle Hiram could do was to take one of the tables in a row of little alcoves. The table had seats built on two sides of it, and there were pink and blue curtains that could be drawn across the doorway, so that the alcove was almost like a separate room. Elizabeth Ann and Doris sat on one side of the table, and Uncle Hiram sat on the other, while a little waitress in a pink and white frock and a green apron brought them hot rolls filled with creamed chicken, and glasses of milk and, for Tony, a green and white enameled dish with tiny pieces of liver all cut up ready for him to eat.

“Here’s your lunch, Tony,” Elizabeth Ann whispered, opening the basket carefully.

Out popped the white head and green eyes of Tony. He looked around the alcove and apparently approved of it. The dish of liver was on the floor and Elizabeth Ann put him down beside it and he went to eating not greedily, but daintily and slowly, as Tony always ate.

“You’ll be eating supper in the Bonnie Susie to-night,” said Uncle Hiram, looking hard at Doris’s glass of milk.

Doris thought he meant her to drink it (which he did) and she took a long swallow. “Is—is the Bonnie Susie a house or a boat?” asked Elizabeth Ann, her curiosity getting the better of her.

“Wait and see,” Uncle Hiram said with a smile.

“It’s a boat!” declared Doris. “I told you it was a boat, Elizabeth Ann.”

“Well, you——” began Elizabeth Ann.

She had intended to say, “You never saw it,” and suggest that Doris might be mistaken.

But instead she glanced down under the table and cried in alarm, “Where’s Tony? Tony isn’t here!”

Tony wasn’t there—he had disappeared. He had licked his dish as clean as clean could be and then had vanished.

“I’ll find him—likely as not he is prowling around the restaurant, in the main room,” said Uncle Hiram. “You two children stay here and I’ll round up the culprit. We can’t allow mutiny on board this craft.”

Uncle Hiram went out through the curtains and Elizabeth Ann and Doris waited. He didn’t come back and he didn’t come back.

“I can’t go away and leave him here,” whispered Elizabeth Ann, feeling as though she would like to cry. “He would be so unhappy if he found out I’d gone off with Uncle Hiram and left him.”

“Serve him right,” Doris said rather crossly. “Anyway, Uncle Hiram won’t let you stay here to wait for Tony; if that cat doesn’t come back, you’ll just have to go and leave him.”

Doris, you see, was a little tired and as people often are, who have been ill, inclined to be cross. She didn’t want Elizabeth Ann to be unhappy, but neither did she want to have their journey interrupted by a search for Elizabeth Ann’s cat.

“I just have to find him,” said Elizabeth Ann. “I’m going to open that door and see where it goes.”

She pointed to a door in the wall behind them—a closed door. But it wasn’t a locked door for it opened when Elizabeth Ann turned the knob, and there was a flight of steps leading down to the cellar.

“You’d better stay right here,” Doris told her, and that was certainly good advice. Elizabeth Ann, unfortunately, didn’t always take good advice.

“I’m going down to look for Tony,” she said firmly. “You stay there so you can tell Uncle Hiram where I’ve gone.”

And down the steps went Miss Elizabeth Ann, into a perfectly strange cellar.

It wasn’t dark—that is, it wasn’t so very dark. She began to call softly for Tony as she went down the steps and when she found herself on the cement floor she thought she saw him moving among the shadows. But when she walked toward what she thought was the cat, Elizabeth Ann discovered that it was only a piece of wood someone had dropped as they carried an armful up for the fire.

“Here, Tony, Tony!” called Elizabeth Ann.

The cellar seemed to have little rooms arranged around it—Elizabeth Ann wrinkled her nose at the spaces where coal and wood were piled, and the potatoes and onions and other vegetables heaped in neat piles in some of the other rooms. But when she came to a place just lined with shelves, Elizabeth Ann paused. She forgot Tony for a moment, too. “It looks like the pantry Aunt Hester had in her house,” thought Elizabeth Ann.

These shelves were filled with glass jars, just as Aunt Hester’s shelves had been filled. Elizabeth Ann knew what was in the jars—fruit and jam and jellies—perhaps vegetables, too. She opened the gate made of slats and went in to have a better look.

“I thought so!” said a sharp voice behind her. “I’m not a bit surprised. Put out your hand!”

Too surprised to disobey, Elizabeth Ann held out her little right hand.

At once she felt three hard stinging blows across it—blows from a ruler the owner of the sharp voice held in her hand.

“Now you march right upstairs,” commanded the sharp voice.