The Bird’s Nest Read Online Free PDF Page A

pleased, and I can remember perfectly well how you feel.”
    â€œBut I didn’t,” Elizabeth said. “I mean, I didn’t do anything.”
    â€œSuppose you didn’t
do
anything,” Aunt Morgen said reasonably, “that’s still no reason for not telling me, is it?” She laughed. “It’s if you
did
do something you ought to be scared,” she said.
    â€œBut I mean I didn’t do
any
thing.”
    â€œThen what
did
you do?” Aunt Morgen asked. “What on earth can you find to do at that hour of the night if you didn’t
do
anything?” She laughed again, and shook her head, bewildered. “What a
hell
of a way to talk,” she said. “Don’t you know any honest words?”
    â€œNo.” Elizabeth thought. “I mean,” she said, “I didn’t
do
anything.”
    â€œGood lord,” Aunt Morgen said. “Good holy lord God almighty, I can’t
say
it again. Are there any words,” she asked delicately, “which might communicate with your dainty brain? I am trying to ask you precisely what occurred, and with whom, at one o’clock last night.”
    â€œNothing,” said Elizabeth, twisting her hands.
    â€œI am by now completely convinced that it was nothing,” said Aunt Morgen fervently. “I am only astonished that he could have expected anything else. There must be people,” she said as though to herself, “like that in the world, but how does she find them? Who, then,” she continued to Elizabeth, “was this optimistic young man?”
    â€œNo one,” said Elizabeth.
    â€œBlood from a stone,” said Aunt Morgen, “gold from sea water, fire from snow. You’re your mother’s own daughter, mud up to the neck.” She laughed, unexpectedly good-humored. “I don’t know
why
,” she said, still laughing, “I should believe that
you
would go out on a cold night to meet a young man. My own private guess, being you’re your mother’s daughter, is that you’d make a big mystery of going out to mail a letter, and hope someone would think the worst of it. Or to find a nickel you lost last week. And if it
is
some fellow,” she added, pointing jeeringly at Elizabeth, “I’ll bet your poor dear father’s fortune
he
isn’t fooled. You’re like your mother, kiddo, a cheat and a liar, and neither of you could ever get around me.”
    â€œBut I didn’t,” Elizabeth said helplessly.
    â€œOf course you didn’t,” Aunt Morgen said. “Poor baby.” She rose and left the kitchen, and Elizabeth was finally able to get the dishcloth and wipe up the spilled milk.
    Â â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    There was still a gaping hole in her room at the museum, and it stayed just beyond her left elbow all day. In the morning mail, which included a letter asking the museum for a complete listing of the exhibits in the Insect Room, and a letter asking for a final decision upon an unparalleled collection of Navajo hammered silver, there was another letter for Elizabeth. “ha ha ha,” it read, “i know all about you dirty dirty lizzie and you cant get away from me and i wont ever leave you or tell you who i am ha ha ha.”
    Coming home that afternoon with the letter in her pocketbook Elizabeth stopped suddenly on the street between the bus stop and her aunt’s house. Someone, she thought distinctly, is writing letters to
me.
    She put this letter also into the red valentine box which had held chocolates on her twelfth birthday, and opened and reread the other two. “i will catch you . . .” “She’s all I have . . .” “you cant get away from me . . .”
    â€œWell?” Aunt Morgen said after dinner. “You decided to give in?”
    â€œI didn’t do anything.”
    â€œYou didn’t do anything,” Aunt Morgen said. “All