Susan Coolidge

What Katy Did at School Susan Coolidge

Publisher Marketing: It was just after that happy visit of which I told at the end of "What Katy Did," that Elsie and John made their famous excursion to Conic Section; an excursion which neither of them ever forgot, and about which the family teased them for a long time afterward. The summer had been cool; but, as often happens after cool summers, the autumn proved unusually hot. It seemed as if the months had been playing a game, and had "changed places" all round; and as if September were determined to show that he knew how to make himself just as disagreeable as August, if only he chose to do so. All the last half of Cousin Helen's stay, the weather was excessively sultry. She felt it very much, though the children did all they could to make her comfortable, with shaded rooms, and iced water, and fans. Every evening the boys would wheel her sofa out on the porch, in hopes of coolness; but it was of no use: the evenings were as warm as the days, and the yellow dust hanging in the air made the sunshine look thick and hot. A few bright leaves appeared on the trees, but they were wrinkled, and of an ugly color. Clover said she thought they had been boiled red like lobsters. Altogether, the month was a trying one, and the coming of October made little difference: still the dust continued, and the heat; and the wind, when it blew, had no refreshment in it, but seemed to have passed over some great furnace which had burned out of it all life and flavor. Contributor Bio:  Coolidge, Susan Susan Coolidge was the pen name of nineteenth-century American author Sarah Chauncey Woolsey. Born to wealth, Coolidge worked as a nurse during the Civil War before returning to her family home to take up a career in writing. Although best known for her classic Katy series of children's novels including What Katy Did and What Katy Did Next, Coolidge also published more than twenty works of fiction, and edited The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mrs. Delaney and The Diary and Letter of Frances Burney. Coolidge died in 1905.