About a little girl, Elizabeth Ann, who was being raised by her great-aunt and first-cousin-once-removed, with the best of intentions. Except that one day, when they bring in a doctor and don't quite believe him when he says Elizabeth Ann is perfectly healthy, the great-aunt coughs, and the doctor diagnoses the great-aunt.
After a plot twist, the little girl finds herself packed off to the Putney farm, though those were the relatives that the great-aunt and cousin most wished to keep her from. (Why they gave children chores, like they were hired hands.)
And it traces through her life there, involving school and kittens and what grade she's in, a trip to the fair that goes very wrong, sewing and falling in a pit, and rather more. Light and sweet.