My lambs, I have now read Stepsisters For Lorna! It was such a solid lump of comfort, if I may apply that phrase to a non-doctor. All the old staples of an EBD book - some really dodgy parenting decisions, an aunt who steps in heroically, a feud, a seemingly mild injury that turned into a major drama requiring months of nursing and lying flat, followed by a somewhat hasty reconciliation scene out of the blue. I don't know if any of you have read Lorna at Wynyards, but if you haven't, Lorna's mum sends her off to stay with her aunt because Lorna's report says she is bumptious. Lorna is heartbroken because her mother is a total cow and farms her out rather than actually parent her herself, and refuses to let her go home for holidays. The aunt is nice and Lorna Makes Good. Her dad dies and her mother decides to go on a trip to Madeira with her daughter-in-law who is delicate. Lorna will stay with her aunt for the rest of her schooldays.
Stepsisters For Lorna opens about 6-9 months later, when Lorna's mother sends the most ridiculous letter you've ever heard to her sister (the nice aunt). She coolly informs her that she's getting married again, less than a year since her previous husband died, because she has met a delicate man who needs her to look after him. Romantic. Said man is a widower with two daughters of his own. One of them is very spoilt and tantrums like a three-year-old, despite being 13. Lorna's mother wants her sister to board them and send them to school with Lorna. Now, at this point I would be going "fuck off, Bess, deal with your own stepchildren. I am not nannying a spoilt 13 year-old who is fuck all to do with me. While you're at it, perhaps you could actually come back from Madeira for long enough to explain to your daughter why you're getting married again so quickly and deal with the fall-out re her feelings of betrayal of her dead dad." None of the children are invited to the wedding - the stepsisters have already been farmed out to the aunt, and neither Lorna nor her numerous adult siblings are invited either. The weird thing is that both girls (Rosemary and Marigold, who are pretty much dead ringers for Gillian and Joyce Linton in terms of looks and character) seem to like the mother. It's weird - her behaviour is pretty similar to, say, the Carricks, or Theodora Grantley's mother, but EBD presents it totally differently - Aunt Katt is not especially pleased to be asked to do all this, but at no point does she actually criticise her sister.
Anyway, naturally Marigold causes ructions. She is pretty irredeemedly BAD for most of the book, only to very suddenly repent at the end. I thought she was an interesting departure for EBD, because she is actually pretty nasty and spiteful for a main character.
My one quibble with Stepsisters is that EBD had clearly been reading What Katy Did just before she wrote it - she does reference Katy directly quite a lot and there is much discussion about a similar spinal injury. We have that old favourite of sprained back muscles, and the treatment is similar to that of Eustacia - basically, forget about physio, let's lie very still and flat.
But all in all, it was a lovely comforting delight to read! It was published in 1947 - there's a hospital admission where the doctor (another Dr Russell!) wants to keep Marigold for an extra month or two so Sister can squash her thoroughly and return her a much nicer girl - imagine that in the NHS! Oh, and at Christmas someone gets a new Josephine Bettany 
and a Phyllis Matthewman - wasn't she EBD's 'adopted sister'?