CHAPTER XV
TWO PENNIES TO SPEND
Jacqueline waked early on her first morning at the Conway farm. With arooster crowing under your window, you need no alarm clock, and with acozy six-year-old at your side, inclined to snuggle on a warm morning,you have no inducements to lie abed.
So Jacqueline jumped up and dressed herself. She put on the Peggy Janesthat she had marked with approval the night before, and she slipped herbare feet into Caroline's old sneakers. She washed her face and hands atthe marble-topped washstand. The washbasin had a green landscape in thebottom, very pleasant to look at through the clear water, but thepitcher belonged to a different set and was ornamented with purplebands.
Nellie chattered in a lively manner all through the hasty dressingprocess, mostly about some new kittens and a rooster named GeneralPershing. She dressed herself very handily, but she didn't scornJacqueline's help when it came to the back buttons of her underwaist andoveralls.
Early as the children were, they found, when they climbed down the funnysteep stairs into the kitchen, that Grandma and Aunt Martha and thebabies were up before them.
"That's a nice rig for the country, Jackie," Aunt Martha saidapprovingly, as she spied the Peggy Janes. "I'm glad you didn't bringany starched up city notions to the farm. There's time and place foreverything, of course," she added tolerantly, "but high heeled shoes andfrilly dresses don't go with the soil."
Freddie had remembered Jacqueline over night, perhaps because of thepiece of shapeless chocolate that she had popped into his mouth. Hethrew himself upon her with gurgles of greeting.
"He takes to you all right," said Grandma, as she paused with a pan ofbiscuits in her hand, midway from stove to table. "I wonder now if asmart girl like you couldn't take it on herself to dress him mornings.Every minute counts this time o' day, and your Aunt Martha has her handsfull."
"Sure I will," Jacqueline promised airily. She was promising only for afew days--just as few as she chose to make them. And she really did likeFreddie. He was more fun than a puppy dog.
"Just pump that pitcher full of water, Jackie, and fill the glasses atthe table," Aunt Martha struck in briskly. "Ring the bell, Nellie.Breakfast's about ready."
Nellie sprang on a chair, and took down a big dinner bell from the shelfabove the stove. But she didn't ring it at the foot of the stairs torouse her sleepy brothers--oh, no! She went out on the doorstone in thesoft clear morning air, and she clanged that bell as if all LongmeadowStreet were burning up.
Very quickly the three boys came scuffling in from the barn and shedswhere they had been doing the first chores of the day. They washedhurriedly at the sink--so hurriedly that Aunt Martha sent Neil back todo it all over again. Then they sat down to breakfast in the shabby,homely dining room, that wasn't a bit like the rural interiors thatJacqueline had seen on the stage and in the movies.
There were no frills about that breakfast any more than there had beenabout the supper. On the table was a big plate of hot raised biscuits,fluffy and light, and a platter of freshly cooked hash, meat andpotatoes (more potatoes than meat!) warmed on the stove in what AuntMartha called a "spider," crisp and brown on the outside, soft andsavory within. There was milk for the children, and coffee in a shinytin pot for Aunt Martha and Grandma. Freddie and Annie had porridge.Aunt Martha fed Annie spoonsful with one hand, and ate her own breakfastwith the other.
Both at Buena Vista and at school, fried things and hot breads had beenconsidered unhygienic. Being forbidden, they had always seemed toJacqueline desirable. She ate two helpings of hash and three biscuitsand a half. She wanted to eat four, the same as Dickie did, but she hadto give up, beaten. She could chew still, but she couldn't swallow.
"Now you and Nellie see how nice you can clear the table and wash thedishes, and then put the dining room to rights," said Aunt Martha, as ifshe asked the most natural thing in the world. "Grandma'll be here tooversee. I've got to go down to the ten acre, and see if that Polack ison the job, or just getting over the christening party they had lastnight at the Corners."
Aunt Martha tied on a straw hat, nodded to her family, and went hercompetent way. The boys went, too, quite like men of business. In thesedays of high wages, when Polish farm-hands expected fifty cents an hour,you either let your youngsters work in the fields, or closed up shop andwent "on the town," Grandma told Jacqueline, as one who endured whatcould not be cured. Ralph was as good as a man on the place, she addedproudly. He'd be weeding onions now until the sun got too hot. Dickieand Neil would be working in the vegetable garden, which supplied thefamily table and a few good paying customers on Longmeadow Street.
"They'll be hungry as horses by noon," said Grandma. "I guess I'll flaxround and stir 'em up some gingerbread."
Grandma seemed chief cook of the establishment. Already she had baked abatch of bread since she got up, and had dried-apple pies to pop intothe oven, and a piece of meat--to Jacqueline it looked mostly bone andgristle--simmering on the back of the stove, lest it spoil in the hotweather. She now mixed gingerbread, as spry as you please, and meantimegave directions about putting Annie outside in the baby pen, and takingthe table-leavings to the hens, and setting another kettle of hot waterto boil.
"You'll need some rinsing water or your dishes will be streaked," shetold Jacqueline. "There's a right way and a wrong way to do everything,even dishes, and it's just as easy to do it right as wrong." Jacquelinedidn't mind, for one day only. She thought dish washing rather a game.She and Nellie brought the things out from the dining room.
"Take the tray," said Grandma, "and bring a lot at a time. Always madeyour head save your heels."
Then they rinsed the milky glasses, and they scraped the plates.Jacqueline was going to add to the scraps for the hens the bit of hashthat was on the platter, but Grandma stopped her with a gesture ofpositive horror.
"Mercy, child! Don't throw away good clean victuals, even if the war_is_ over. Put it in that clean little cracked dish. It'll warm up niceand tasty for somebody's supper. The butter goes in that stone jar. Letthose biscuits cool before you put 'em into the bread box. Never shut uphot bread in a close box, or it'll spoil on you."
What a lot of things to remember, thought Jacqueline! This was moreexciting than mental arithmetic.
She washed the dishes just as Grandma told her, and Nellie wiped thempainstakingly. First they did the glasses, then "the silver"--poorplated ware that it was!
"Be sure to get the tines of the forks clean," cautioned Grandma. "Andremember, when we have eggs, not to plump your silver and your dishesinto hot water, or you'll cook the egg right to 'em. Wash eggy thingsfirst in cold water, always." After the silver, came the plates and thecups, and last of all "the calicoes," as Grandma called the cookingdishes. Then the dish pan must be scalded, and the dish towels set toboil upon the stove, and while they were boiling, Jacqueline brushed upthe dining room, rather an amateurish job, but Grandma said she tookhold handily. Then Jacqueline and Nellie, each with a big square of softcloth, dusted the dining room furniture, and last of all, they hungtheir dish towels out in the warm sun to dry.
By that time Jacqueline had had enough of housework. She was ready tosay so, and to quit right then and there. But Grandma said:
"You're a big help, Jackie. Your aunt's awful busy outside, and I'm notas quick on my feet as I was. Some days it seems like I'd never getthrough step-stepping."
Well, when a little old lady says a thing like that to you, of courseyou can't flop down on the dining-room couch with a story paper andleave her to work all alone. So while Nellie kept an eye on Freddie andAnnie, Jacqueline went upstairs with Grandma and did the chamber workand had her first lesson in bed-making. As there were four beds, besidesFreddie's crib, she had had quite a lot of practice by the time theyfinished.
"Make a handsome bed, you'll get a handsome husband, they used to tellme when I was a girl," chuckled Grandma. "You want to do your best,Jackie, unless you aim to be one o' these
new women that get alongwithout men folks."
After the beds were made, Jacqueline and Nellie each had a piece ofgingerbread, and they took two big pieces for Dickie and Neil, and wentout to them in the garden. It was quite a big garden, with poles ofbeans and rows of peas, trained up on dry bushes, tomato plants andcucumber vines, beets and lettuce, squash and pumpkins. But there wereno onions. You got onions by the peck out of the great fields thatspread all round the farm. For the Conways, like their neighbors, putall their land into onions, and on the price of onions their fortuneshung.
They dined at noon at the Conway farm, and dinner was all of coldthings, so as not to heat the kitchen in the middle of the day. Therewas ready cooked cereal, and a pitcher of milk. There were great slicesof home-made bread, with home-made plum jam. (Jacqueline had gone downwith Grandma into the deep cold cellar where the food was kept, and shehad seen the shelves where the jars of home-canned fruits and vegetableslived. Next time she could go down herself and save Grandma's old legs.)There was cottage cheese, and lettuce, and sliced tomatoes. There wasgingerbread--all the gingerbread that any one could wish to eat.
After the dinner dishes were cleared away and left to be washed at nightwhen it was cooler, Aunt Martha and Grandma sat down to sew and mend fortheir big family.
"We'll have to count on you to do your own mending," Aunt Martha toldJacqueline. "But you just run out to the barn now, and play."
Jacqueline went. She wanted to see those kittens. She also wanted to trysome hazardous stunts that she had thought up, as soon as she had seenthe beams and ladders in the barn. Neil and Nellie came with her, andDickie presently joined them. Of course Dickie could do acrobatic featsthat none of them could equal. But Jacqueline felt she did pretty wellat balancing on her hands for the first time, and she could put herankle behind her neck as well as any of them.
She thought they had been playing only the least little while, butreally it was in the middle of the afternoon when the big bell rang.They scampered at once to the house. That was the law of the farm:always run when you hear the bell, or you may miss something youwouldn't like to miss.
Aunt Martha was on the doorstone, talking to a bearded man in a muddyFord.
"Hurry up!" she called, as soon as the children came within earshot."Here's Mr. Griswold driving up to town and he has room for two. Getyour purse, Jackie. Here's a chance to buy you that toothbrush. Neil,you can go with her and show her the way home. You'll have to hoof itback, unless you find somebody coming down to the Meadows that will giveyou a lift."
Adventure beckoned! Jacqueline thought nothing of the walk through thedust in the heat. She flew upstairs and got Caroline's shabby purse, andflew down again. Perhaps where they were going, she could get a soda,one for herself and one, of course, for Neil.
Aunt Martha must have read her thoughts.
"Now don't you go wasting that money," she ordered. "You ought to getyou a brush for fifteen cents at Miss Crevey's. You bring backthirty-five cents."
"Oh, Aunt Martha!" protested Jacqueline.
"Don't you forget what I say." Aunt Martha fixed Jacqueline with grayeyes that looked her through and through. "Jump in now. Mr. Griswold'swaiting."
Jacqueline didn't stop to argue. She jumped in, and Neil jumped inbeside her, and away they rattled with the friendly neighboring farmer,through the hot-smelling fields of green onions. As they rattled along,a heartening thought came to Jacqueline. She had fifty cents in herpurse, and two pennies. Aunt Martha had said nothing about the pennies.She could spend them. She didn't quite know what you could get for twocents, that was good, but there must be something.
Mr. Griswold put down his little passengers at the Orthodox church inLongmeadow Street. He was going on to Northford himself to get a youngpig in a crate.
"Now show me the shop," Jacqueline bade Neil. She had taken command ofhim, much as she had taken command of Caroline. "And I've got twopennies to spend as I please."
"Gee!" said Neil. "That's great."
He meant it, too. Jacqueline looked at him in wonder. She counted herspending money usually, when she troubled herself to count it at all, indimes and quarters, never in copper pennies.
They went into Miss Crevey's shop. A funny little shop Jacquelinethought it, and she thought Miss Crevey with her false front, and herill-fitted false teeth, and her alpaca sleeves, was like a character ina story book. They got the toothbrush readily enough--that part of theshopping was simple and uninteresting. But to spend the precious twopennies was different. There was such a choice of things for a penny--atiny glass measure of hard red and white candies--or a stick of gum--ortwo large white peppermints--or a stick of striped candy. Jacquelinewanted the gum very much, for at home she had never been allowed to chewit. But Neil, she could see, hungered for a dreadful confection ofmolasses, imperfectly covered with chocolate.
"We'll get both," suggested Jacqueline.
"Well--you see----" Neil hesitated. "If we get all those little jiggersfor a penny, we'll have something to take home to the kids."
Jacqueline looked at him and slowly reddened. She hadn't thought of thekids. Indeed she had thought two pennies hardly big enough to dividebetween two children, let alone five. But Neil had thought of theyounger ones.
"We'll have that chocolate stick, please," Jacqueline told Miss Creveywith sudden generous resolve, "and a glass dingus of the little jigs.After all, I don't care for gum."
And just as she said the words, she heard the door creak open behind herand she turned her head. There on the threshold stood a prim lady in awhite summer frock, and with her a little girl in a posy-strewn muslin(Jacqueline's muslin!) who looked as scared as if she had seen a ghost,and the little girl, of course, was Caroline!