CHAPTER XIX
THE PRICE OF TEMPER
But all the days at the Conway farm were not like the day that ended ina blaze of glory, with praises and hot Johnny-cake. No more than a weeklater there came a day when everything went crooked.
Perhaps Jacqueline got out of bed on the wrong foot. Perhaps she wasthinking too much of a pile of story papers, which she had unearthed inthe shed chamber, and too little of her work. Perhaps it was simply thatshe had grown tired of the role of Caroline--even of a virtuousCaroline, who was a help and comfort in the house, and bossed theyounger children.
At any rate Jacqueline dawdled and shuffled through her work, andcomplained constantly of the heat. It was a hot day, true enough, but asGrandma said, talking about the weather only made a bad matter ten timesworse. Let _it_ alone, and likely it would let _you_ alone!
But Jacqueline groaned and grumbled, and finally lay down on the diningroom couch (with a story paper!) and gave herself up to beinguncomfortable. Presently she fell to thinking of the Gildersleeve place,and the big, cool, dim rooms that she knew such a roof must cover, andthe white porcelain tub, with lots of hot water, and a maid to wash thetub when you stepped out of it. She began to think that she had treatedCaroline very generously, and treated herself very badly.
Dinner was a horrid meal--pickled codfish in white sauce, cold peas fromlast night's supper, slabs of home-made bread, molasses cookies, andcottage cheese. The room was hot, and the boys were sweaty and tired.Freddie upset a mug of milk, and Neil fussed about the heat, and saidhis head ached. Jacqueline was quite disgusted that he should be sobabyish.
After dinner Aunt Martha insisted upon Grandma's lying down in her room.Grandma looked "tuckered out," and no wonder, for she had beenstep-stepping all the morning, while Jacqueline loafed. Of course,Jacqueline told her uneasy conscience, she would have helped, if Grandmahad asked her. But you know, it is easier sometimes for a tired oldwoman to do things herself than to ask a sulky and unwilling little girlto do them for her.
Aunt Martha sent Nellie off into the barn with the babies. She was to besure that they did not disturb Grandma. Ralph and Dickie went back tothe fields, and Aunt Martha herself drove off to Northford, to see a manwho owed her money that she very much needed. Jacqueline was left faceto face with the dinner dishes.
"Come on, Neil," she said bossily. "I'm not going to wrassle thesealone."
"I gotta headache," Neil answered, from the couch that Jacquelinecoveted. "I don't have to work this afternoon. Mother said so."
"She meant work in the fields. She didn't mean the dishes."
"She did, too."
"She didn't, neither. Get up, you great, lazy boy, and help me. Youought to be ashamed of yourself, making such a fuss about the weather.You let _it_ alone, and likely it'll let _you_ alone. Come on now!"
"Won't!" said Neil.
Jacqueline's face flamed.
"Then the dishes will stay right there till Aunt Martha comes," shesaid. "I won't touch 'em."
"Don't!" mocked Neil, and settled himself more comfortably.
Well, Jacqueline didn't touch those dishes! If you'll believe it, shetook her story papers and went out and read in the hammock for twomortal hours, while the dinner table stood just as the family had leftit, and the stockings in Grandma's basket cried: "Come darn me!" andpatient little Nellie struggled all alone to keep two hot and fussybabies amused and quiet.
In the old papers Jacqueline found a continued story of the sort sheliked, about a girl who went to a boarding school, where most of theteachers were mean and malicious and incredibly stupid; about the pranksthat she and her friends played, and the mystery of a buried treasurethat she solved. Jacqueline was so deep in the mystery that she scarcelyheeded when Aunt Martha drove into the yard. She came out of thetreasure vault with a jump, only when she heard her name called. Thenshe looked, and saw Aunt Martha standing in the kitchen doorway.
Full of the spirit of her heroine, who put tyrannical teachers in theirplace, Jacqueline rose and went into the kitchen. She was almost eagerfor "a scene."
"Why aren't those dishes done?" Aunt Martha asked directly. Her shrewdgray eyes went right through Jacqueline.
This was drama with a vengeance. Jacqueline's heart began to beat fast.
"There were so many of 'em, and the day was so hot, and I had aheadache, and Neil wouldn't help," she poured out all her reasonsglibly.
"You leave Neil out. I'll attend to him. It was your job to clear up thedining room, and wash those dishes. Go about it now."
Jacqueline turned slowly toward the dining room door, but as she turnedshe said aloud, with a toss of her head:
"I don't _have_ to!"
She looked round to make sure that Aunt Martha heard her, for AuntMartha had a way of not always hearing saucy and hateful speeches.
"If you stay in this house," said Aunt Martha, as she unpinned her cheaphat, "you'll have to do your share, like all the rest of us."
"Well, maybe I won't stay in your old house," Jacqueline told hersuperbly. "There are better places I can go to."
"All right," said Aunt Martha easily. "Trot along--only get those dishesdone before you start."
That was too bad of Aunt Martha, for in the role of tyrant, whichJacqueline had thoughtfully assigned her, she ought to have lost hertemper at Jacqueline's threat, instead of turning it into a kind ofjoke. Since Aunt Martha kept her temper, Jacqueline lost hers. Shesnatched the tray from its shelf with unnecessary clatter, and she wentinto the dining room, and banged it down hard on the table. She began topile the soiled dishes upon it, helter-skelter, with as much noise as ifshe were a raw Polish girl, just out of the onion fields.
Neil turned a flushed face toward her, where he lay on the couch.
"Tell-tale!" he softly sang.
The justice of the taunt made it sting.
"You're a slacker," Jacqueline retorted promptly. "Everybody hates aslacker. I was going to give you a birthday present, and somethingperfectly scrumptious at Christmas, but I never will now--never--never!"
To emphasize the threat, she banged down the heavy milk pitcher on thetray, without noticing that the tray overhung the edge of the tableperilously. There was a tilt--a sickening slide and crash--then plates,glasses, broken food, spilled milk lay all in a mess at Jacqueline'sfeet, and among the debris, shattered to bits, were the two green-dragoncups and saucers of thin china.
Jacqueline felt the anger ooze out of her. She stared at the wreckage,conscience-smitten. Neil sat up and looked at her.
"You've done it now!" he said.
"I don't care!" Jacqueline flung at him the first words that came. Shehad to say something, or she would have burst out crying.
"Caroline!" spoke Aunt Martha's voice. She stood there in the room, withher tanned face really white round the lips. "Don't tell me you've goneand broken Grandma's cups!"
"Nothing but two old cups!" Jacqueline almost sobbed.
Aunt Martha did not seem to hear her. She went down on her knees andgroped among the fragments for bits of the shattered green-dragon china.Her hands fairly shook as she gathered them up.
"They are all that was left of her wedding china," she said, more toherself than to the startled children. "We ought not to have used themcommon--but she didn't relish her tea in a thick cup--and she wouldn'tdrink from china while I drank out of kitchen ware. No, I can't mend'em, ever. They're smashed to smithereens."
"I don't care--I don't care!" Jacqueline screamed across the awful lumpin her throat that was choking her. "I hate this house--and I hate youall--and I'm never coming back again!"
She called back the last words from the kitchen doorway, and next momentshe was out in the yard, headed for the road, and running, as if for hervery life, to the Gildersleeve place, and the Gildersleeve relations,and the identity of Jacqueline that now, with all her heart, she wantedto get back again.