CHAPTER XL
TURN ABOUT AGAIN!
Jacqueline wasn't at the Conway farm, when Caroline, in frantic quest ofher, came stumbling into the kitchen, on Aunt Martha's invitation.Instead she was down on the knoll by the river having a picnic with theyoung Conways.
It was a most unusually nice picnic. Dickie had gone early to the knoll,and with his Boy Scout lore had built a fire and set potatoes to roastin the hot embers. Some of them were a little underdone at supper time,and some were a little overdone, but smeared with butter, they tastedever so much better than the baked potatoes that one ate off a plate athome in the dining room. Besides the potatoes there were appleturnovers, made with flaky pie crust, as a special treat. Aunt Marthahad time to do some of the cooking herself, now that Grandma was able tosit up.
The picnickers left nothing for the birds but a very few crumbs, andthey straggled home through the onion fields, just before sunset, fed-upand contented, so that even the thought of the good-night chorescouldn't damp their happiness.
"I'll stir up a batch of Graham bread and set it to rise," Jacquelinemurmured, "but first I'll give Annie and Freddie their baths. And you'vegot to take a bath, too--you hear me, Nellie? Not just your feet and alick at your neck, but all over."
"I did yesterday," protested Nellie.
"You will to-day," said Jacqueline in her bossiest voice, "or else youwon't sleep in the bed with me, and don't you forget it."
Quite as important as the mother of a large family, Jacqueline bustledinto the kitchen, which was now growing dusky. Soft splashings from thewashroom and gurgles from Freddie told her that Aunt Martha hadforestalled her at part of her labors. She must already have bathed andbedded Annie, and now she was at work on Freddie.
Honestly Jacqueline was sorry to seem to have shirked.
"Oh, come now, Aunt Martha!" she spoke into the washroom. "You didn'tneed to do that. You knew I was coming."
Aunt Martha looked up from where she knelt in the lamp light to scrubFreddie.
"'Tisn't likely you'll have time for any chores to-night," sheexplained. "Your folks'll be sending for you any minute now."
"Oh!" said Jacqueline, with a squeak like the squeak of a rubber pigwhen you let the air out of it. "You mean--but they can't be! Theyhaven't got back from the beach--not yet!"
"Everything's happened all in a heap," Aunt Martha told her. "They'vecome back from the beach, sure enough, to meet your aunt and uncle. Theymust be here by this time. Caroline turned up 'bout five o'clock withthe news."
"Caroline is here?"
"Yes. She looked pretty well done out, poor young one. I just took timeto call up the Judge and ask him to step right over to your AuntEunice's, and tell her the whole story and how both you children werehere at the farm, waiting for them to send and get the one that reallybelongs to them. Then I packed Caroline off to bed. She's in your oldroom. Better kite upstairs and speak to her. You may not have muchtime."
That was all Aunt Martha said. Matter of fact like that, and scrubbingFreddie's neck while she talked, so vigorously that he began to whine!Jacqueline herself had no choice but to take matters calmly, though shefelt this to be a most exciting hour of her life. What would she say,that horrid old Cousin Penelope, when she found the little girl she hadsnubbed was really her cousin's child? Jacqueline chuckled a little toherself, as she scampered up the narrow stairs to the north chamber.
In the big bed in the corner Caroline rose on one elbow and looked ather--a white-faced Caroline with dark smudges under her eyes. She waswearing one of the scant, thin little gowns that Jacqueline had worn allsummer, and she held Mildred in her tiny be-trimmed nightdress, closeagainst her breast.
"Hello, Carol!" said Jacqueline. But her voice didn't sound so jaunty asshe meant it to.
"Oh, Jackie!" Caroline cried at sight of her. "Did Aunt Martha tellyou?"
"Sure," answered Jacqueline, and sat down in her dusty Peggy Janes, uponthe edge of the bed.
"She's awful good," said Caroline, in a wavering voice. "She said not toworry about the cows--the boys look after them. And she wanted me to eatsome supper but I couldn't. She didn't scold, not one bit. Oh, Jackie,I'm afraid Cousin Penelope will scold you--dreadfully."
"I should worry," said Jacqueline.
Caroline looked at her for a moment with all the old admiration, andthen she shook her head woefully.
"We shouldn't have done it, Jackie--it was an awful thing to do."
"Well," said Jacqueline defensively, "you liked the piano, didn't you?"
"Y-yes," Caroline confessed, and then the tears began to drip down hercheeks, and she hid her head in the pillow.
"Oh, suffering chipmunks!" Jacqueline cried angrily. "Don't do that!Don't do that, I tell you! Would you rather we hadn't?"
"I-I don't know!" wept Caroline. "No, I guess not. Yes, I guessso--perhaps." She dried her eyes uncertainly with the front of herwrist. "There are your clothes, Jackie," she said in a voice that shetried vainly to keep steady. "All folded up on the chair. I put them onfresh this morning--down at Monk's Bay--in the beautiful Shieling." Shebit her lip that trembled, and went on: "Don't you believe--you couldwear them back?"
Jacqueline gave her a startled look.
"But I want to wear the Peggy Janes," she said, "and knock 'em dead withsurprise."
Couldn't she just see herself "making an entrance" at the Gildersleeves'poky house--the dismay of that starched Cousin Penelope--the amazementof Aunt Edie and Uncle Jimmie?
"But they are my Peggy Janes," said Caroline wistfully, "and I've got tohave some clothes to wear."
"You can have those duds of mine," said Jacqueline, with an airy gesturetoward the kilted pongee skirt, the orange silk slip-over, the leghornhat, the ruffled underwear. "We'll swap."
"No, no!" Caroline cried in such a distressful voice that Jacqueline wasamazed. "I don't want 'em--I don't want ever to see 'em again--take 'emaway, Jackie, please--please!"
"Why, sure," said Jacqueline, somewhat hurt, "if you feel it that way."
Hastily, as she had changed on the train, weeks before, she shed thePeggy Janes and the sneakers, and put her dusty self into her ownlawful, rather dusty clothes. While she changed, she let her tongue runon. Somehow she dreaded to have a silence fall in the room whereCaroline crouched so white-faced in the big bed.
"You didn't see my Aunt Edie and my Uncle Jimmie," Jacquelinequestioned, "did you?"
"No," said Caroline. "I ran right away when I heard they were coming.It's an awful long way from Longmeadow to the farm."
"Pretty nice, though, when you get here," said Jacqueline, as shewriggled into her own sand-colored silk socks.
Caroline drew a quivering breath.
"This is a bigger room than at Cousin Delia's," she said. "Nellie and Iwill have it together, Aunt Martha told me. I haven't seen Nellie, butthe babies are real cunning. I know I shall love them. Aunt Martha'sgoing to make me a winter coat out of an ulster of hers, and dye itblue. It's cold here winters--and there'll be lots of chances toslide--and there's a pond where Ralph will teach me to skate. AuntMartha's awful good."
"I'll say she is," assented Jacqueline, as she thrust herself into theslip-over. "Crazy elephants! I've gone and grown this summer."
She stepped to the wavery looking-glass, and grinned at her ownsunbrowned reflection. From the mirror her glance traveled to the windowclose by--the window that looked out on the road--and at sight of whatwas passing on the road, she gave a whoop that made Caroline sit up.
"Oh, jumping skeeters! It's my Uncle Jimmie--and the Judge! They'vecome--they've really come! I've got to go."
She caught up the leghorn hat. She was Jacqueline herself again, just asif the summer masquerade had never happened.
As if it had never happened--and Caroline's black-smudged eyes fairlystabbing Jacqueline with their woefulness!
Jacqueline swooped down on the bed, and threw her arms round Caroline,and kissed her tumultuously.
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"Don't you care!" she said. "Think of the fun you had--and we'll havesome great times together yet. I'll come back to-morrow--and you'll comeand see me at Aunt Eunice's."
Caroline said nothing, but it was only afterward that Jacquelineremembered that she had been silent. Jacqueline gave her a last hug--shecouldn't linger, with Uncle Jimmie at the door--and then she gallopeddown the narrow stair into the kitchen.
Aunt Martha was there, and Freddie, in his little Teddie sleeping suit.Nellie was minding him, and Nellie's eyes were round with amazement.
"I was just going to call you," said Aunt Martha. "They won't comein--they're in an awful hurry. Say good-by to Grandma. I've sort ofprepared her."
Jacqueline went quickly and quietly into the parlor that still wasGrandma's room. Grandma sat in her worn old wrapper in the big woodenrocker. An oil lamp burned on the table beside her and her knittingrested on her knees. Thank goodness, she often said, she could at leastknit again. She didn't have to sit round any longer like a bump on alog!
Grandma turned her head and looked at Jacqueline, and suddenlyJacqueline felt lumpy in the throat, and teary round the lashes. Itwasn't funny at all, what she had done and put Caroline up to doing. Andshe wasn't going to enjoy this hour a little bit, even if she got ahundred rises out of stuck-up Cousin Penelope.
"So you ain't our Jackie, after all," said Grandma, in the trembly voicethat was hers since her illness.
Jacqueline went to Grandma's side and took the veined old hands tight inboth hers.'
"I'm _your_ Jackie," she said painfully. "Oh, Grandma, I sure will missyou! I'll run in to-morrow, and I'm coming back to visit next summer, ifAunt Martha'll let me."
Grandma smiled, the saddest sort of smile.
"To-morrow's another day, child--and summer's a long ways off. There,now, just you kiss me and run along to your own folks."
Jacqueline bent and kissed the withered old cheek.
"Don't ye cut up no more crazy didoes," Grandma whispered with a queerlittle chuckle that might as well have been a sob.
"I won't," said Jacqueline, stifled.
She went out of the room very quickly. If she had stopped or lookedback, she realized that she might have begun to cry. Oh, fuzzycaterpillars, what was the use of talking grandly to one's self aboutwheelchairs for Grandma and china dishes? Some things you couldn't makeup for. Some things you couldn't set right.
Aunt Martha didn't aim to have prolonged leave-takings. She was out onthe doorstep, with Freddie, beshawled, in her arms, and the childrenstanding round her with perplexed faces, all of them; even Ralph. In theroadster sat Judge Holden, and Colonel Jimmie Knowlton stood by therunning board with his cap in his hand, talking with Aunt Martha.
Jacqueline threw herself upon Uncle Jimmie and kissed him. She wanted toget through with everything very quickly, and drive away. She kissedNellie. She kissed Freddie. She dabbed at Aunt Martha's cheek.
"Oh!" cried Nellie suddenly. "Don't go, Jackie--don't go!"
"S'long," Jacqueline nodded to the boys. "I'm coming back to-morrow.I'll say you've shown me one grand time!"
They were looking at her with big eyes, as if she were a stranger. Oh,dumb-paste that skirt and slip-over! If only she could have kept thePeggy Janes.
"Jump in!" bade her Uncle Jimmie, in his military voice, whichJacqueline fancied only when he joked. She suspected that he was in nomood for joking now.
She scuttled into the wide seat of the roadster beside Judge Holden, whonodded to her gravely. Uncle Jimmie folded his long legs into the seatbeside her.
"Good-night, Mrs. Conway, and many thanks," he said.
The car was turning. In a moment the top would shut away the sight ofthem, the dear friendly people who were not her own, standing there withsurprised, reproachful faces, in the dusk that was about to swallow themup.
"Good-by, Aunt Martha," Jacqueline called. "I'll see you to-morrow."
The roadster had quite turned now, and was heading for the road.
"Jackie! Jackie!" That was Freddie's voice, lifted in a howl of anguish."I want my Jackie--Jackie!"
Uncle Jimmie looked down at Jacqueline beside him. She could feel hiseyes boring through her and she could feel herself shrinking smaller andsmaller, till a crack would have held her.
"Well," said Uncle Jimmie in the tone, she felt, in which he sent men tobe court-martialed--a tone that left you flat, crushed under tons ofrighteous disapproval. "I'll say that for a nickel-plated,triple-riveted Miss Mess-it you've broken the world's record this trip."