The Turned-About Girls

  CHAPTER XLIII

  IN THE MEADOWS

  Caroline, all unaided, had baked a "toad in the hole" for dinner. Do youknow what "toad in the hole" is? Scraps of meat baked in a deep dish, ina kind of custard batter. Caroline had learned from Cousin Delia how tomake it. She was remembering now all sorts of things she had forgottensince she left Cousin Delia--all the things she had let herself forgetat The Chimnies. She and Nellie had washed the dinner dishes, and thenCaroline had scrubbed the kitchen floor and polished the stove, as asurprise for Aunt Martha. She did so want to show Aunt Martha that shecould be as helpful as Jackie, even if she _was_ a "scare batty" (asNeil called her) in regard to cows.

  Now Caroline, in her Peggy Janes and sneakers, which Jacqueline had rundown at the heels very badly, was out in the barn with Nellie and thebabies. Nellie had brought along her cloth doll, a lumpy creature namedGertrude, and Caroline was making it a dress, out of some pieces ofcalico that Grandma had unearthed from her scrap-bag.

  Mildred looked on in a stately, rather disapproving manner. Mildred worea little dress of ruffled dimity, pink with a fine white stripe, and apink sunbonnet. All Mildred's silks and satins, which Aunt Eunice andCaroline had made in the summer house for Mildred to wear in foreignclimes, were packed away in the satin box in the bureau drawer in thenorth chamber. Caroline had cried a little as she laid them away. Shedidn't mean to look at them again for a long time--not till she was ableto forget that life at The Chimnies had been real--not till she was ableto think of it, as she hoped to think of it some day, as a lovely dreamthat she should always cherish.

  The sunlight came through the big rear door of the barn, and creptfarther and farther into the dusk that smelled of cows and new hay, asthe sun moved nearer to the western hills. "To-night it is Saturdaynight," Caroline remembered the first line of a little child-song thather mother sometimes used to sing to her. To-morrow would be Sunday, andthen her second week at the farm would begin, and after it weeks andweeks, and months, and years would follow.

  "But there'll be lots of chances to slide," Caroline kept repeating toherself, "and Ralph will teach me how to skate--he said so himself! AndGrandma is going to show me how to knit. Maybe I can knit things forChristmas presents. If only I could crochet a sweater for poor Gertrude,like the one Muzzy made for Mildred."

  "Look-it! Look-it!" Freddie cried suddenly, and Nellie, all excited,raised her voice at the same moment: "It's an automobile, comin' intoour yard--it's a limousine!"

  Caroline lifted her eyes from her sewing, and looked. She recognized thecar in a single glance. It was the limousine that she had so enjoyedriding in--Aunt Eunice's own car. It was stopping at the door of thefarm. Oh, cried guilty conscience, here was CousinPenelope--Jacqueline's Cousin Penelope!--come accusingly, as Carolinehad always feared she would come, to tell Caroline what she thought ofpeople who pretended to be other people, and let you be good to them,with dentists and pianos, and all the time were deceiving you!

  Caroline dropped Gertrude, so violently that it was well she was notmade of anything more breakable than painted cloth and cotton. Shecaught up Mildred in a frantic clasp.

  "You mind the babies, Nellie!" she bade. "I won't come back till she'sgone, not even if she stays here ten thousand years!"

  She scuttled out at the rear of the barn, just as the stately limousinecame to rest alongside the kitchen door. She ran round to the south sideof the barn, where there was a pile of old lumber, and a disusedhen-house. She crawled into the hen-house--she wasn't very big in thePeggy Janes!--through a hole that looked hardly large enough for agood-sized dog.

  It was hot and rather stifling in the hen-house, but Caroline felt assafe as if she were in a diving-bell at the bottom of the sea. Shecuddled in a corner and held Mildred tight and comforted her. She wasjust assuring Mildred that there was nothing to fear, for CousinPenelope would go away very soon, and then they would crawl out where itwas cooler, when she heard steps close at hand, and the rustle ofgarments among the tall weeds by the lumber pile, and voices.

  One voice unmistakably belonged to Cousin Penelope.

  "Where _can_ she have vanished to?"

  "I bet I know!" That shrill pipe was Nellie's, the little traitor! "Ibet she's gone and hid in the old hen-house."

  "But she couldn't possibly have got in there," gasped Cousin Penelope.

  "'Course she could," insisted Nellie. "Want me to crawl in and show youhow?"

  There was a second of silence, in which Nellie evidently waitedhopefully for Cousin Penelope to say she would follow her through thehole into the hen-house. But when Cousin Penelope did speak, what shesaid was:

  "Run back to the house now, little girl."

  She spoke in the sort of tone that would make any little girl run away.Nellie ran, no question! But Cousin Penelope stayed. Caroline couldalmost hear her breathing while she held her own breath and listened.

  "Caroline!" That was not a bit like the voice in which Cousin Penelopehad spoken to Nellie and it came from a Cousin Penelope who must bekneeling on the ground (Cousin Penelope kneeling!) in order to throw thevoice into the hen-house. "Are you in there, dear? Please come out! Iunderstand--I'm not angry with you. We've all suffered enough--some ofus deserved it." (Could it be that Cousin Penelope was crying just alittle?) "Come out, dear, please! We've come to see you, Aunt Eunice andI. You're not afraid of Aunt Eunice, I know. Oh, don't be afraid of meany more!"

  And Caroline wasn't afraid of this Cousin Penelope--the Cousin Penelopewho had come to her room on the night when it thundered andlightened--the Cousin Penelope who had walked with her on the downs. Shecrawled out of the hen-house, with a long new rip in the Peggy Janes,and before she could rise to her feet, she found herself and Mildredfast in Cousin Penelope's arms, and Cousin Penelope, in her lovely whiteand green summery things, was actually hugging a dusty Meadows child,and kissing her--yes, kissing her.

  "You're coming home with us now, Caroline," Cousin Penelope whispered.Yes, she had been crying. Caroline could feel that the cheek pressedagainst her own was wet. And Caroline wanted to cry, too, but shecouldn't.

  "Oh, no!" she said achingly. "Oh, no! I want to like anything--but Icouldn't! I couldn't bear to go away again--I thought last time I wasgoing to die."

  "But you're not going away again, ever," said Cousin Penelope. "You'recoming home with us to stay--always. Don't you understand, dear? AuntEunice wants you--and I want you, too, Caroline--I want you to be myvery own little girl."