CHAPTER IV
THE BIG IDEA
The fact that the two little girls were going to the same town was thefinishing link in the chain of friendship that they had forged sorapidly. They talked that evening about their schools, and their games,and the books they had read until Miss Fisher and Caroline's own senseof propriety plucked them apart. In the morning they began where theyhad left off, while Miss Fisher, who was quite exhausted, after acar-sick night, remained aloof and shook her head in utter helplessness.
Now Miss Fisher's car-sickness has a great deal to do with the story.She was honestly feeling that she could not endure another hour in thetrain, when she received a telegram at Albany. Friends of hers, whom shehad not seen in months, a nice girl and her even nicer brother (so MissFisher thought), wired that they would meet her at the train inPittsfield and whisk her away for a blissful week-end in the Berkshiresbefore she went on to her aunt's house in Boston. For an instant MissFisher thought of duty and the tiresome, unruly child she had agreed tochaperon. Then she thought of the deadly hours in the train, and thenice girl's even nicer brother.
Miss Fisher lurched out into the car and captured Jacqueline. ToJacqueline she explained that she had to leave the train at Pittsfield,and that Jacqueline would remain in the care of the conductor and theporter till she reached Baring Junction, where those officials woulddeliver her to her great-aunt. Jacqueline was of course to be a verygood girl.
"Sure!" promised Jacqueline--too readily, a suspicious person might havethought.
But Miss Fisher was too fluttered with her own affairs to be suspicious.She tripped gayly off the train at Pittsfield, into the arms of herfriends, and out of this story. Of course her conduct was quiteblameworthy, and so Jacqueline's Aunt Edie and several other people saidlater. Just the same Jacqueline should not have called her a fish, andcertainly not a piece of cheese.
The moment Miss Fisher's rumpled blue linen skirt had vanished from thecar, Jacqueline laid hold of Caroline's suitcase and, like a valoroussmall ant with a huge crumb, tugged it into the drawing-room. Carolinesnatched up her hat and her sweater, and with Mildred in her armsfollowed after protesting.
"You come along," Jacqueline over-rode her protests. "We can sprawl allwe want to in here, and people won't stop to stare at Mildred, and askus our names, and do we like to travel. Wouldn't they be peeved if _we_asked _them_ questions like that, without being introduced?"
So Caroline and Jacqueline and Mildred settled down to enjoy the privacyand comfort of the drawing-room, without the disadvantages of MissFisher's presence. But somehow they didn't enjoy themselves much. Forthey couldn't forget--that is, Caroline and Jacqueline couldn't, for Idon't know about Mildred--that the pretty little gold watch onJacqueline's wrist, with its madly racing minute-hand, was tearing awaythe hours, so very few now, before the train reached Baring Junction.
"I'm going to have a rotten summer," complained Jacqueline. "Oh, I wishI'd made Aunt Edie let me go to a camp! Great-aunt Eunice is as old asthe hills and Cousin Penelope is most as old. It will be poky at theirhouse, and I can't do this, or Aunt Eunice will be scared, and I can'tdo that, or Cousin Penelope will scold. Oh, shivering chimpanzees! Iwish I'd gone to camp!"
But poor little Caroline had no words for the misery that possessed her,as the minutes ran by and the hour came nearer that should deliver herinto the hands of grudging strangers.
"I--I hope half-aunt Martha's boys aren't big," she confided toJacqueline. "I--I'm afraid of boys."
"I'm not," said Jacqueline. "I'd rather face fifteen boys than one oldpiano."
"And I hope they don't make me pitch hay or drive cows--I'm scared ofcows," quavered Caroline.
"I'd rather drive a million cows than have to be starched up and on mygood behavior with a pack of tiresome aunts," Jacqueline returnedgloomily.
"Oh!" Caroline was goaded into crying. "If only you were me, and I wereyou!"
Jacqueline snorted derision. What's the use of wishing? Then her gazewandered to the helter-skelter heap of her belongings on thecouch--hat-box, vanity bag, coat, suitcase, books!
Books! Her eyes fell on the gay jacket of "The Prince and the Pauper."
Suddenly she grasped Caroline's arm so hard that Caroline squeaked:"Ow!"
"Don't stop to _ow_!" bade Jacqueline. "Because if you've got your nervewith you, I've got the dandiest plan so you can have a piano thissummer, and no babies to tend, and no boys, nor nothing."
Caroline merely stared and held Mildred tight. She really feared thatthe heat of the day had affected Jacqueline's head.
"Your bossy old half-aunt has never seen you," went on Jacqueline, "andmy Gildersleeve relations haven't seen me since I was three years old."
"Yes," nodded Caroline. That much she thought it safe to grant.
"They're each of them expecting a little girl most eleven years old,with brown hair and eyes, and her hair bobbed."
"Yes," Caroline freely admitted.
"Well, then!" Jacqueline concluded triumphantly. "Suppose we go andchange clothes, like Prince Edward and Tom Canty in 'The Prince and thePauper,' and you say you're me, and I say I'm you,--and who's to knowthe difference?"