THE TURNED-ABOUT GIRLS
Blithe McBride
Hands Off!
Hugh Gwyeth: A Roundhead Cavalier
Soldier Rigdale, Ill. by R. Birch
The Making of Christopher Ferringham
A Little Captive Lad, Ill. by Will Grefe
Merrylips, Ill. by F. Merrill
The Turned-about Girls, Ill. by Blanche Greer
But just as she reached the gap Caroline came pattering out of the dark and clutched her—
THE TURNED-ABOUT GIRLS
BY
BEULAH MARIE DIX
AUTHOR OF “MERRYLIPS,” “BLITHE MCBRIDE,” ETC.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922
All rights reserved
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Copyright, 1922,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1922.
FERRIS
PRINTING COMPANY
NEW YORK CITY
To
MY TRUSTY AND WELL-BELOVED DAUGHTER
EVELYN GREENLEAF FLEBBE
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
[But just as she reached the Gap, Caroline came pattering out of the dark and clutched her—]
[“Jacqueline! It’s I—Cousin Penelope. Don’t be frightened”]
THE TURNED-ABOUT GIRLS
CHAPTER I
STRANGERS ON THE LIMITED
At Chicago, on a hot afternoon in early summer, two little girls got aboard the car on the Limited that was bound through to Boston. Both little girls had bobbed brown hair and brown eyes and both were going on eleven, but there all likeness between them ended.
The larger of the two little girls wore a black silk frock embroidered with amber-colored butterflies and curlicues, and black silk knickerbockers. The socks that stopped just below her sturdy brown knees were of black silk, and her black sandals had tiny buckles of onyx. She wore a hat of fine black straw, and in her arms she carried a little black vanity bag, two big books with colored pictures on their jackets, and a box tied up in white paper and gilt cord that screamed—and smelled—of chocolates.
Before her walked a solemn brown porter, laden with suitcases and handbags and hatboxes. Behind her walked a worried young woman, in a fresh blue linen suit. Thus attended the little girl passed along the aisle, with the air of a good-natured young princess, and vanished into the drawing-room at the end of the car. When the solemn-looking porter came out of the drawing-room, he was no longer solemn but smiling, and the piece of silver that he pocketed was large and round.
The smaller of the little girls had watched this progress admiringly, but without envy. She was a serious little girl, and this was her first long journey in the world. She sat very still in her seat, which was back to the engine, and she clasped a doll tight in her arms. The doll wore a neat print dress and frilled underclothes, and though the day was hot, a crocheted sweater and a cunningly made hood. The little girl herself wore a dress of pink and white checked gingham which was a little faded and a little short for her. Her hat was of white straw with a wreath of pink flowers, and her socks were white, and so were her buttoned boots. Over her arm she carried a knitted sweater coat of red, and at her feet stood a large suitcase which had seen much travel.
“Did you see the little girl in black?” she whispered to the doll, whose name was Mildred. “Do you s’pose she’s in mourning for somebody? Well, people can be just as sorry inside—we know it, don’t we, Mildred?—even if they have to wear last summer’s clothes, and they happen to be pink.”
Mildred was a very intelligent doll. She had steady blue eyes, a sweet smile, and a shock of flaxen curls. She showed her intelligence by always listening sympathetically and never speaking. So she did not let on now that she saw tears in her young mother’s eyes.
Meantime in the drawing-room the little girl in black silk had put down her books and her bag, and hung up her hat, and rung for the porter.
“I want a pillow,” she told the worried young lady who accompanied her, “and a table so I can play Canfield and—oh, yes! I want a big long drink of lemonade.”
“I’m afraid the porter won’t come till the train has started,” the young lady told her. “Can’t you read your books until then? What are they?”
The little girl resigned herself quite sweetly to going without her pillow and her table, and even her lemonade. She sat down beside her companion and showed her the books.
“This one is about Robin Hood,” she said, “but I’ve heard of him before. This other one is some book!”
“My dear!” the lady murmured in rebuke.
“I’ll say it is!” the little girl affirmed. “I read it nights in my berth till Auntie Blair switched off my light. Some book, I’ll tell the world! It’s called ‘The Prince and the Pauper.’”
And if a kind old guardian hadn’t happened to give that little girl a gorgeous copy of the beloved romance, when she left Los Angeles, and if the little girl hadn’t “eaten it up,” and dreamed of it, and lived herself into it on the long railway journey, this story, as you soon will see, would never have been written.
CHAPTER II
MILDRED, MISTRESS OF CEREMONIES
At the first call for dinner the little girl in the drawing-room left her pillow, which had grown hot, and her crayola outfit, which had long since displaced the game of Canfield in her favor. Very glad of the change, she went with her companion into the dining car. They sat at a little table, just big enough for two, with shining plated ware and a starched white cloth, and a water bottle plugged with a fresh napkin. The little girl ate soup, and roast beef, and baked potatoes, and asparagus, and vanilla ice-cream with lady fingers, and some preserved strawberries besides.
Back in the sleeping car the little girl in the checked gingham had waited anxiously to see what her neighbors would do when supper time came. There was no one of whom she could ask questions. She was in the conductor’s care, to be sure, but he seemed to her a remote and very grand person.
Presently she saw that people about her, mothers of families and tired-looking gray women who traveled alone, were taking lunch boxes from their bags. Some of them made the porter set up tables for them, but the little girl would never have dared ask such a service from the lordly black man. She placed Mildred in a corner of her seat, and she heaved up the suitcase, which she found almost too heavy for her, and put it on the opposite seat, which the gentleman with the massive watch chain had left vacant some time ago, when he went (to her great relief) into the smoking car. She opened the suitcase. Inside it, neatly folded, were a fresh nightgown, a change of underwear, a clean dress, in case her trunk should go astray, a pair of knitted bed shoes, sadly worn, a comb and brush, a fairylike wardrobe which was all Mildred’s, and lastly a pasteboard shoe box, full of lunch.
The little girl took out the shoe box and opened it with all sorts of precaution not to make crumbs on the floor, or on the beautiful plush seat. In the box were some peanut-butter sandwiches, a hard-boiled egg, two doughnuts, four raisin cookies, some soda crackers, an apple, and a piece of chocolate. She was to eat the sandwiches that night, the egg for breakfast, the crackers and chocolate for next day’s lunch, and the sweets and the apple when she pleased. She was to get water in her own cup, there in the sleeper, and she was on no account to go into the dining car, for the prices that they charged were downright robbery, and like as not there were ptomaines (whatever they might be!) in the food. So the little girl ate her peanut-butter sandwiches, and her cookies, and drank her cup of water, and thought how wonderful it was to travel, and how nice that she was not homesick—not at all, scarcely!—and not the least bit afraid.
She had put away the lunch box very carefully, and she was undressing Mildred for the night, with Mildred’s little nightgown, trimmed with Hamburg edging, laid ready on the arm of the seat beside her, when the little girl in black silk came strolling back from the dining car. The little girl in gingham knew that she was coming, but she had been taught that it was not pretty to stare, so she kept her eyes glued to the wee buttons on Mildred’s waistband.
Nobody seemed to have taught the little girl in silk, or, if so, they had had their labor for their pains. She stopped short, very firmly planted in the swaying car, and she smiled at Mildred who smiled back.
“Jacqueline, please!” said the worried young lady in the blue linen suit, which was not so fresh as when she wore it first aboard the train.
“I’ll come in a minute,” the silken Jacqueline told her casually. “I want to talk to the doll.”
At that the little girl in gingham looked up, as she had been dying to do.
“Hello!” said Jacqueline. She had a rebellious mouth, and a square boyish chin, and brown eyes as direct as a boy’s, that could be merry when they chose—and just now chose.
The little girl in gingham smiled shyly. She had an oval face, pale olive in tint, not glowing with red through the brown tan like Jacqueline’s. Her smile was timid, and her brown eyes were soft.
“She looks like a nice child,” thought the young woman in linen, “and even if she isn’t, if Jacqueline has made up her mind to know her, I’m helpless.”
She washed her hands of her charge, as the saying is, and went into the drawing-room. Don’t blame her too severely! She was young, she was worn out with a hard winter’s teaching, and after all, Jacqueline, with her lordly ways, had been “wished upon her.” She went into the drawing-room, and Jacqueline, like one accustomed to getting her way, sat down in the place that the little girl in gingham eagerly made for her in the seat at her side.
CHAPTER III
A BOND IN COMMON
“What’s your name?” asked Jacqueline.
The little girl in gingham blushed and kept her eyes fixed on Mildred’s buttons.
“Caroline,” she said, in a small voice. “For my grandmother.”
“My name’s Jacqueline Gildersleeve,” cut in her companion. “At school they call me Jackie. I’ll let you.”
Caroline smiled shyly.
“I like Jacqueline better,” she said. “It’s like trumpets and red sunsets.”
Jacqueline turned in the plush seat and looked at her, much impressed.
“You’re a funny kid,” she said. “How can anybody’s name be like a trumpet?”
“But names are all music and things,” the little girl in gingham insisted. “That’s why I don’t care for Caroline. It’s like a bushel of wheat. Muzzy always called me Carol. That’s a nice name—like Christmas trees, and snow outside, and yellow candles.”
“Is your mother with you?” asked Jacqueline.
“No,” Caroline answered, and made herself very busy with Mildred’s nightdress. “My mother is—dead.”
“Oh!” said Jacqueline blankly, and seemed for a moment unable to think of anything else to say.
“She died last winter,” Caroline went on, in her patient little voice. “That’s why I’m going to my half-aunt Martha. Have you—lost somebody, too? I see you’re wearing black.”
“Oh, that’s just not to show dirt,” Jacqueline explained. “But I haven’t any mother nor father. They died ages ago. Aunt Edie takes care of me, and Judge Blair is my guardian. Have you got a father?”
Caroline shook her head.
“Daddy died three years ago when everybody had the flu. He was on a newspaper. My mother gave music lessons. We had a room with the piano in it, and a gas flat we cooked breakfast on, and a couch that pulled out and made a bed for us both.”
It was very clear that Caroline was talking against time. Equally clear that the brown eyes that she kept obstinately fixed on Mildred were filling fast with tears.
Jacqueline tumbled out of her seat, just missed a stout old lady as she caromed down the aisle, and vanished into the drawing-room. Before Caroline had dried her eyes—and Caroline was not slow about it, either!—Jacqueline was back, and in her hand was a big satin-covered box.
“Have some chocolates?” she urged, as she slid into the seat beside Caroline. “Those big whales are scrumptious, only they’re full of goo. Hold your hanky under your chin when you bite into them! Here, I’ll take your doll.”
Jacqueline took Mildred on her lap, very carefully, to Caroline’s great relief. She examined the trimming of her small, clean nightgown and tenderly slipped her into the little flowered crêpe kimono, while Caroline still struggled with the gooey chocolate.
“What cunning little ducky clothes!” cooed Jacqueline.
“My mother made ’em,” Caroline spoke thickly because of the chocolate. “She could make most anything. She made my dress, too—it was for best last summer, but I’ve grown since then. She knitted my sweater, too.”
Caroline bent her head and stroked the red sleeve dumbly.
“Have another chocolate,” coaxed Jacqueline. “Have a lot! Try the one that’s like a porcupine! Have a gummy one!”
“I dassen’t,” said Caroline. “I’ve got a hole in my tooth, and caramels always make it ache.”
“That’s too bad,” agreed Jacqueline. “I’ve got braces in my mouth so I can’t eat caramels at all. Oh, well, I’ll give ’em to the Fish.”
Caroline looked at her questioningly.
“I mean Miss Fisher,” said naughty Jacqueline mincingly. “The piece of cheese I’m traveling with.”
“You mean the lady in the blue dress?” asked Caroline.
Jacqueline nodded and cuddled Mildred to her. She looked quite gentle until she smiled, and then the imps of mischief crinkled in her eyes.
“Auntie Blair changed at Chicago for Montreal, and I’m to go East with Miss Fisher that she knew ages ago in college. She’s a fuss. She didn’t want me to speak to you. And she’s not my aunt or anything. I shall talk to you as long as I want to.”
Caroline longed to say: “Please do!” She was fascinated with this bold little girl, who used words her mother had never let her utter, and was afraid of nobody, not even the black porter or the august conductor. But she hardly dared say: “Please do!” She only smiled vaguely and picked a small chocolate-covered nut from the satin box.
“Do you go to school?” Jacqueline asked abruptly.
“Oh, yes,” stammered Caroline. “I’ll go into the sixth grade in September. That is, I would have gone into it. I don’t know what school I’ll be in, where I’m going.”
“Do you like school?”
Caroline looked dubious.
“I like the reading lessons and the history,” she said. “I can’t do arithmetic. I’d rather play the piano.”
“Play the piano!” Jacqueline repeated, as if she couldn’t believe her ears. “You mean you like to practice?”
“Oh, yes!” said Caroline from her heart.
“Good night!” said Jacqueline.
“Don’t—don’t you?” faltered Caroline.
Jacqueline, like the skipper in “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” laughed a scornful laugh.
“But I’m going to get out of it this summer,” she boasted darkly. “I’ll tell my Great-aunt Eunice I’ve sprained my thumb, or something. She hasn’t seen me for years and years. I suppose she thinks I’m a little goody-goody. Well, she’s going to get the surprise of her life.”
Jacqueline tossed her head defiantly, and Caroline fairly glowed with admiration.
“You’re not a bit afraid of strangers, are you?” she quavered.
Jacqueline smiled in a superior way, as if to challenge: “Bring on your strangers!”
“I am,” admitted Caroline. “And I don’t know any of them. I never saw my half-aunt Martha, and I don’t know anything about my half-cousins, but I do hope they have a piano, and that there aren’t too many babies.”
“Don’t you like ’em?” queried Jacqueline.
“I—I’m kind of tired of them,” Caroline confessed shamefacedly. “I stayed with Cousin Delia after Muzzy died, and she had twins besides two odd ones, and when one fretted, the others always kept him company.”
“You ought to shake ’em,” counseled Jacqueline. “Shake ’em good and hard. I would! You’re too meek. Don’t you let your old half-aunt go and boss you.”
“But—but she’s giving me a home,” persisted Caroline. “That is, if we get along. If we don’t——”
“Well?” said Jacqueline, with shameless curiosity.
“I suppose I’ll go to an—an Institution,” whispered Caroline. “You know—orphan asylum.”
“Oh!” said Jacqueline, again blankly. There seemed nothing more to say. But she did have the inspiration to put Mildred into Caroline’s arms, and Caroline hugged her dumbly, with her dark little head bent low over Mildred’s sleek gold curls.
“You’d better keep the chocolates,” said Jacqueline, in a brisk little voice. “I always have lots, and the box will be nice to put your doll’s clothes in.”
“I—I oughtn’t to,” gasped Caroline, overcome with the glory of the gift.
“The box is mine,” snapped Jacqueline. “I can give it away if I want to, can’t I? I’d like to see the Fish stop me.”
Suddenly the hard little termagant softened. She put her arm round Caroline and Mildred.
“Of course your half-aunt will like you,” she said, “and you’ll stay with her, and maybe there’s a piano. Does she live in Boston?”
“No,” answered Caroline, nestling close to her new friend. “She lives on a farm in a place called Longmeadow.”
“Longmeadow?” parroted Jacqueline.
“And I get off at a place called Baring Junction.”
Jacqueline suddenly squeezed Caroline in a hug that really endangered Mildred.
“Can you beat it?” she cried. “I get off at Baring Junction, and I’m going to Longmeadow, just the same as you!”
CHAPTER IV
THE BIG IDEA
The fact that the two little girls were going to the same town was the finishing link in the chain of friendship that they had forged so rapidly. They talked that evening about their schools, and their games, and the books they had read until Miss Fisher and Caroline’s own sense of propriety plucked them apart. In the morning they began where they had left off, while Miss Fisher, who was quite exhausted, after a car-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 the train, when she received a telegram at Albany. Friends of hers, whom she had not seen in months, a nice girl and her even nicer brother (so Miss Fisher thought), wired that they would meet her at the train in Pittsfield and whisk her away for a blissful week-end in the Berkshires before she went on to her aunt’s house in Boston. For an instant Miss Fisher thought of duty and the tiresome, unruly child she had agreed to chaperon. Then she thought of the deadly hours in the train, and the nice girl’s even nicer brother.
Miss Fisher lurched out into the car and captured Jacqueline. To Jacqueline she explained that she had to leave the train at Pittsfield, and that Jacqueline would remain in the care of the conductor and the porter till she reached Baring Junction, where those officials would deliver her to her great-aunt. Jacqueline was of course to be a very good girl.
“Sure!” promised Jacqueline—too readily, a suspicious person might have thought.
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 her friends, and out of this story. Of course her conduct was quite blameworthy, and so Jacqueline’s Aunt Edie and several other people said later. Just the same Jacqueline should not have called her a fish, and certainly not a piece of cheese.
The moment Miss Fisher’s rumpled blue linen skirt had vanished from the car, Jacqueline laid hold of Caroline’s suitcase and, like a valorous small ant with a huge crumb, tugged it into the drawing-room. Caroline snatched up her hat and her sweater, and with Mildred in her arms followed after protesting.
“You come along,” Jacqueline over-rode her protests. “We can sprawl all we want to in here, and people won’t stop to stare at Mildred, and ask us 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 privacy and comfort of the drawing-room, without the disadvantages of Miss Fisher’s presence. But somehow they didn’t enjoy themselves much. For they couldn’t forget—that is, Caroline and Jacqueline couldn’t, for I don’t know about Mildred—that the pretty little gold watch on Jacqueline’s wrist, with its madly racing minute-hand, was tearing away the hours, so very few now, before the train reached Baring Junction.
“I’m going to have a rotten summer,” complained Jacqueline. “Oh, I wish I’d made Aunt Edie let me go to a camp! Great-aunt Eunice is as old as the hills and Cousin Penelope is most as old. It will be poky at their house, and I can’t do this, or Aunt Eunice will be scared, and I can’t do that, or Cousin Penelope will scold. Oh, shivering chimpanzees! I wish 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 her into the hands of grudging strangers.
“I—I hope half-aunt Martha’s boys aren’t big,” she confided to Jacqueline. “I—I’m afraid of boys.”
“I’m not,” said Jacqueline. “I’d rather face fifteen boys than one old piano.”
“And I hope they don’t make me pitch hay or drive cows—I’m scared of cows,” quavered Caroline.
“I’d rather drive a million cows than have to be starched up and on my good behavior with a pack of tiresome aunts,” Jacqueline returned gloomily.
“Oh!” Caroline was goaded into crying. “If only you were me, and I were you!”
Jacqueline snorted derision. What’s the use of wishing? Then her gaze wandered to the helter-skelter heap of her belongings on the couch—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 nerve with you, I’ve got the dandiest plan so you can have a piano this summer, and no babies to tend, and no boys, nor nothing.”
Caroline merely stared and held Mildred tight. She really feared that the heat of the day had affected Jacqueline’s head.
“Your bossy old half-aunt has never seen you,” went on Jacqueline, “and my 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 and change clothes, like Prince Edward and Tom Canty in ‘The Prince and the Pauper,’ and you say you’re me, and I say I’m you,—and who’s to know the difference?”
CHAPTER V
TURNED-ABOUT GIRLS
It was thoroughly wrong, the deception that Jacqueline had suggested. She knew it was wrong, but she didn’t care. As for Caroline, her mind was such a jumble of cows and boys and fierce half-aunts (so much more ogreish in suggestion than whole aunts!) and an Institution, looming in the background, that she hardly knew right from wrong.
Only as she followed Jacqueline’s example and began to unfasten her rumpled frock, she mustered the spirit to falter:
“But they’ll find out right away——”
“No, they won’t, unless you’re a silly.”
“But some day your Aunt Edith who knows you will come——”
“Not before September,” said Jacqueline cheerily, “and by that time summer will be over, and we’ll have had our fun. Think of the piano!”
“Oh, I don’t know what to do!” wailed Caroline. She was a shivering little figure, barelegged, in her underclothes, with her soiled and mussed checked gingham in a heap at her feet.
“Now you do as I tell you,” counseled Jacqueline in her most masterful manner. “Why, Caroline, it’s nothing but a joke, and just the minute you want to, we’ll change back. Be a good sport now! Come on!” When Jacqueline smiled she was irresistible. She smiled now. Caroline wavered.
“If you don’t,” said Jacqueline sweetly, “you’re a quitter, and I’ll never speak to you again.”
To lose Jacqueline, the one friend she had in this new world into which she was being cast, was more than Caroline could bear.
“I’m not a quitter,” she vowed. “I’ll show you. Wait till I get out some clothes.”
The big shabby much-traveled suitcase that was Caroline’s, and the smart black leather case that was Jacqueline’s, alike held fresh changes of clothes. In these the little girls dressed themselves from the skin out. Caroline gasped a little at the silk socks, the delicate undergarments, the knickers and the frock of henna-colored crêpe in which she rather guiltily encased herself. Jacqueline tumbled gleefully into cotton socks, much-mended plain cotton underwear, and a fresh frock of brown and white gingham, with a big patch in the back breadth.
“I’m bigger than you,” she chuckled. “These clothes look awful skimpy on me. I’ll tell your half-aunt that I shot up last winter. I did really, so it isn’t a fib.”
“Your clothes look—nice on me,” said Caroline, as she caught a glimpse in the mirror of the strange child into which she had turned herself. “They fit me.”
“That’s because they’re short for me,” Jacqueline told her. “Aunt Edie has ’em made that way—it’s the smartest thing, this year. She’d think you looked dowdy with your skirt way down to your knees, but probably Great-aunt Eunice won’t mind.”
In a businesslike way she restrapped the black leather suitcase.
“That’s yours now, remember,” she told Caroline, “and the hatbox, and the black hat, and the coat, and my watch here,—don’t forget to wind it!—and those two books, and the vanity bag. Hang on to it! The check for my trunk—your trunk it will be now—and the key to it are there in the little purse.”
“But there’s money in it, too,” protested Caroline. “Oh, Jackie, I can’t take your money.”
“You won’t take much of it,” Jacqueline assured her. “I shall slip three dollars to the porter, and tell him not to give us away.”
Caroline looked at her admiringly. She hadn’t thought of the porter. She felt quite sure that if ever a woman became president of the United States, as she had heard was now possible, Jacqueline would be that woman.
“Now sit down,” bade Jacqueline, and poked Caroline into a seat. “We’re only half an hour from Baring Junction——”
“Oh!” Caroline softly squeaked.
“Don’t oh! We’ve got to get things straight because they may ask questions. Now your father was John Gildersleeve——”
“No, he wasn’t!” protested Caroline.
“You ninny! Don’t you see—you’re me now—Jacqueline Gildersleeve. Your father was John Gildersleeve. He was born and brought up in Longmeadow, and he and Cousin Penelope went to school together. By and by he grew up, and his father and mother died, and he went out to California. He was in the oil business. My mother—I mean, she’s your mother now—was Marion Delane. Her father had a big ranch, with horses and things, and Aunt Edith is her sister. And she died—not Aunt Edith, but my mother that you must call your mother—when my baby brother came, and he died, too, and my father was killed the next autumn in the oil fields. I’ve lived with Aunt Edith ever since, and our place is called Buena Vista—that’s Spanish for Fair View—and first I had governesses, but last year I went to boarding school. Aunt Edith married my new uncle Jimmie Knowlton on the fifth day of June. He’s Colonel Knowlton—he was in the air service—and he took me up twice in his plane, and we did a tailspin—oh, boy! He’s some uncle. But they didn’t want me on their honeymoon—they’ve gone to Alaska—that’s why I’m going to Great-aunt Eunice. She’s wanted me to spend a summer with her for years and years. I don’t believe she likes Aunt Edith much.”
Jacqueline paused at last for breath, and fixed her eyes on the trembling Caroline.
“Can you remember all that?” she asked sternly.
“I—I guess so,” Caroline answered dubiously.
“You’ll be all right,” Jacqueline encouraged. “Aunt Edie hardly ever wrote letters to Great-aunt Eunice, so she doesn’t really know much about us. Now see if I remember what I’ve got to know. I’m you now—Caroline Tait. My father was Henry Tait, and he was born in Longmeadow, and he came to Chicago years ago and was on a newspaper when he died. And he met my mother out there, and her name was Frances Meade, and she was a music teacher, and none of the Longmeadow folks ever saw her. And I’ve been living with her cousin, Delia Meade, and I’m going to my father’s half-sister, and her name is Martha Conway. Is that all right?”
“Yes,” Caroline nodded, “but oh! I’ve just thought. Won’t we have to write letters back to your Aunt Edith and my Cousin Delia—and they’ll see that the handwriting isn’t ours?”
For as much as half a second, Jacqueline hesitated. Then she rose to the occasion.
“I’ve got two post-cards shut up in my Robin Hood book. Quick! Write to your Cousin Delia on this one that you’ve got safe to Baring Junction, and your half-aunt met you and is very nice.”
“But I don’t know if she is!” protested truthful Caroline.
“You’ve got to take chances sometimes,” Jacqueline silenced her. “Hurry up and write, and I’ll write one, too, to my Aunt Edie.”
Hastily and in pencil the post-cards were written. From a recess in the vanity bag Jacqueline dug out two stamps, the worse for wear but still stickable. These she fixed upon the cards.
“The porter’ll post ’em,” she said. “That’ll satisfy your Cousin Delia and my Aunt Edie—and we’ve simply got to get out of writing them any more letters, somehow.”
Then the black porter hammered at the door, and Jacqueline bade him enter, and in her lordly manner permitted him to brush her off.
“Ain’ yo’ done mix yo’ clothes up, Missy?” he asked with interest.
Caroline quaked. Jacqueline merely dimpled.
“Of course we have,” she said. “We’re going to put something over on our relations. You see, I know her folks just like she knows mine.”
(Which was true in the letter, but not in the spirit. Jacqueline might as well have told a fib and been done with it.)
The porter seemed to hesitate.
“It will be all right,” Jacqueline told him loftily. “Here’s something for you. Take off that young lady and her luggage as soon as the train stops. I’ll look out for myself.”
So sure of herself she was that the porter, like Caroline, was put to silence. He pocketed the money that she gave him, chuckled, muttered that she was “de beatermost,” and went his way.
“We’ll be there in five minutes now,” said Jacqueline. “Put on this hat. Here, give me yours. Take the books. Give me the doll.”
“Oh, no!” cried Caroline, and clasped Mildred to her.
“But look here,” said Jacqueline, “I’m you and the doll is yours, so I’ve got to have her.”
“Oh, I can’t—I can’t!” cried Caroline. “Not Mildred! Don’t you see? Daddy gave her to me—the Christmas before he died—and Muzzy made all her clothes—I can’t give her up, Jackie—not even to you—she’d be homesick.”
“Now stop it!” commanded Jacqueline. “I don’t want your silly old doll! Take her along with you. It won’t give us away.”
“But her clothes—they’re in my suitcase—your suitcase—”
Already Jacqueline was tearing open the shabby suitcase.
“You shan’t gum the show now,” she panted. “We’d look like—like a couple of boobs. Here are the clothes. Take ’em, quick!”
“I can’t get your suitcase open,” chittered Caroline.
The train was slowing down for Baring Junction. Moments counted. Jacqueline seized the nearly emptied satin candy box and crammed its remaining contents into the pockets of the brown and white gingham that she wore.
“I told you her clothes would go into the candy box,” she said as she hastily crushed Mildred’s wardrobe into the satin receptacle. “Take it quick—here’s the porter—I’ll strap the suitcase.”
“Oh, Jackie!” Caroline turned wildly to her friend, like a frightened kitten that doesn’t know which way to run.
“Wipe your eyes, kid, and don’t weaken!” bade Jacqueline stoutly. “Porter, take the books, too—her hands are full. Beat it now, Carol! Ask for Mrs. Eunice Gildersleeve and don’t forget there’s sure to be a piano!”
CHAPTER VI
CLAIMED AND CALLED FOR
In the wake of the grinning black porter, Caroline stumbled out of the drawing-room. She had only a few steps to take through the narrow passage to the vestibule, and in those few steps she hadn’t time enough to reconsider, and call up her courage and run back to Jacqueline, with a refusal to go on with this naughty deception. She had time only to feel, in Jacqueline’s finery, like the poor little old woman in the nursery-song:
Lawkamussy on me,
This can’t be I!
Then she stood in the swaying, cinder-powdered vestibule. Through the open door she saw the dark red walls of a country station creeping by and people hurrying to be alongside the steps when the car should stop. Strange people—hundreds of people, they seemed to her. Oh, she wanted her half-aunt—she even wanted the cows! Jacqueline’s Great-aunt Eunice would be terrible. She would know at once that Caroline was a little fraud. She would send her away to an Institution.
But now there was no turning back. The train had stopped. The porter had leaped nimbly off. A stout man in the vestibule behind Caroline was bumping her silken calves with his heavy bag, and fuming at her for blocking the way. Caroline clutched Mildred tight to the bosom of Jacqueline’s henna-colored frock, and scrambled down the steep steps of the car. She was glad that the porter steadied her with a hand on her arm. She felt so sick and dizzy that she could scarcely see.
A tall lady was beside her instantly. In the strong sunlight of the station platform, so different from the stuffy dusk of the train, Caroline could not make out her features but she had an impression of white clothes and she caught the scent of violets.
“This is Jacqueline, isn’t it?” the lady said, in a clear, low voice.
Caroline nodded, blinking between tears and sun-blindness.
“You’re Great-aunt Eunice?” she faltered.
“No, my dear,” said the low voice, with a ripple of laughter in it. “She’s waiting over there in the car. Bring along her things, Frank. Come quickly, Jacqueline! Let’s get out of this frightful press.”
The stout man had bumped the lady with his clumsy bag, and his gruff “Beg pardon!” did not seem in the least to mollify her. She put her gloved hand on Caroline’s shoulder and hurried her away across the wide platform, with its pillared red roof.
In the shade of the elm trees at the other side of the platform a stately limousine was parked among humbler touring cars and sedans. A stout elderly lady looked eagerly from the window.
One desperate glance Caroline cast behind her. She saw a self-assured small figure, in a scant brown and white gingham dress, propel itself down the car steps, behind a big shabby suitcase. She saw a squarely-built woman in an old straw hat hurrying toward the car steps, and she saw the little figure cast itself into her arms. Jacqueline had taken possession of half-aunt Martha.
Caroline had no chance to see more, for now she was at the side of the limousine.
“Mother, here’s Jacqueline,” said the lady in white, who was evidently Jacqueline’s Cousin Penelope. “This is Aunt Eunice, Jacqueline.”
The old lady, who wore gray clothes and had pretty white hair, nodded and smiled at Caroline from her cozy seat. But Caroline, all confusion and on the verge of tears, had no time to greet her, for Cousin Penelope asked just then for the trunk-check.
“It’s here—in my bag,” quavered Caroline, as she struggled with the unfamiliar clasp of Jacqueline’s vanity bag.
“Do help her, Penelope. She’s tired out, poor little mite,” said Aunt Eunice.
Cousin Penelope took the bag in her brisk way, and opened it. She made a queer little face, as she saw the very grown-up small vials and powder-puff inside, but she said nothing. By instinct, probably, she opened the little purse and took out the trunk-check and gave it to her chauffeur, who came up at that moment with the hand-luggage.
“Tell them to send the trunk up by express,” she bade him. “Jump in, Jacqueline. We’ll be away from this wretched hot station in a couple of minutes now.”
Caroline stepped gingerly into the limousine. With its cool gray upholstery, its little side-pockets full of bottles and notebooks, its hanging crystal vase of marguerites, it seemed to her a little palace on wheels. She sank upon the cushions with a sigh of relief.
“You are tired, you poor little thing,” said Aunt Eunice. “Now just rest. We won’t trouble you with questions about the journey. You’re here safe—that’s all that really matters.”
Caroline nestled back in her seat and hugged Mildred to her. The train that had sheltered her had pulled out of the station. Jacqueline, her dear and dangerous friend of twenty-four hours, was gone. She had nothing left but Mildred.
Cousin Penelope stepped into the car in a regal manner. Her dress was of soft shimmery white, and she wore a sweater coat of mauve silk, and a white hat with a mauve silk scarf about the crown. A faint scent of violets breathed from her when she moved. Why, she wasn’t old like Aunt Eunice, as Jacqueline had said she would be. She was young—not so young, perhaps, as Caroline’s beloved Sunday School teacher, but still young, and such a pretty lady!
Frank, the well-trained chauffeur, came at a military gait across the sunny station platform. He closed the door of the car, then stepped to his seat. A moment later the great car glided—oh, so smoothly and softly!—away from the platform and under the elms of the station park into a wide street where two-story brick buildings cast long shadows in the late afternoon light.
“Where are we going?” Caroline wondered. “Oh, I hope it’s ever so far. If I could only sit here with Mildred forever and ever.”
Cousin Penelope pulled up a window.
“I know the air is too much for you, Mother,” she said crisply.
Aunt Eunice seemed rather to sigh but she offered no protest.
“By the way, Jacqueline,” Cousin Penelope turned to Caroline who sat between the two ladies, “I didn’t see that Miss Fisher, who was to look after you from Chicago. I wished of course to thank her.”
“She got off at Pittsfield,” Caroline managed to find her tongue.
“Indeed!” said Cousin Penelope in an icy voice. What things she could evidently have said to Miss Fisher!
“And left you to travel by yourself?” cried Aunt Eunice. “No wonder she’s tired and upset, Penelope, all alone like that.”
“I—I played with a little girl,” explained Caroline, “and I always have Mildred.”
“Is that your dolly’s name?” Aunt Eunice asked quickly.
Caroline nodded.
Aunt Eunice patted her hand with her soft plump palm.
“It’s nice to see a little girl that loves dolls,” she said. “Not many of them do, nowadays.”
She smiled at Caroline, and Caroline, looking up at her, smiled back. It didn’t matter whether she were Jacqueline or Caroline—she knew that she was going to like Aunt Eunice.
CHAPTER VII
LIKE A DREAM
Smoothly and softly the limousine glided out from among the brick buildings of Baring Junction—not a great many of them!—and along a country road which was edged sometimes with a rail fence, and sometimes with a stone wall, but always with a green wayside growth of blackberry and elderbush, alder, and in the low places, young shoots of willow. Pastures slipped by the windows of the car, and farm-yards, and meadows. Once they drove slowly over a wooden bridge, with a roof and sides that made a tunnel where their wheels echoed in a rumbling, hollow fashion; and Caroline wondered if Mildred were afraid.
Then they came to a wide street, with green lawns between the sidewalk and the road, and elms that almost met above them. The street was bordered with big comfortable houses, white or cream or red, which were set well apart in lawns and gardens, unlike the cramped suburban houses to which Caroline was accustomed.
“This is Longmeadow Street, dear,” explained Aunt Eunice. “That brick house with the horse-chestnut trees before it, is the John Gildersleeve place, where your father was born, and his father before him. And here’s the William Gildersleeve place—our place—and we’ve got home.”
A smooth white driveway carried them behind a tall hedge of box. The color and fragrance of an old-fashioned garden were on the left hand, and on the right a plushy green lawn, and a white house, very square and big and substantial, with windows set with many panes of glass.
“It’s such an e-normous house,” thought Caroline, in a panic.
Would there be a butler? In the motion pictures to which Cousin Delia had sometimes taken Caroline, there were often butlers, and they were always very proud and fat. And would she find a lot of knives and forks at her place at table and not know which one to use first? And would she be found out at once and sent away in disgrace? She hoped not—at least not until to-morrow! She couldn’t stand it to meet any more new people today, now that she had found Aunt Eunice so kind.
They went from the porch through a wide doorway with a paneled door and a big brass knocker, into a long hall with a curving staircase. The dark floor was as shiny as glass, and the white paint of the woodwork was as dazzling as snow. The furniture was of dark wood, with red winey gleams beneath its polished surface.
There was a tall case of drawers, which seemed by their weight to have bowed the slim legs on which they rested, and a table—no, half a table—against the wall. On the table were two brass candlesticks, and between them a dull blue bowl, which held some little, pale pink roses. Oh, if only Muzzy had not taught her that she simply must not stare! There was so much to see in this wonderful house!
At the top of the curved staircase was a long, cool hall, with cream white doors on either side. Aunt Eunice herself opened the third door on the right.
“This will be your room, my dear,” she said, and motioned for Caroline to follow her across the threshold.
To Caroline it seemed as if she stepped suddenly into a quiet green pool, the room was so still and cool and goldeny green. There was a dull green border to the oyster white rug that covered the floor, and a pattern of wreathed leaves picked out in green upon the pale gray furniture. Green leaves where golden figures of canaries were half hidden, made a deep frieze above the cool, pale paper with which the walls were hung. The curtains at the windows and upon the low book-shelves, the cushions of the chairs, the covering upon the bed, all had the same pattern of green leaves and gold canaries. Outside the window that was opposite the door, were the green, sibilant leaves of an elm, and through them came the late sunshine in a powdery dust of gold.
Caroline said nothing. She just stared, in spite of all that her mother had taught her. Then she turned toward Aunt Eunice a quivering little face.
“My room?” she asked.
“Yes, darling.”
“Doesn’t anybody have to sleep with me?”
“Not in that narrow bed, child. You’re not afraid to be alone?”
“Oh, no, no!” cried Caroline. “I like to be alone with my thoughts, and all last winter——”
She stopped. She could feel her heart beating fast with the terror of a narrow escape. For she had almost said that all last winter, in Cousin Delia’s little house, she hadn’t had a corner to call her own, no, nor a minute of time.
“Never mind, dear,” said Aunt Eunice and patted her shoulder gently.
But there was a little pucker between Aunt Eunice’s eyebrows. She was going to tell Penelope later just what she thought of this Aunt Edith (not on the Gildersleeve side of the family, thank goodness!) who had packed that shy little sensitive girl off to a boarding school!
“You’ll want to rest a bit before dinner,” Aunt Eunice filled up the awkward little pause, “and wash, too, after the train. There’s the door to the bathroom, over by the dressing-table. Can you manage by yourself, or shall I send Sallie to help you?”
“I can manage, thank you!” Caroline assured her.
To her own ears her voice sounded dry, and oh! she didn’t want to seem ungrateful, when her heart was just bursting with joy that was almost rapture. So, as Aunt Eunice turned away, Caroline slipped up to her side and laid a hand on her arm.
“Thank you!” she whispered shyly. “It’s—it’s like a dream room and I—I’ll take awful good care of everything. I can make my own bed,” she added proudly. “And I can sweep and dust as nice as anybody.”
Aunt Eunice beamed approvingly.
“Why, what a sensible school your aunt must have sent you to,” she said. “But you needn’t do tasks in vacation, little girl. Sallie will take care of your room. Now wash your hands and brush your hair, and bring a good appetite with you to the dinner table.”
With a nod and a smile—and Aunt Eunice’s smile was the kind that you waited for eagerly, because it made her whole face brighten—Aunt Eunice left the room and closed the door behind her. Very carefully Caroline put her coat (Jacqueline’s coat that was!) and her hat and the satin candy box full of doll-clothes down upon a chair, and then, with Mildred in her arms, she walked slowly and almost a-tiptoe with reverence round the room.
There were pictures on the walls—lovely fairytale pictures, such as she had seen in windows of gorgeous shops, with cobalt blue seas and airy mountains, towered castles and dark thickets shot through with sunshine. There were pretty things on the dressing-table—little trays and boxes of thin china, patterned in green and gold, two slender perfume bottles of cool green glass, a lovely little lady in brocaded silk, with her hair piled high, whose skirts when lifted revealed a hidden pin-cushion. On the writing-desk by the window there was a green blotter with gold and green leather corners, and a brass owl, which was an inkwell, and a brass turtle which miraculously was a stamp box. On the little shelves of the desk were sheets of creamy paper, large and small, and engraved on each sheet was the legend: The Chimnies, Longmeadow, Massachusetts.
“Oh, dear,” thought Caroline, “if only I could write to somebody on this ducky paper, but I mustn’t ever, because my handwriting isn’t Jackie’s, and it would give us all away.”
With a little sigh, she turned from the desk and looked out at the windows. There were two of them. The western window looked into the elms. The northern window looked across some fields to a low mountain, a great heap of dark trees and raw red cliffs, which humped itself like a gigantic beast against the sky.
Caroline was gazing at the mountain, when there came a rap at the door, and a neat middle-aged maid, who must be Sallie, brought in her suitcase (Jacqueline’s suitcase!) and the hatbox. Sallie also offered to help Caroline wash her face. Dear me! If Sallie had known the little girl was Caroline, and not Jacqueline, she would have known that at Cousin Delia’s Caroline had not only washed her own face, but several other little faces besides.
After Sallie had gone, Caroline opened the door and went into the bathroom. It was not a bit like Cousin Delia’s bathroom, with its golden oak woodwork and its zinc tub which Caroline had so often scrubbed. This bathroom was all white tiles and shining nickel, and had a porcelain tub big enough for half a dozen Carolines. On the nickel rods were big towels and little towels and middle-sized towels, thick towels and thin towels, rough towels and smooth towels, all marked with a beautiful big G.
Caroline took off the henna-colored frock most particularly, and she washed her face with some very faintly scented white soap, not forgetting to wash behind her ears, and she washed her neck and her hands and her knees, too, but she decided to let her feet go until after dinner. Then she opened her suitcase (really Jacqueline’s!) and feeling a little apologetic, even though it was Jacqueline’s own plan that she was carrying out, she took Jacqueline’s pretty blue leather traveling-case, with its ivory implements, and she made her hair smooth and her hands tidy.
Caroline, you see, was a gentle little girl, and in the haphazard months at Cousin Delia’s she had not forgotten the careful teachings of her gentle little mother. If she had, her whole story might have turned out very differently. She made herself now as fresh and tidy as possible. Then she sat down in the low rocker beside the bookcase, and looked at the books—such a lot of books, not new ones, she could see, but new to her, bound volumes of St. Nicholas, and a whole set of Miss Alcott, books by Laura E. Richards, and Miss Molesworth, Kate Douglas Wiggin, and Juliana Ewing.
She was dipping into “We and the World” when she heard a knock at her door, and there on the threshold, not waiting to be asked in, stood Cousin Penelope. Now that her hat was off, Caroline saw that she had pretty, fair hair, but she had also a forehead so high and white that it gave her rather a forbidding look.
“Day-dreaming, Jacqueline?” said Cousin Penelope briskly.
“I—I was looking at the books,” Caroline explained, as she rose hastily. “I never saw so many.”