THE CAPTURE OF A HALF-AUNT
When Caroline walked out of the drawing-room on the train, in the wake
of the black porter, you will remember that she left Jacqueline in the
patched brown and white gingham (Caroline's dress!) restrapping the
shabby suitcase (Caroline's suitcase!).
Jacqueline was not in the least flustered. Through the open door of the
drawing-room she could see that a stout man with a bag, and several
other passengers were making their way toward the open vestibule. She
had a couple of minutes to spare. And she fully meant to be the last
person to leave the train at Baring Junction. She wasn't going to cloud
the issue and spoil her little plot by having the groups of waiting
relatives see two little brown-eyed girls, with bobbed brown hair,
descend in a procession from the train.
Jacqueline felt pretty sure--and the event justified her--that when a
nicely dressed little girl, with J. G. on her smart suitcase and her
hatbox, came timidly down the steps of the car, the Gildersleeve
relatives would pounce upon her and bear her away. Then later, when
Caroline's shabby little substitute appeared, she would naturally fall
to the share of half-aunt Martha.
So at the latest moment she dared to risk, Jacqueline took the red
sweater over her arm and the big suitcase in her hand, and trailed along
at the end of the line that was leaving the car. She felt very jubilant,
for she loved to play-act--and this was the most perfect piece of
play-acting that she had ever invented. She wasn't in the least afraid
for, if she found half-aunt Martha horrid and her house impossible, she
would simply go to her Gildersleeve relatives and explain who she was,
and ask Caroline to back up her story, and then she would have back her
own clothes and her own rightful place, and everything would be just as
it was before.
A little hard on Caroline, perhaps, but still, she would be no worse off
than she would have been, if she hadn't met Jacqueline in the first
place. At least she would have had the society of the piano--why should
any one yearn for a piano?--for several days.
You see, Jacqueline was a selfish little girl, and a thoughtless little
girl. But perhaps young Aunt Edith Delane, who now was Edith Knowlton,
hadn't been the wisest of foster-mothers. In some things she had
indulged Jacqueline foolishly, and in others she had checked her with
equal folly. Jacqueline had had lovely clothes and toys and all manner
of semi grown-up pleasures, but she had not been allowed to make friends
when and where she pleased, nor do the foolish "rowdy" things, as Aunt
Edith called them, that she had seen other children do--such as riding
their bicycles through the streets to public school or flying
hazardously down hill on rollerskates. Of course Jacqueline had longed
to do the very things that she was forbidden to do. And now she could.
She was rid of Aunt Edith, and governesses, and teachers, and chaperons.
She was just Caroline Tait, and she was going to have the free,
untrammeled time of her young life--always with the Gildersleeves to
shield her in the background!
Staggering under her suitcase, Jacqueline reached the head of the steps.
In the distance she caught just a glimpse of Caroline in the
henna-colored frock being hurried off to a tiresome old limousine by a
prim-looking lady in a mauve silk sweater. Thank goodness, she wasn't
Caroline! She knew just the sort of dull old poky house they'd take her
to.
Then Jacqueline gave her attention to getting herself and the suitcase,
with the porter's help, down the steps of the car. She landed in a
little knot of people who were kissing their friends and sorting out
their hand-luggage, and she saw a woman hurrying toward her, a
solidly-built woman with a weather-beaten face, who wore an old black
skirt and a white shirt-waist, and a black straw sailor-hat, a little
askew. The woman began to smile as soon as her eyes met Jacqueline's.
Jacqueline play-acted all over the place. She dropped the suitcase and
fairly flew to meet the stranger.
"Oh, half-aunt Martha," she cried loudly, and cast herself into the
woman's arms.
"My goodness, child," said Mrs. Martha Conway. "Don't knock the breath
out of a body!"
She kissed Jacqueline soundly on the cheek.
"I kind of suspect you're Caroline," she said, with a twinkle in her
gray eyes. "Give me hold of that suitcase. I'd have had one of the boys
here to help us--they were all crazy to come meet their cousin--but I
wanted room in the car so as to get your trunk, and I just brought
Nellie along."
All the while she talked, half-aunt Martha had been hurrying along the
station platform, and hurrying Jacqueline and the suitcase with her,
much as the Red Queen hurried Alice in the Looking Glass Country, you
will remember. They now turned a corner of the station, and there in the
shade opposite the open door of the baggage room stood a dingy-looking
Ford. In the Ford was a sun-browned little girl of six in a stiffly
starched gingham dress, who smiled and waved her hand to them.
"You keep on sitting, Nellie," called Aunt Martha. "Where's your
trunk-check, Caroline?"
"Gee! I forgot all about it," said Jacqueline ruefully.
"You can't have," Aunt Martha told her, patiently but firmly. "Look in
your pockets--in your sweater pocket."
"It isn't there," Jacqueline confessed. She hardly knew whether to laugh
at herself or be annoyed. She looked at Aunt Martha's anxious face, and
decided she wouldn't laugh.
"We'll unstrap the suitcase," said Aunt Martha, as she placed the
suitcase on a packing-box. "Don't worry, Caroline. It must be somewhere.
I knew a woman once that always kept her trunk-check in the toe of her
bedshoe when she went on a long train trip. And even if we don't find
it, we can prove property and claim your trunk. What kind of a trunk was
it?"
"I--I don't know," said Jacqueline feebly. She could feel her cheeks
burning, and the tears of vexation rising to her eyes. For she fully
believed that everything was going to be spoiled right at the outset.
And somehow, as she looked at Aunt Martha's weather-beaten anxious face
and steady gray eyes, she felt that it would not be what she would call
a picnic to explain to Aunt Martha why she didn't know what her own
trunk looked like, and how she came to stand here in the soiled white
shoes of Caroline Tait.
But Martha Conway saw in Jacqueline's confusion only the natural
distress of a child, who was tired with a long journey and frightened at
the prospect of losing all her little possessions.
"Don't cry!" she bade briskly. "'Twon't help matters. Nothing's lost, if
you know where 'tis, as the sea-cook said when he dropped the tea-kettle
overboard, and that check must just be in this suitcase somewheres."
She had the straps unfastened by this time and the lid lifted.
"My, what a hoorah's nest!" she murmured, and indeed Jacqueline's hasty
incursion into the suitcase, in search of Mildred's wardrobe, had
utterly disarranged Caroline's neat garments.
Aunt Martha turned over the pink and white soiled gingham and the
discarded underwear. She felt in the toe of each of the worn bedshoes,
and looked disappointed at finding nothing in them. She shook out the
nightgown. But though she looked more and more anxious, and though her
silence made Jacqueline feel more and more what a real disaster to
Caroline and to Caroline's people the loss of a mere trunk would be, she
did not once scold.
At the bottom of the suitcase were Caroline's comb and brush, in a
chintz case with the initials F. T. worked on it in cross-stitch, and a
little chintz handkerchief-case, with the same initials. Aunt Martha
opened the handkerchief-case and smiled with relief as she saw on top of
the handkerchiefs the clumsy oblong of the pasteboard trunk-check.
"Well, now," she said, "you were a good girl to put it away so
carefully, only next time don't go and forget where you put it. Now I'll
go right and get the baggage man to put the trunk into the Ford. I
suppose there'll be room. Or did you bring a Saratoga, Caroline?"
"The trunk isn't exactly what you might call big," murmured Jacqueline
non-committally. She certainly hoped it wasn't. What mightn't it be
like, this unknown trunk of Caroline's that was now her trunk?
While she waited for Aunt Martha to return with the trunk, Jacqueline
started to restrap the suitcase, but before she did so, she cast a
hurried glance about, in search of the trunk-key. She was pretty sure
that Aunt Martha would be asking for that, next. To her great relief,
she found underneath the comb and brush case a shabby little red purse
(Caroline's purse!) and in it were the trunk-key, two pennies, and a
fifty-cent piece. She pocketed the purse and its contents joyfully. Fair
exchange was no robbery, and even after the porter had his fee, there
were left a couple of dollars in the vanity bag (Jacqueline's bag!) that
Caroline had carried away.
By the time the suitcase was strapped, Aunt Martha came back with a man
in shirt-sleeves who carried a trunk on his shoulder. Not at all a large
trunk, praise be! but a little battered steamer-trunk, which went quite
easily between the back and front seats of the Ford, with room enough
besides for the suitcase, and Jacqueline's red sweater, and some brown
paper bundles and bags that were half-aunt Martha's. One didn't come to
Baring Junction every day, it seemed, and one profited by the occasion
to do a little shopping.
After the baggage was safely placed, Aunt Martha and Jacqueline settled
themselves on the front seat, with the six-year-old girl between them.
"This is Nellie," said Aunt Martha, "and this is your Cousin Caroline,
Nellie."
The little girl hung her head and smiled. She had a pointed chin and
thick golden brown eyelashes. She seemed to Jacqueline rather a baby.
After a little rebellion on the part of the Ford, which Aunt Martha
subdued in a capable manner, the car got under way. Jacqueline watched
the process with interest. She knew a lot of funny stories about Fords,
but she had never ridden in one before. Uncle Jimmie had a Locomobile,
and Aunt Edie swore by her Marmon.
Rather spasmodically, as they got up speed, they rolled across the worn
asphalt of the station park and into the one wide street of Baring
Junction. Along the street were two-story buildings of brick, fruit
shops and hardware shops and drygoods shops, as the wares that
overflowed on the sidewalk bore witness, and drug shops. At sight of the
large advertisements that shouted the joys of sundaes and cool drinks,
Jacqueline remembered that she was thirsty. She remembered also the
fifty cents in Caroline's shabby red purse. She never dreamed that the
gift of fifty cents, because Caroline must not go on a journey
penniless, meant real generosity on Cousin Delia's part.
"Let's stop and get a drink," begged Jacqueline. "My treat, of course.
I've got fifty cents--enough for three fifteen-cent sodas."
Aunt Martha turned her head and looked at her.
"Forty-five cents just for drinks?" she said. "You hang on to that
half-dollar, Caroline. You'll be needing it, like as not, for
hair-ribbons."
Jacqueline started to say, very rudely: "It's my money!" But she
recollected that it was really Caroline's. She also caught herself
wondering if it were advisable to be rude to half-aunt Martha. A lady
who could squelch a Ford might be able to squelch a supposed half-niece.
Then she was glad that she hadn't been rude, for Aunt Martha smiled. She
seemed to guess what it was like to be ten years old, and just off the
train on a hot June afternoon.
"I'll get you and Nellie each an ice-cream cone," she said.
Nellie smiled. She couldn't have looked more blissfully happy if
somebody had promised her a beautiful fifty-cent special, with a plate
of _petit fours_.
"There's a nice-looking place," suggested Jacqueline eagerly, "the big
one with the little fountain of water in the window."
"Donovan's?" said Aunt Martha. "That's a big place, all right, and
prices to match. They'll charge you fifteen cents for an ice-cream cone
if you go in there. We'll stop at the little Greek place."
Just at the end of the street of brick buildings they stopped
accordingly at a tiny shop, wedged in between two pompous neighbors.
Aunt Martha bought two ice-cream cones for seven cents apiece. Only two
cones. Perhaps she didn't like ice-cream herself.
"Eat 'em up before they melt, and don't spill any more than you can
help," she advised.
Nellie's little pink tongue was deep in the custardy contents of the
pasteboard-like cone before Aunt Martha had regained her seat.
Jacqueline clutched her cone and followed suit joyously. Never before
had she been encouraged to eat dubious ice-cream, publicly, shamelessly,
in a moving car, on an open road. She licked the cool drops that
dribbled from the melting mound, and thought them delicious.
"Thank you, half-aunt Martha," she said, with a sticky smile.
Aunt Martha chuckled.
"My land, child," she said. "Don't call me half-aunt. Makes me feel like
I was cut in two."