NEW RELATIONS
Over the covered bridge and into Longmeadow Street the Ford panted,
where the limousine some time before had silently and sumptuously
rolled. But in Longmeadow Street Jacqueline's way parted from
Caroline's. Before they reached the Gildersleeve place they turned to
the left into a road of trodden dirt. Soon they had left the well-kept
village houses, with their trim lawns and flower-beds, behind them. They
drove now through vast level fields which were green with the tops of
onions. In the distance were mountains, such as Caroline was studying
from her north window. Overhead the blue sky was losing some of its hard
brilliance, as the sun jogged downward toward the western hills.
Along the dirt road were strung a few farms, wide apart, with clusters
of buildings, houses, barns, and sheds. Around each farmhouse grew
trees, beeches and elms and nut-trees. But the road itself was
shadeless, running straight as a builder's line between the green and
pungent-smelling fields of onions.
"My, but it's hot!" panted Jacqueline.
"You just wait till winter," boasted Nellie. "The wind comes just
a-whooping down from the north, and the snow is that high. Last winter I
got in a drift up to my waist, going to school. Ralph, he hauls me on my
sled but----"
"Tell Caroline about the blizzard later," Aunt Martha interrupted. "Here
we are now, and she's got other things to think about."
They turned from the road into a dirt track. On the right was a square
old white house, badly in need of paint, with huge bushes of lilac that
hid its front door from the road, and elms that towered above the
weather-worn dark roof. At the left was untidy grass where red hens
scratched among rusty croquet wickets; poplar trees, with a shabby
hammock hung between two of them; a swing that lacked a seat, drooping
from a butternut tree. Then the car stopped in the irregular plot of
trodden dirt at the side-door of the house. A great slab of granite was
the doorstone, and round it grew bachelor's buttons and phlox, fenced
high with wire to keep out the chickens.
Jacqueline noticed that if they drove on, they would land in a barn,
with a wide open door, and beside the barn was a lane, which ran off
toward the western mountains, and there was an orchard, and sheds, and a
fenced, small cow-yard. She didn't have time for more than a fleeting
glimpse.
"Here's Grandma, Caroline," Aunt Martha claimed her attention.
Jacqueline turned her head and saw an old lady come briskly out upon the
doorstone. She was weather-brown and small and spry, as they say in New
England. She had very dark eyes and a thin, delicate nose, and she was
as neat as wax, in a gray alpaca dress, and a big white apron. A little
tow-headed boy in blue overalls, who must be Freddie, came trotting at
her side, but as soon as he saw Jacqueline, he clutched at Grandma's
skirts and hid his head in their folds.
Jacqueline opened the door of the Ford and jumped out.
"How do you do, Mrs. Conway," she began.
"Guess you'd better say Grandma, and have it over with," the old lady
said, and kissed her. "My, but you're a fine big girl for ten years
old--not a bit spindle-legged like some city children. You come right in
now and wash up while they're getting the things out of the car. I got
some water hot on the oil stove."
At Grandma's side, with Freddie peeping at her round Grandma's skirts,
Jacqueline went into the kitchen of the old Conway house. It was a long
room, with many-paneled doors, and windows set with little lights of
glass. On the well-scoured floor were mats of braided rags. At one side
a huge fireplace had been bricked up, and projecting from what had been
its hearth, stood a big cookstove, ornamented with polished nickel,
which was quite cold. At the other side of the room, between the
windows, was an iron sink with two pumps, and near it a big three-burner
oil stove, on which a kettle gently simmered.
"Hard water in the right-hand pump," Grandma rapidly explained to
Jacqueline. "Cistern water in the left-hand. Cistern water is good for
the complexion--but that will interest you more a few years later.
There's the hand basin--don't ever take the tin one--it's for the
vegetables. Don't touch that yellow soap--leave it for the dishes and
such like. Here's the white soap for your hands, and you'll find the
clean roller towel on the closet door."
Why, this was roughing it, thought Jacqueline. She had known nothing
like it since she went camping in the Yosemite. She washed her face and
hands in a blue enamel basin, with a white lining--soft water from the
left-hand pump, warm water from the kettle.
"Don't waste none of it!" warned Grandma. "Martha and Nellie and the
boys will want a lick before supper."
She dried her face and hands on the clean, coarse roller towel, and then
with great bumping and thumping her trunk (Caroline's trunk!) was
brought into the kitchen, and she met Caroline's cousins, who had served
as baggage smashers. Of course she knew them at once from their mother's
description. The tallest one, with the direct gray eyes like Aunt
Martha's and the cowlick, was Ralph, and the thin brown one with the big
mouth was Dickie, and the red-head who grinned at her engagingly was
Neil. Ralph wore long pants and shirt of khaki and heavy shoes and
stockings, but Dickie and Neil were barelegged in sneakers, and their
old shirts and knickers, like their hands, might have been cleaner. But
they looked nice boys, and even if they hadn't been, Jacqueline wasn't
in the least afraid of boys.
She shook hands all round, and then Nellie wished her to look at Annie,
the wonderful baby. Off the kitchen was a little bedroom, which had been
Grandma's for years and years, and here in a little crib beside
Grandma's bed with its white dimity cover, sat Annie. She was a
blue-eyed, serious person, in faded pink rompers, and she divided her
attention between a string of empty spools and her own toes. Jacqueline
felt sorry for her. Poor baby, with so little to play with! She sat down
beside her and dangled the spools before her eyes. Then the serious
Annie suddenly gurgled and clutched at them and clapped her hands and
laughed, with adorable dimplings. She was more fun than a kitten. No,
she wasn't like a kitten. With her firm little body she was much more
like a wriggling, happy, affectionate small puppy.
"Bring her along, Caroline," called Grandma, from the kitchen. "Supper's
ready."
Jacqueline didn't know much about babies, but she wouldn't admit her
ignorance, especially before Nellie. She picked Annie up in her arms,
and holding her tight--for to drop her would be more dreadful even than
to drop a puppy--she followed Nellie to the supper table.
Jacqueline had rather expected that the Conways, being poor people,
would eat in the kitchen, but she found the table laid in the big square
room off the kitchen that looked into both the side-yard and the lilac
bushes at the front of the house. It was a shabby room, with faded brown
wall-paper and a painted floor. There was a well-worn couch in one
corner, a wicker armchair, and a couple of rockers, a sewing machine by
the side-window, and a whatnot in the farthest corner, filled with
school books and farm papers. The table was spread with a checkered red
and white cloth, and the dishes were of three or four different
patterns. The silver was plated, and the glasses were thick. But the
table was neatly set, Jacqueline realized, and everything was spotlessly
clean.
Annie sat in a highchair beside Aunt Martha, and Freddie sat on a
hassock placed on a chair at Grandma's right hand. Jacqueline sat
between Grandma and Dickie. It was Aunt Martha, of course, who brought
in the supper. Such a supper Jacqueline had never heard tell of--a huge
shortcake, made of two layers of biscuit-dough that must have been baked
in the grandfather of all drip pans. Luscious red strawberries, crushed
to a pulp and mixed with sugar, were between the layers and oozed their
richness, as Aunt Martha cut great squares for her hungry family.
Besides the shortcake there was milk for the children, and tea in thin
white cups, adorned with jocund green dragons, for Grandma and Aunt
Martha. That was all the supper.
Jacqueline looked questioningly round her. Was there nothing else to
begin with--or to end with? But her cousins (Caroline's cousins!) were
wading into the shortcake, as if it were all that they asked or
expected. She took a bite--a large one. Oh, but she found it good!
She looked sidewise at Dickie, and Dickie, with his mouth full, looked
at her. She nodded toward the juicy piece of shortcake on the platter
that was all ready and waiting for the first child who should ask for a
second helping.
"Bet you I'll beat you to it," murmured Jacqueline. Instinct told her
that invasions of decorum had best not be shouted aloud in Aunt Martha's
presence.
"G'on!" said Dickie softly.