"CALL ME JACKIE!"
Strawberry shortcake is a bond in common. By the time that supper was
over Jacqueline was no longer a stranger to Caroline's cousins, and when
she had shared with them the rather squashy chocolates that still
survived in her pockets, they were friends.
"I wish you'd call me Jackie," she told them. "That's what they always
called me at school."
"I don't take much stock in nicknames," said Aunt Martha. She had such
an uncanny way of always being there, although you couldn't say she
snooped.
"I'd feel more at home if you called me Jackie," Jacqueline suggested
artfully.
To that plea Aunt Martha yielded, as Jacqueline had guessed she would.
"All right, then--Jackie. Now you can unpack your trunk. That'll be
chore enough for to-night."
"But after this Jackie can do the dishes," suggested Neil teazingly,
"because she's a girl."
"No, sir," said Aunt Martha promptly, "you can keep right on doing your
share of dishes, because you're a boy."
Unpacking the trunk was really chore enough, Jacqueline decided, before
she was through. To take even a steamer-trunk up the steep stairs that
led from the kitchen was impossible. All Caroline's possessions had to
go in armsful (Jacqueline's arms!) to the room that she was to share
with Nellie.
It was a square room--Nellie thought it a large room--with a bricked up
fireplace and a narrow white wood mantel, on which were a china dog,
with a basket of matches in his mouth, and a little figure of a boy in a
short tunic, kneeling at his prayers. On the walls was a paper strewn
with baskets of roses. Unfortunately the paper had been hung upside
down, which gave the room a somewhat rakish atmosphere. There were only
two pictures, an engraving of a dog, after Landseer, and a
resigned-looking Evangeline seated beside a grave. The floor was covered
with matting, and there were rag rugs over the thinnest places where the
boards showed through. The bed was high and old-fashioned, with a chintz
valance. The bureau and the washstand were of black walnut, with marble
tops. The chairs were of painted wood, with slatted backs.
Jacqueline could claim for her own two drawers of the bureau, and most
of the hooks in the shallow closet, and as no one offered to arrange her
things for her, she arranged them herself and took a certain pride in
doing so. Only there were so few things in Caroline's battered trunk;
socks for summer and stockings for winter, faded and much darned;
undergarments, thinned with frequent washing and set with neat patches;
skimpy-looking gingham dresses; one dress of wool that had been dyed; a
winter coat, with a collar of worn velvet.
"Try on that coat, Jackie," bade Aunt Martha, as she turned from
straining the milk.
Jacqueline tried it on, and felt that she looked indeed the part of poor
child. Such a shabby, outgrown little coat it was. Wasn't she glad that
she was only playing at being Caroline?
"Tut, tut!" clucked Aunt Martha, and frowned. "You must have had that
coat at least two seasons. Well, Nellie will grow to it in another year,
and we've got to get you a new coat for winter, somehow. There's an old
ulster of mine perhaps I could dye and cut over for you. But winter's
some ways off, and we won't go crossing bridges till we get to 'em."
Near the bottom of the trunk Jacqueline discovered three pairs of Peggy
Janes--overalls such as Aunt Edie would have shrieked aloud to see her
wear. She made up her mind to wear them, here at the farm. Maybe she
would go barefoot, too--or at least barelegged and in sneakers, like
Dickie and Neil.
In the last armful that Jacqueline carried upstairs was a box of
Japanese lacquer, tied with an old hair-ribbon. Jacqueline had the
curiosity to open it when she was in her room and Nellie's. Then she
wished that she hadn't. She felt as if she had walked into a room
without knocking. There were in the box a few letters, tied up with a
bit of worsted, and slipped upon the worsted, and secured with a knot,
was a plain gold ring. There were two little pins--not a child's
pins--and a slender chain of gold beads. There was a little pair of
scissors, and a bag of crocheted purple silk, which held two spools of
fine cotton. There was a tiny fine handkerchief, with the letter C half
finished in the corner, and the threaded needle stuck in the place, just
as some one had left it. Last of all, wrapped in a piece of white tissue
paper, was a small photograph of a lady with gentle eyes and a sweet
mouth, like Caroline's.
Very soberly Jacqueline put back everything as she had found it, and
tied up the box, and hid it away in the back of the drawer.
"Those were Caroline's mother's things," she thought, "and she's dead. I
won't touch 'em again, ever."
By now it was dusky in the little room, as the long June day came to an
end. Aunt Martha trudged up the stair, with a well-trimmed oil lamp in
her hand. Behind her lagged Freddie and Nellie.
"I'll get 'em to bed," she told Jacqueline. "Freddie sleeps in my room,
just across the hall. You go sit in the hammock with the boys. By the
time I'm through up here the water will be ready for you to have a bath,
and I guess after that long hot journey, you'll be ready for it."
So Jacqueline sat out in the shabby hammock under the poplars, in the
warm, sweet dusk, and saw the great June stars come out and the distant
mountains subside into rims of inky blackness round the silent meadows.
She and Neil and Dickie poked and crowded each other fraternally, and
Dickie boasted about his hunting trips on the mountain with Ralph, and
Jacqueline raged inwardly because, in her part of Caroline, she couldn't
cap his stories with her account of the Yosemite.
At last Aunt Martha called her into the kitchen. There were two kettles
on the oil stove, and a big bath towel, worn rather thin, lay over the
back of a chair.
"There's the washroom," Aunt Martha told Jacqueline, and nodded toward a
door at the farther end of the kitchen.
Jacqueline went in. Here were no nickel faucets and no porcelain bath,
but just a stationary tub of shiny zinc, which drained into a pipe that
led out of doors. A square, unglazed window, high in the wall, admitted
the light from the kitchen, and the heat.
"Oh, what a funny bath!" cried Jacqueline.
"'Tisn't much like what you're used to in the city," said Aunt Martha,
as she bustled in with a kettle of steaming water. "But I tell you it
seems like Heaven not to have to lug water both ways. I guess if them
that say 'cleanliness is next to godliness' had had to winter it once in
New England with four young ones, they'd have said cleanliness was next
thing to martyrdom."
Two kettles full of hot water went into the tub, and a bucket of cold
water that Jacqueline pumped.
"By Saturday night I guess you can do for yourself, same as Neil," Aunt
Martha told her approvingly.
Last of all, into the zinc tub one-third full of warm water, went
Jacqueline, and soaped and splashed and chuckled and enjoyed herself. A
funny bath, indeed! If she had to do it all her life, horrible! But just
for two or three days--why, it was a lark.
It was not such a lark though, scrubbing that zinc tub afterward, with a
rag and warm water and "Clean-o." She hadn't thought of doing it, till
Aunt Martha came in and pointed out that cleaning the tub after you used
it had something to do with the Golden Rule.
"I know you won't need to be told twice," said Aunt Martha.
"I guess I won't be here to be told twice," Jacqueline thought
resentfully as she scrubbed.
She came out of the washroom, glowing and glowering, in Caroline's
nightgown and faded kimono and worn bedshoes.
"You can brush your teeth upstairs," said Aunt Martha, who seemed to
find endless last tasks to do in that kitchen, before she should join
Grandma with the darning basket, under the big, hot lamp in the dining
room. "The hard water for your teeth is in the little pitcher on the
washstand."
"I--I----" Jacqueline faced the same difficulty that at about this hour
presented itself to Caroline. "You see--I haven't got the toothbrush I
had on the train. I must have--lost it."
"Tut, tut!" Aunt Martha clucked again. Then she took heart. "It might
have been worse. Better lose your toothbrush than your sweater or your
head, for that matter. You'll have to buy you a new one to-morrow. Lucky
you didn't spend that half-dollar on foolishness. I'll mix some cooking
salt and warm water, and you just rinse your mouth out good. It's the
best we can do for now."
Left to herself, Jacqueline would probably have "forgotten" to use the
tepid salt and water. But she was not left to herself. Aunt Martha went
upstairs with her, and stood over her till the mouthwash was properly
and thoroughly applied. Then she tucked her into bed beside Nellie, who
grunted sleepily and grudgingly moved over to give the newcomer room.
Having tucked Jacqueline in, Aunt Martha kissed her in a businesslike
and somewhat absent-minded way.
"Have a good sleep," she bade, and took the lamp, and went creaking down
the stair.
Jacqueline lay in the dark, beneath the sheet, in the room that was warm
and breathless. She thought of the zinc tub that she had had to scrub,
and the dishes that she should have to wash, and of Aunt Martha, who
seemed to have as many rules and standards as if she had dressed in silk
and ridden in a limousine, like Great-aunt Eunice.
"I don't like it here," thought Jacqueline. "First thing in the morning
I'll hunt up those Gildersleeves."
Nellie beside her turned sleepily and cooed:
"That you, Jackie?"
"Sure!"
"Nice Jackie--kiss me goo' night!"
Jacqueline did so. What a hot little thing Nellie was--but how cunning!
That funny baby, too, was a darling, and Freddie, who gurgled when you
tickled him. Neil had promised to show her a woodchuck's hole in the
morning, and Dickie had boasted about his rabbits.
"It might be worse," Jacqueline reconsidered, "and if I back out, I'll
never get another chance to wear Peggy Janes, and cut on behind carts,
and be poor and rowdy. I guess now I'm in, I'd better stick it out for a
day or two."