TWO PENNIES TO SPEND
Jacqueline waked early on her first morning at the Conway farm. With a
rooster crowing under your window, you need no alarm clock, and with a
cozy six-year-old at your side, inclined to snuggle on a warm morning,
you have no inducements to lie abed.
So Jacqueline jumped up and dressed herself. She put on the Peggy Janes
that she had marked with approval the night before, and she slipped her
bare feet into Caroline's old sneakers. She washed her face and hands at
the marble-topped washstand. The washbasin had a green landscape in the
bottom, very pleasant to look at through the clear water, but the
pitcher belonged to a different set and was ornamented with purple
bands.
Nellie chattered in a lively manner all through the hasty dressing
process, mostly about some new kittens and a rooster named General
Pershing. She dressed herself very handily, but she didn't scorn
Jacqueline's help when it came to the back buttons of her underwaist and
overalls.
Early as the children were, they found, when they climbed down the funny
steep stairs into the kitchen, that Grandma and Aunt Martha and the
babies were up before them.
"That's a nice rig for the country, Jackie," Aunt Martha said
approvingly, as she spied the Peggy Janes. "I'm glad you didn't bring
any starched up city notions to the farm. There's time and place for
everything, of course," she added tolerantly, "but high heeled shoes and
frilly dresses don't go with the soil."
Freddie had remembered Jacqueline over night, perhaps because of the
piece of shapeless chocolate that she had popped into his mouth. He
threw himself upon her with gurgles of greeting.
"He takes to you all right," said Grandma, as she paused with a pan of
biscuits in her hand, midway from stove to table. "I wonder now if a
smart girl like you couldn't take it on herself to dress him mornings.
Every minute counts this time o' day, and your Aunt Martha has her hands
full."
"Sure I will," Jacqueline promised airily. She was promising only for a
few days--just as few as she chose to make them. And she really did like
Freddie. He was more fun than a puppy dog.
"Just pump that pitcher full of water, Jackie, and fill the glasses at
the table," Aunt Martha struck in briskly. "Ring the bell, Nellie.
Breakfast's about ready."
Nellie sprang on a chair, and took down a big dinner bell from the shelf
above the stove. But she didn't ring it at the foot of the stairs to
rouse her sleepy brothers--oh, no! She went out on the doorstone in the
soft clear morning air, and she clanged that bell as if all Longmeadow
Street were burning up.
Very quickly the three boys came scuffling in from the barn and sheds
where they had been doing the first chores of the day. They washed
hurriedly at the sink--so hurriedly that Aunt Martha sent Neil back to
do it all over again. Then they sat down to breakfast in the shabby,
homely dining room, that wasn't a bit like the rural interiors that
Jacqueline had seen on the stage and in the movies.
There were no frills about that breakfast any more than there had been
about the supper. On the table was a big plate of hot raised biscuits,
fluffy and light, and a platter of freshly cooked hash, meat and
potatoes (more potatoes than meat!) warmed on the stove in what Aunt
Martha called a "spider," crisp and brown on the outside, soft and
savory within. There was milk for the children, and coffee in a shiny
tin pot for Aunt Martha and Grandma. Freddie and Annie had porridge.
Aunt Martha fed Annie spoonsful with one hand, and ate her own breakfast
with the other.
Both at Buena Vista and at school, fried things and hot breads had been
considered unhygienic. Being forbidden, they had always seemed to
Jacqueline desirable. She ate two helpings of hash and three biscuits
and a half. She wanted to eat four, the same as Dickie did, but she had
to give up, beaten. She could chew still, but she couldn't swallow.
"Now you and Nellie see how nice you can clear the table and wash the
dishes, and then put the dining room to rights," said Aunt Martha, as if
she asked the most natural thing in the world. "Grandma'll be here to
oversee. I've got to go down to the ten acre, and see if that Polack is
on the job, or just getting over the christening party they had last
night at the Corners."
Aunt Martha tied on a straw hat, nodded to her family, and went her
competent way. The boys went, too, quite like men of business. In these
days of high wages, when Polish farm-hands expected fifty cents an hour,
you either let your youngsters work in the fields, or closed up shop and
went "on the town," Grandma told Jacqueline, as one who endured what
could not be cured. Ralph was as good as a man on the place, she added
proudly. He'd be weeding onions now until the sun got too hot. Dickie
and Neil would be working in the vegetable garden, which supplied the
family table and a few good paying customers on Longmeadow Street.
"They'll be hungry as horses by noon," said Grandma. "I guess I'll flax
round and stir 'em up some gingerbread."
Grandma seemed chief cook of the establishment. Already she had baked a
batch of bread since she got up, and had dried-apple pies to pop into
the oven, and a piece of meat--to Jacqueline it looked mostly bone and
gristle--simmering on the back of the stove, lest it spoil in the hot
weather. She now mixed gingerbread, as spry as you please, and meantime
gave directions about putting Annie outside in the baby pen, and taking
the table-leavings to the hens, and setting another kettle of hot water
to boil.
"You'll need some rinsing water or your dishes will be streaked," she
told Jacqueline. "There's a right way and a wrong way to do everything,
even dishes, and it's just as easy to do it right as wrong." Jacqueline
didn't mind, for one day only. She thought dish washing rather a game.
She and Nellie brought the things out from the dining room.
"Take the tray," said Grandma, "and bring a lot at a time. Always made
your head save your heels."
Then they rinsed the milky glasses, and they scraped the plates.
Jacqueline was going to add to the scraps for the hens the bit of hash
that was on the platter, but Grandma stopped her with a gesture of
positive horror.
"Mercy, child! Don't throw away good clean victuals, even if the war
_is_ over. Put it in that clean little cracked dish. It'll warm up nice
and tasty for somebody's supper. The butter goes in that stone jar. Let
those biscuits cool before you put 'em into the bread box. Never shut up
hot bread in a close box, or it'll spoil on you."
What a lot of things to remember, thought Jacqueline! This was more
exciting than mental arithmetic.
She washed the dishes just as Grandma told her, and Nellie wiped them
painstakingly. First they did the glasses, then "the silver"--poor
plated ware that it was!
"Be sure to get the tines of the forks clean," cautioned Grandma. "And
remember, when we have eggs, not to plump your silver and your dishes
into hot water, or you'll cook the egg right to 'em. Wash eggy things
first in cold water, always." After the silver, came the plates and the
cups, and last of all "the calicoes," as Grandma called the cooking
dishes. Then the dish pan must be scalded, and the dish towels set to
boil upon the stove, and while they were boiling, Jacqueline brushed up
the dining room, rather an amateurish job, but Grandma said she took
hold handily. Then Jacqueline and Nellie, each with a big square of soft
cloth, dusted the dining room furniture, and last of all, they hung
their dish towels out in the warm sun to dry.
By that time Jacqueline had had enough of housework. She was ready to
say so, and to quit right then and there. But Grandma said:
"You're a big help, Jackie. Your aunt's awful busy outside, and I'm not
as quick on my feet as I was. Some days it seems like I'd never get
through step-stepping."
Well, when a little old lady says a thing like that to you, of course
you can't flop down on the dining-room couch with a story paper and
leave her to work all alone. So while Nellie kept an eye on Freddie and
Annie, Jacqueline went upstairs with Grandma and did the chamber work
and had her first lesson in bed-making. As there were four beds, besides
Freddie's crib, she had had quite a lot of practice by the time they
finished.
"Make a handsome bed, you'll get a handsome husband, they used to tell
me when I was a girl," chuckled Grandma. "You want to do your best,
Jackie, unless you aim to be one o' these new women that get along
without men folks."
After the beds were made, Jacqueline and Nellie each had a piece of
gingerbread, and they took two big pieces for Dickie and Neil, and went
out to them in the garden. It was quite a big garden, with poles of
beans and rows of peas, trained up on dry bushes, tomato plants and
cucumber vines, beets and lettuce, squash and pumpkins. But there were
no onions. You got onions by the peck out of the great fields that
spread all round the farm. For the Conways, like their neighbors, put
all their land into onions, and on the price of onions their fortunes
hung.
They dined at noon at the Conway farm, and dinner was all of cold
things, so as not to heat the kitchen in the middle of the day. There
was ready cooked cereal, and a pitcher of milk. There were great slices
of home-made bread, with home-made plum jam. (Jacqueline had gone down
with Grandma into the deep cold cellar where the food was kept, and she
had seen the shelves where the jars of home-canned fruits and vegetables
lived. Next time she could go down herself and save Grandma's old legs.)
There was cottage cheese, and lettuce, and sliced tomatoes. There was
gingerbread--all the gingerbread that any one could wish to eat.
After the dinner dishes were cleared away and left to be washed at night
when it was cooler, Aunt Martha and Grandma sat down to sew and mend for
their big family.
"We'll have to count on you to do your own mending," Aunt Martha told
Jacqueline. "But you just run out to the barn now, and play."
Jacqueline went. She wanted to see those kittens. She also wanted to try
some hazardous stunts that she had thought up, as soon as she had seen
the beams and ladders in the barn. Neil and Nellie came with her, and
Dickie presently joined them. Of course Dickie could do acrobatic feats
that none of them could equal. But Jacqueline felt she did pretty well
at balancing on her hands for the first time, and she could put her
ankle behind her neck as well as any of them.
She thought they had been playing only the least little while, but
really it was in the middle of the afternoon when the big bell rang.
They scampered at once to the house. That was the law of the farm:
always run when you hear the bell, or you may miss something you
wouldn't like to miss.
Aunt Martha was on the doorstone, talking to a bearded man in a muddy
Ford.
"Hurry up!" she called, as soon as the children came within earshot.
"Here's Mr. Griswold driving up to town and he has room for two. Get
your purse, Jackie. Here's a chance to buy you that toothbrush. Neil,
you can go with her and show her the way home. You'll have to hoof it
back, unless you find somebody coming down to the Meadows that will give
you a lift."
Adventure beckoned! Jacqueline thought nothing of the walk through the
dust in the heat. She flew upstairs and got Caroline's shabby purse, and
flew down again. Perhaps where they were going, she could get a soda,
one for herself and one, of course, for Neil.
Aunt Martha must have read her thoughts.
"Now don't you go wasting that money," she ordered. "You ought to get
you a brush for fifteen cents at Miss Crevey's. You bring back
thirty-five cents."
"Oh, Aunt Martha!" protested Jacqueline.
"Don't you forget what I say." Aunt Martha fixed Jacqueline with gray
eyes that looked her through and through. "Jump in now. Mr. Griswold's
waiting."
Jacqueline didn't stop to argue. She jumped in, and Neil jumped in
beside her, and away they rattled with the friendly neighboring farmer,
through the hot-smelling fields of green onions. As they rattled along,
a heartening thought came to Jacqueline. She had fifty cents in her
purse, and two pennies. Aunt Martha had said nothing about the pennies.
She could spend them. She didn't quite know what you could get for two
cents, that was good, but there must be something.
Mr. Griswold put down his little passengers at the Orthodox church in
Longmeadow Street. He was going on to Northford himself to get a young
pig in a crate.
"Now show me the shop," Jacqueline bade Neil. She had taken command of
him, much as she had taken command of Caroline. "And I've got two
pennies to spend as I please."
"Gee!" said Neil. "That's great."
He meant it, too. Jacqueline looked at him in wonder. She counted her
spending money usually, when she troubled herself to count it at all, in
dimes and quarters, never in copper pennies.
They went into Miss Crevey's shop. A funny little shop Jacqueline
thought it, and she thought Miss Crevey with her false front, and her
ill-fitted false teeth, and her alpaca sleeves, was like a character in
a story book. They got the toothbrush readily enough--that part of the
shopping was simple and uninteresting. But to spend the precious two
pennies was different. There was such a choice of things for a penny--a
tiny glass measure of hard red and white candies--or a stick of gum--or
two large white peppermints--or a stick of striped candy. Jacqueline
wanted the gum very much, for at home she had never been allowed to chew
it. But Neil, she could see, hungered for a dreadful confection of
molasses, imperfectly covered with chocolate.
"We'll get both," suggested Jacqueline.
"Well--you see----" Neil hesitated. "If we get all those little jiggers
for a penny, we'll have something to take home to the kids."
Jacqueline looked at him and slowly reddened. She hadn't thought of the
kids. Indeed she had thought two pennies hardly big enough to divide
between two children, let alone five. But Neil had thought of the
younger ones.
"We'll have that chocolate stick, please," Jacqueline told Miss Crevey
with sudden generous resolve, "and a glass dingus of the little jigs.
After all, I don't care for gum."
And just as she said the words, she heard the door creak open behind her
and she turned her head. There on the threshold stood a prim lady in a
white summer frock, and with her a little girl in a posy-strewn muslin
(Jacqueline's muslin!) who looked as scared as if she had seen a ghost,
and the little girl, of course, was Caroline!