OVER THE TEACUPS
Caroline and Aunt Eunice sat in the summer house, making doll clothes.
The weather, like the Little Bear's porridge, was neither too hot nor
too cold, but just right. A little breeze made the flowers in the garden
curtsy like so many tall belles, arrayed in bright hues for a
merrymaking at the court of the fairies. That was what Caroline told
Aunt Eunice. She found it easy to tell Aunt Eunice all sorts of things.
Aunt Eunice sat in a cushioned wicker armchair, which Frank had brought
out for her, and Caroline sat in a low rocker. Mildred sat on the bench
at their elbow, lightly clad in a lace-edged camisole and snowy French
drawers. She bore herself with the fine dignity and indifference that a
queen of the ancient régime surrounded by her ladies in waiting would
have shown in the like circumstances.
Aunt Eunice was frilling lace into a tiny sleeve. Caroline was setting
her finest stitches in the hem of a silken skirt of peacock blue.
"When her new clothes are made, Aunt Eunice," said Caroline, in her
sweet, serious little voice, "I think we should let her go on a long
journey to wonderful places."
"I think so, too," Aunt Eunice assented.
"Where should you like to go, Mildred?" asked Caroline. "To the Snow
Queen's palace in the cold, blue, frozen north? We are going to make you
a cunning cape of black velvet with a white fur collar, and I'm sure it
would be greatly admired by the snow elves. Only there are great silvery
bears at the North Pole and they might fancy you for a tit-bit, my poor
darling. I suppose, Aunt Eunice, they must get tired of eating just
seals and Esquimaux and so on."
"I'm sure _I_ shouldn't relish an Esquimau," said Aunt Eunice.
"Then you shall go south, Mildred," said Caroline. "After all, most of
your clothes are of silk and muslin, and better for a warm climate. You
can go to the Isles of Greece where burning Sappho loved and sang."
Aunt Eunice looked up from the tiny sleeve, and lifted her brows, never
so slightly.
"Where did you ever hear of Sappho, child?"
"It was in my reader at school," Caroline explained, "and long before
that, when I was little, I had a gray kitten and her name was Sappho.
Were you ever in the Isles of Greece, Aunt Eunice?"
"No, dear."
"Oh!" said Caroline, disappointed. "You've been most everywhere else.
Well, let's send Mildred to Italy, where the citrons are, and bandits,
and beggars, and Pompeii. Oh, Aunt Eunice, won't you tell Mildred and me
how you went to Pompeii on your wedding journey?"
The little smile brightened on Aunt Eunice's soft old face.
"Why, Jacqueline, dear, you must be sick of the story of my wedding
journey. In the fortnight you've been here, you've heard it thirteen
times at least."
"Fourteen times would be one for every day in the week," Caroline
suggested, with a twinkle in her brown eyes that were usually so grave.
"Oh, do tell me again, Aunt Eunice! I love to hear about strange,
beautiful places. When I shut my eyes at night I see them just as you
tell them, and I go to sleep and dream I am there."
Aunt Eunice looked at the glowing little face of her companion.
"You'd like to go to Italy, Jacqueline?"
Caroline nodded.
"I want to ride in a gondola on a blue lagoon," she said, "and see the
Alpine glow, and a castle on the Rhine, and walk in those streets of old
ancient houses in Paris where Notre Dame is that you tell about."
Aunt Eunice paid close attention to her stitches.
"Of course," she said, after a pause, "you'll go abroad some day soon
with your Aunt Edith."
Caroline gave a quick little sigh. Oh, if only she need not be made to
remember, every now and then, that she was not--could not
be--Jacqueline!
"I suppose perhaps I shall," she said, since she must say something.
To herself Aunt Eunice said indignantly that it was clear enough that
Edith Delane had starved the soul of this sensitive, beauty-loving
child.
"If only I could show her Venice!" thought Aunt Eunice, and then, in her
turn, she gave a quick little sigh. She had waited ten years to have
Jack's little daughter with her for a summer. She might have to wait
another ten years, before the boon was granted her a second time. In ten
years more Aunt Eunice would be eighty-one. Too old for long journeys.
No use for her to plan!
So Aunt Eunice and Caroline, each for good reasons of her own, lapsed
into a silence as deep as Mildred's, and not so sunny. It was fortunate
perhaps that just at that moment Cousin Penelope joined them. She
carried a shallow, woven basket in which were three cups and saucers of
egg-shell thinness, and silver spoons, worn smooth with age, a glass
dish of wafer-like slices of lemon, stuck with whole cloves, and another
dish of crystallized dates. Behind her came Sallie, with the teapot in
its queer wadded Japanese basket, like an old lady church-ward borne in
Colonial days, and a light wicker stand of three baskets, each with its
own brand of goodies wrapped in a white napkin--crisp buttered toast,
wee sandwiches of orange marmalade and of cream cheese, and tiny
nut-cakes, coated with caramel frosting.
Caroline sprang up to help Sallie place the folding table, and spread
the embroidered white cloth that she carried on her arm, and set out the
tea. Aunt Eunice folded her work neatly. Cousin Penelope drew up a
chair. Only Mildred was idle, but she wore her idleness like a grace,
and no one ever thought of rebuking her.
In the oblique light that filtered through the leaves of woodbine into
the summer house, Aunt Eunice and Cousin Penelope and Caroline took
their tea. It would have been just like every tea they had taken in the
last fortnight, if Caroline had not ventured on a crystallized date. A
moment later there rippled across her face a little wave of discomfort,
which did not escape Cousin Penelope. Strange how quick Cousin Penelope
was--even quicker than Aunt Eunice--to note any change in Caroline!
"What's the matter, Jacqueline?" she asked promptly.
"Nothing, Cousin Penelope."
"You surely don't make faces for the fun of it?"
"Don't tease the child, Penelope," struck in Aunt Eunice.
"Mother, please! I want to know. These involuntary twitchings in a child
mean something, always. I've been reading Stanley Hall."
"Very recently, Penelope?"
"In the last week, Mother. Tell me, Jacqueline. There! Your face
twitched again."
"It isn't anything really, Cousin Penelope," pleaded Caroline. "I didn't
mean to--I'm sorry. It was the sugar on the date--and my tooth----"
"Which tooth?"
Caroline almost jumped, so peremptory was Cousin Penelope's voice.
"The one with the hole in it," she faltered, "but it's been there ever
so long."
"Well!" said Cousin Penelope.
Further words failed her. She looked at Aunt Eunice. Aunt Eunice looked
at her. Volumes of accusation of Edith Delane were in those looks. A
woman, according to the Gildersleeve code, might as well neglect a
child's immortal soul as neglect its teeth.
"We won't waste time with any of these local dentists," Cousin Penelope
broke the silence in which Caroline sat quaking. "I shall take
Jacqueline down to Boston early in the morning. It promises to be a fine
day. We'll take the car. I'll have Dr. Stoddard look her over. If he
won't take her himself, he can tell me of some dentist who makes a
specialty of children."
But this was awful, thought Caroline. Dentistry was fearfully expensive.
Cousin Delia had said so, when Caroline's tooth had first begun to
trouble her. And now here was Caroline letting Jacqueline's relatives
give her dentistry that was meant for Jacqueline. There were tears in
the little girl's voice as she pleaded hopelessly:
"But I don't want to go to a dentist--don't make me, please! My tooth
doesn't hurt much--I'm used to it and----"
"That means the nerve is dying," said Cousin Penelope, in a solemn
voice. "Of all the criminal neglect!"
"Hush, hush!" warned Aunt Eunice.
Caroline took out her handkerchief (Jacqueline's handkerchief!) and
wiped her eyes.
"Jacqueline, dear," said Cousin Penelope awkwardly. She moved closer to
Caroline and actually put her hand on her shoulder. "I wasn't angry with
you. I was thinking of something else, if I spoke sharply."
"_Must_ I go to the dentist?" persisted Caroline.
"But we'll do more than go to the dentist," urged Cousin Penelope.
"Listen, dear, we'll go shopping. We'll buy all the things for the party
I promised you--invitations, and favors, and prizes. We'll select the
candies and the ices. Why, we'll plan the whole party on this trip, and
shop for it."
Caroline looked at her, with wet eyes. One word of the truth, and she
would save herself from being dentistried under false pretenses. But she
would say farewell to the piano, and Madame Woleski, and the party.
Caroline was going on eleven, and she had never had a party.
"I d-don't mind the dentist," she assured Cousin Penelope, with a watery
smile. "You're very good about the party. I shall love to go to Boston
with you."
Cousin Penelope smiled at Aunt Eunice, who smiled back. They wouldn't
have admitted, even to their own consciences, that they smiled a little
for triumph over Edith Delane, as well as for pleasure at the pleasure
they gave the supposed Jacqueline. And Caroline smiled to herself, as
she dried her eyes, because she thought of her party. Mildred, you see,
with her fixed, calm smile was the only one of the four who knew the
situation upside down and inside out and roundabout, and who was able
therefore to smile tolerantly and perhaps a little compassionately at
them all.