ACCORDING TO AGREEMENT
By the time that Jacqueline had had her cry out, she was nearly a mile
on her way to Longmeadow Street. Her eyes were smarting, and her nose
was sore, and her throat felt hot like a furnace. When she came to the
boundary brook between Kaplinsky's lease and Deacon Whitcomb's field,
she was glad to stop and bathe her face and quiet the jumping pulses in
her wrists with cool water. She smoothed her hair, too, with her wet
fingers, and she even took off her shabby sneakers and washed her dusty
feet and ankles. After all, she didn't want to arrive at the
Gildersleeve place looking worse than she had to.
Now that she was refreshed, she trudged on more slowly. She realized
that she was tired out with the wild pace at which she had run, and with
the scene in Aunt Martha's dining room, which she winced to remember.
Wasn't she thankful that she really wasn't Caroline, and that she
needn't ever go back to the Conway farm? How could she have faced
them--Aunt Martha, and Neil, and Grandma? Poor Grandma, whose precious
cups she had broken!
Again the tears started to Jacqueline's eyes. She brushed them angrily
away. She didn't need to cry. Wasn't she going to send Grandma some new
cups--the thinnest cups she could buy in Boston--a dozen cups--a whole
dinner set? That would make everything all right again.
By the time she came in sight of the first outlying houses of the
village, she had added to the dinner set for Grandma an embroidered cap
for Annie, a doll with real hair for Nellie, a belt with a silver buckle
for Ralph, a camera for Dickie, and a choo-choo train for Freddie.
With great effort, as she entered the village, she finally added to the
collection a big, soft, luscious rug for Aunt Martha's car, and a
magic-lantern for Neil--not one of the little dinky toys that get out of
order, but the real thing.
When the people at the farm got all those gifts, she rather guessed
they'd change their minds about her. Perhaps they'd be sorry then that
they hadn't been more considerate. How they would regret her--and admire
her! Maybe she'd go out there once more--just once more--in her
wine-colored jumper dress that she liked, and take a big box of sweets
to the children. She fairly swelled out her chest, in her dusty Peggy
Janes, as she pictured herself playing Lady Bountiful. But when she
thought of Grandma, her chest flattened again, just like a toy balloon
when you prick it and the air runs out. Oh, she did want to get that
dinner set right away! Her eyes filled every time when she thought of
Grandma, sitting down to supper, and drinking her tea patiently from the
thick, ugly, crockery cup.
The sun had just dipped behind the western hills across the river, when
Jacqueline came to a halt outside the box-hedge that enclosed the
Gildersleeve place. She had thought all along that she would walk right
up to the front door, and knock, and ask for Mrs. Gildersleeve, and
simply say to her:
"Aunt Eunice, I am Jacqueline. Call the little girl who's staying here,
and she'll tell you it's just so."
But now that the moment for action had come, she hesitated. To do it
that way seemed not quite fair to Caroline. Like stealing a march on
her. Really she must see Caroline, and tell her what was up, before she
gave away the trick that they had played upon the Gildersleeves and the
Conways.
"Not that Caroline won't be as glad as me to have it over with,"
Jacqueline tried to quiet an uneasy something within her. "She must be
fed up by this time on that old piano."
A little path, as narrow as a cat track, ran between the Gildersleeve
hedge and the rose tangle that bounded the Trowbridge lawn. Jacqueline
knew all about that path, and a few others. She hadn't come into the
village with that born rover, Neil, for nothing. She slipped up this
path in the shadows that were cool and dark, and she quickly found the
gap in the hedge for which she was looking. She wriggled through it,
with some damage to the Peggy Janes (Caroline's Peggy Janes!) and there
she was in the garden, among the flowers that were already half asleep.
She peered about her eagerly. If only Caroline would come that way! Then
she spied the summer house, and stole to the doorway that gaped beneath
the over-hanging vines, and peered in.
The summer house was empty. The tea table was folded up, and the wicker
chairs set trimly in place against another day. Under one of the chairs
a bit of clear orange color caught Jacqueline's eye. She pounced upon
it, and found it was a little doll-smock of orange, cross-stitched in
dark blue. This must belong to Mildred, and no doubt Mildred's careful
little mother ("fussy," Jacqueline called her) would find it missing and
come to look for it. Why, things couldn't have fallen out better for
her!
Jacqueline sat down on the bench that ran round the wall inside the
summer house, and waited with what patience she could scare up. She
could see a bit of the house through the elms that stood round it--a
gleam of white clapboards, that caught the last light of the afterglow,
a green shutter, a window like an anxious eye. She wondered if that were
the window of the room that should be hers.
Then she saw a little girl in a leaf brown dress come from behind a
clump of shrubbery and head toward the summer house, with eyes bent upon
the path, as if she looked for something. Caroline, in the name of all
that was lucky! Gurgling with mischief, Jacqueline drew back and waited
in the shadows that now were quite thick in the summer house. She didn't
have to wait long. Framed in the doorway, Caroline stood before her,
dainty in Jacqueline's leaf brown smock with orange stitching, and
Jacqueline's amber beads, and with a soft sparkle in her face, which
came from thoughts of pleasant things that had happened and pleasant
things to come.
"Boo!" cried Jacqueline.
Caroline gave a little squeak, and clutched the side of the door.
"Don't be scared, goose!" bade Jacqueline, stepping forward. "It's only
me."
Caroline's pale little hands fluttered to her throat as if she wanted to
push off something that choked her.
"Y-yes," she stammered. "H-hello, Jackie."
That was all Caroline said. She didn't help Jacqueline one bit, though
she must have known that Jacqueline hadn't come there simply to say:
"Hello!" She just clung to the side of the door and stared like somebody
who expects to be hit.
"I'm not a ghost," said Jacqueline, impatiently. "Don't look at me like
that. I just came over to say I've had enough of the farm, and if you
don't mind, we'll swap back."
Caroline nodded.
"Yes," she agreed, in a dry little whisper. "All r-right, Jackie." Then
she slid into the seat by the door, just as if her legs had folded up
under her, and she hid her face in her hands and began to cry.