AN HOUR TO TRY THE SOUL
What do you suppose Prince Edward would have done, if Tom Canty hadn't
wished to be Tom Canty any more? Suppose that Tom, instead of being a
well-mannered little English boy, willing to keep his proper station,
had cried out at the mere thought of going back to the foulness and
cruelty of Offal Court, and insisted, not unnaturally, perhaps, that he
preferred to be comfortable in a palace?
Jacqueline had never thought of this possibility, when she read "The
Prince and the Pauper," nor when she tried to translate the story into
modern terms. But she faced it now in deep dismay, as she looked at
Caroline, sobbing her heart out, there in the dusk of the summer house.
For a moment Jacqueline shifted her weight from one foot to the other,
and hardly knew what to do. But she was not in the habit of being turned
from a purpose, once her mind was made up, and her mind was very much
made up to sleep that night at the Gildersleeve place. So down she sat
beside the weeping Caroline, and laid a hard little sunburnt hand upon
her shoulder.
"Don't be a baby, Carol," she said, quite fiercely, because she didn't
want to let herself pity Caroline. "You know you _said_ you'd change,
the minute I wanted to."
Caroline nodded the little dark head that was bowed desolately upon her
hands.
"Well, then!" said Jacqueline, in an injured tone. "What _are_ you
crying about?"
(What, indeed?)
Caroline lifted her face and smeared her eyes with her hands.
"When--when shall we--change?" she faltered.
"Now," said Jacqueline bluntly.
Then Jacqueline remembered something that all her life she had wanted to
forget--the look in the eyes of Aunt Edie's little lap dog, when she had
struck him. Of course Jacqueline had been just a tiny thing--only four
years old. It was right after her father died. And she had been jealous
of the wee dog, because he had sat on Aunt Edie's knee sometimes when
she wanted that place herself. So one day when she found him alone and
he turned to her for a caress, she had slapped him--hard. She gave him
sugar afterward, and the cushions from her best doll-buggy, and
velvet-soft caresses, and tears of penitence. But she had never
forgotten the look in his eyes when she struck him, and she saw that
look now in the tear-drenched eyes that Caroline turned upon her.
"Oh, Jackie! No! Not now!"
"Well, I'll be dished," said Jacqueline. The words don't do justice to
the disgust in her tone. There was no doubt that she did hate a quitter!
But Caroline was past heeding even Jacqueline's scorn.
"Oh, Jackie!" she pleaded, and suddenly she caught Jacqueline's hands
and clung to them. "Can't you wait just a little longer--only till
to-morrow night? I won't ask anything more, Jackie--I won't even ask God
for anything more--and I'll give up the piano--and your lovely
clothes--I haven't hurt 'em, I've been awful careful--and I won't cry
one little bit, even if there _are_ cows at the farm--and I've been so
happy here--I didn't know things could be so lovely--I didn't know
people could be so happy--oh, it will be like a beautiful dream, all the
rest of my life--only let me have to-morrow, Jackie--please, please let
me have to-morrow!"
"Ouch!" said Jacqueline. "Stop digging your finger nails into my hands!"
Caroline didn't seem to hear her. She clung like a limpet.
"Only wait till to-morrow!" she sobbed.
"Now you needn't think," snapped Jacqueline, "that I'm going to hoof it
three miles back to that nasty old farm, and sleep in that hot, stuffy
room. What's the dif. anyway between to-night and to-morrow, I should
like to know?"
"But it's my party," wailed Caroline. "To-morrow is my party."
Jacqueline snorted. Don't blame her too much! She had had a birthday
party every year of her life, and a Hallowe'en party, and an Easter-egg
rolling, and a Washington's Birthday party, besides always a group of
children to eat ice-cream and see the fireworks at Buena Vista on the
Fourth.
"What's a party?" she said, with contempt that was quite sincere. No
party, she felt, could give Caroline sufficient pleasure to
counterbalance the discomfort she herself must suffer, if she had to go
back to the farm now--with her tail between her legs, as she put
it!--and face Aunt Martha.
"There are seven girls coming," Caroline panted out the details between
her sobs. "I almost know Eleanor Trowbridge next door--we smile at each
other always--and the table is to be out here in the garden--and the
ice-cream is coming from Boston on the train. Oh, Jackie, shapes of
ice-cream like flowers--the sort you see sometimes in windows--red roses
and green leaves and everything--I picked 'em out myself! And there are
little cakes, like frogs and white m-mice--with almonds for ears! And
we're going to have a peanut-hunt--and prizes--such scrumptious
prizes--silver bangles, and the cunningest little bottles of perfume,
and dear little carved Italian boxes with pictures in the covers. Oh,
Jackie, it's like ten Christmases all come together--and I--I never had
a party before in all my life."
She let go of Jacqueline then. She had to use her hands to hide her
face.
Jacqueline sat quite still. She was very angry with Caroline for being
such a baby. She was too angry to speak to her. At least she supposed
that was the reason she kept silent.
"Muzzy and I used to plan how I'd have a party," Caroline quavered in
the dusk that was now thickening fast in the summer house. "It's the
next best fun to having things. I _almost_ had a party once. But the
Stetson twins' father lost his money and they didn't pay Muzzy for the
music lessons--weeks and weeks of lessons--so she couldn't afford a
party--and I said I didn't care, but oh! I did. And now I was going to
have a party--like in a book--and I'll never have another chance the
longest day I live. Oh, Jackie--Jackie! Couldn't you----"
She didn't finish the sentence. She just let it trail off hopelessly
into the dusk.
Jacqueline felt a queer tingling in her palms, and a hot smarting behind
her eyes. She was _mad_--mad at Caroline--mad at herself--mad at
something in herself that was going to make her do what Caroline wanted,
and hate herself afterward for doing it.
"Like taking candy off a kid!" That was her new Uncle Jimmie's phrase
for something that was _too_ contemptible for a regular fellow to do.
That was what it would be to take Caroline's party away from her. Let
her have her old party! But drat Caroline--and double-drat Prince
Edward, whose silly story had let her in for this! Trouble! _He_ didn't
know the name of trouble!
Jacqueline drew a deep breath, which was rather like a sniffle.
"Aw shucks!" she said disgustedly. "Cut out the sob-stuff, Carol. One
day is as good as another, far as _I'm_ concerned. You can _have_ your
party."
Caroline, all moist and crumpled, fell upon her in the dusk.
"Oh, Jackie! You mean it--really? You are the dearest----"
"Oh, dumb-bells!" scoffed Jacqueline. "Stop bawling now. You'll look
like a squashed egg. I tell you, it's all right, and you can have your
party. So long, now! I've got to beat it home."
She rose, and with a lofty air, patterned on what she thought Uncle
Jimmie would do in similar circumstances, she strode toward the gap in
the hedge. Honestly she tried to whistle as she went. But just as she
reached the gap, Caroline came pattering out of the dusk and clutched
her.
"Now don't go and begin all over again!" Jacqueline scolded.
"Please, Jackie!" Caroline's teeth fairly chattered. "I shan't let
you--it isn't fair--it's _your_ party really--it's _you_ Cousin Penelope
meant it for--and I--I didn't tell you all about it. I was afraid you
_couldn't_ give it up--if I told you everything. There'll be little
satin boxes of candy on the table, one for each of us--and darling
little dolls, with baskets of nuts--one apiece--to keep--and birds that
hold the place-cards--and oh, Jackie, a pie full of presents! You pull a
string, each of you, and then----"
"Oh, g'on!" said Jacqueline. "A Jack Horner Pie. I'm fed up on 'em--had
'em since I was knee-high to a hopper toad."
"Oh!" gasped Caroline, softly, incredulously.
All in a minute, a self-revealing minute such as she had seldom known,
there flooded over Jacqueline the realization of all that she had had
and taken for granted--all that this other little girl had never known,
and valued all the more. She was not angry with Caroline any longer. She
felt that she was sorrier for her than she had ever been for anybody,
and then suddenly she knew that she loved Caroline, poor, little,
sobbing Caroline, whom she had it in her power to lift into a heaven of
happiness.
"Don't go and eat too much at your old party," Jacqueline bade gruffly.
"Now don't hang on to me like that. I gotta go. And I guess I won't come
back for quite a while."
"But to-morrow----" Caroline hesitated. A hope that she was ashamed of
trembled in her voice.
"I was fooling when I said we'd swap," snapped Jacqueline. "I'm not
coming to-morrow. I'm not coming _near_ this mean old place till I have
to. You hear me? I _like_ it at the farm. I'm going to _stay_ there till
Aunt Edie comes, if she doesn't come till next Christmas. And you can
just _stay_ here till you're dead sick of it--the old piano--and
starched people--and prunes and prisms and----"
"Oh, oh! Do you _mean_ that?" Caroline's cry was sheer rapture. "But I
couldn't let----"
Perhaps her honest protest would have moved Jacqueline to recall the
promise she had so rashly made. But just at that moment a clear,
imperious voice called: "Jacqueline!" and when both little girls pivoted
at that name, they saw a figure, in soft white summer clothes, come into
the dusky garden. It was Cousin Penelope, and by the way in which she
headed straight down the path toward the spot where they stood, they
knew that she had spied them.