NEVER AGAIN
Perhaps blood doesn't tell quite as much as Cousin Penelope believed it
did. Certainly Jacqueline and Aunt Martha, who were no relation to each
other, were more alike than Caroline and Aunt Martha could ever have
been. So much alike they were that almost instantly each drew back into
her own corner of the seat, as if they were ashamed of the way in which
they had clutched each other.
Aunt Martha gave her attention to backing and turning the Ford, with the
least possible damage to the lawless onions that overflowed into the
highway. Jacqueline leaned back in her seat and stretched her tired legs
and sighed with blissful relief. Neither spoke till the car was safely
headed homeward. Then Jacqueline found her voice--such a meek voice!
"Were you--looking for me, Aunt Martha?"
"Didn't think I'd be driving to the village at this time of evening just
for the fun of it, did you?"
Such a cool, clipped, everyday voice Aunt Martha spoke in! Who would
have dreamed to hear it that she had hugged Jacqueline two minutes
before?
"How did you know--I'd gone to the village? I might have been most
anywhere."
"I shouldn't have known where to look for you, more'n if you'd been a
needle in a haystack. I _didn't_ look for you," said Aunt Martha
defensively. "But when old Mrs. Gildersleeve called me up and said you'd
been seen up in the village----"
"Mrs. Gildersleeve called up--about me?" Jacqueline repeated stupidly.
Aunt Eunice had telephoned to Aunt Martha! Of all people! How did she
know? Why should she care?
"She's an awful nice woman," Aunt Martha said warmly. "She's the kind
that'll bow just as friendly to old Si Whitcomb on his hay-rack as she
does to Judge Holden in his wire-wheeled car. She had to call twice
before she got me, 'cause that feather-headed Williams girl on our party
line was planning with the minister's youngest daughter how she'd dye
and turn and cut her last winter's suit. I think they made a batch of
devil's food, too, and settled the reputations of half their neighbors
before they got off that line. I know, 'cause I was trying to put in a
call myself."
Was it about her, Jacqueline wondered? But she decided it was best to
ask no questions.
"Soon's Mrs. Gildersleeve got me," Aunt Martha went on, "I thought I'd
best start out on the chance of meeting with you."
"Thank you very much," Jacqueline murmured, oh, so meekly.
Was Aunt Martha going to scold her now, she wondered? Well, perhaps it
would be over before they reached the farm. She waited in the silence
that grew worse and worse every minute, for every minute she realized,
with a deeper sense of guilt, what a lot of trouble and anxiety she had
given the Conways. At last she just couldn't stand it any longer.
"Aunt Martha," she burst out, "_are_ you going to send me to an
Institution?"
Aunt Martha turned and stared at her through the darkness. Jacqueline
could see the whites of her eyes under the brim of her ugly, cheap hat.
"A--what?" Aunt Martha asked sharply.
"Institution," babbled Jacqueline.
"Well, of all the--Whoever put such an idea into your head?"
Jacqueline came pretty near saying: "Caroline!" She remembered just in
time that _she_ was Caroline.
"Cousin Delia said it," she faltered. "She seemed to think I'd go to an
Institution--if you didn't want me--if I was a trouble."
"Delia Meade said that?" Aunt Martha's voice was positively fierce.
"Um-m," Jacqueline almost whimpered.
"Well!" said Aunt Martha. "I must say! I have my opinion."
Evidently it was of Delia Meade that she had the opinion. From the tone
of her voice Jacqueline hoped that Aunt Martha would never have that
sort of opinion of _her_.
"I'm not a heathen, _I hope_!" said Aunt Martha.
Jacqueline thought of a picture in one of her travel books at home. In
the picture some young women with bushy hair, and bone earrings, and
wreaths of flowers round their necks, and not much else in the way of
covering, were dancing round a huge stone image. Those were heathen, if
you please! Aunt Martha couldn't be like them if she tried for a hundred
years. The mere thought of Aunt Martha looking like that made Jacqueline
want to laugh. But she decided that she'd better keep the joke to
herself.
They turned in presently at the Conway farm. How quickly they had come,
and what an endless time it would have taken Jacqueline to cover the
distance on her smarting feet! Aunt Martha ran the Ford into the barn,
and with Jacqueline's help closed and padlocked the great clumsy doors.
None of the boys were there to help her. Why, it must be ever so late!
When they came into the kitchen, where a dim lamp burned, Jacqueline saw
by the hands of the steeple-roofed kitchen clock that it was going on
eleven--a desperate hour for the Conway farm! They had come in softly,
but Grandma must have been lying awake and listening for she called
instantly from her dark bedroom:
"That you, Martha? Did you find her safe?"
"All right, Mother Conway," Aunt Martha spoke guardedly, so as not to
waken Annie. Then she whispered to Jacqueline! "Go in and say goodnight
to Grandma. It'll be a load off her mind to see you're all right."
Jacqueline didn't feel the least bit like laughing, as she went a-tiptoe
into the little bedroom off the kitchen. She had been horrid, she
realized. She almost wished that Aunt Martha and Grandma had been horrid
and hateful and scolded her--yes, and let her find her way home, all
alone, in the awful dark. If they had, she wouldn't have needed to feel
so hot and ashamed as she felt now.
She stole round Annie's crib and paused at the bedside. Grandma put out
her hard old hand, with its twisted knuckles, and caught at Jacqueline's
hand.
"Ye ain't come to no harm, Jackie?"
"No, Grandma," whispered Jacqueline.
"'Tain't like it used to be when I was young. The Meadows ain't the best
place for little folks to run about in after dark. Don't ye do it again,
Jackie, ever!"
The old voice was tremulous.
Jacqueline dumbly stroked the hand that held hers. She couldn't seem to
speak, yet she did so want to say: "I'm sorry!" Wasn't it odd that in
all her life she had never once been able to say those two words? She
couldn't say them now, though her throat was dry and her eyes were
aching with tears that she didn't mean to shed. She pressed Grandma's
hand hard.
"I'm going to get you some new cups." That was what she said at last.
"Thin as egg-shells. I didn't mean to break yours. I--I won't let you
work so hard to-morrow, Grandma."
"There, there, child! 'Course you didn't mean to break 'em."
Their hands fell apart. Folks didn't kiss and cuddle much in the Conway
household.
"Get yourself something to eat before you go to bed, Jackie. I put some
top-milk in the blue pitcher for you, and left it in the cellar-way."
"Thank you, Grandma."
"There's fresh raisin cookies, too, in the tin. Good-night, Jackie."
"Good-night, Grandma."
Very softly Jackie stole back into the kitchen. She found Aunt Martha
lighting the burner beneath the big kettle.
"The water'll be more than blood warm by the time you've eaten," said
Aunt Martha. "Take a pitcher full upstairs and wash your feet before you
get between the sheets. You'll have to wash your hair to-morrow. You
look as if you'd burrowed head first into a sand bank."
Jacqueline blushed, and wondered if Aunt Martha would make any more near
guesses at the truth. But Aunt Martha made no further comments. She
busied herself in putting the cat outside, and locking doors, and
bolting windows. Meantime Jacqueline fetched her cookies and her pitcher
of milk, and sat down at the kitchen table, in the dim light of the one
oil lamp, and ate and drank, hungrily and thirstily. To look at her, you
wouldn't have guessed that she wanted to say, "I'm sorry!" But she did,
and the dryness in her throat took half the good taste out of the milk
and the cookies.
"Aunt Martha!" she spoke suddenly.
Aunt Martha paused in winding the clock, and looked over her shoulder at
Jacqueline.
"I'm going to get Grandma some new cups," said Jacqueline.
A smile that was quizzical and a little bit pitying played round Aunt
Martha's lips. But all she said was:
"That's the right idea. Get a box to-morrow and put your pennies in it
till you've saved enough. It'll take some time, but it's no more than
fair. Now trot along and get some sleep while it's cool. It'll be a
clear, hot day to-morrow, or I miss my guess."
And to-morrow was Caroline's party! Suddenly Jacqueline felt her crushed
spirits revive, and her dampened pride rekindle within her. If Aunt
Martha, and Grandma, and Aunt Eunice, too, had all most unexpectedly
been good to her, she at least had evened up things a little by being
good to Caroline.
"I'm glad I didn't quit," Jacqueline told herself, as she toiled up the
stairs, dead tired, with her pitcher of lukewarm water. "I'm glad I told
Caroline I'd stick it out here, and oh! I'm going to be glad for all my
life that I let the kid have her old party."