THE UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE
If Jacqueline had been given to quoting poetry, she might have said:
"'I feel chilly, and grown old!'"
Not being given that way, she confessed merely to what Grandma called "a
gone feeling." She sat down suddenly on the steps of the porch, quite as
if she had been hit a sudden hard clip in the stomach.
"What makes you look so funny?" Eleanor Trowbridge asked sociably. "Are
you coming down with something? I went and nearly had rash but I
didn't."
"Where have they gone?" Jacqueline interrupted Eleanor's flow of
confidences.
"To the beach, I told you."
"For goodness' sake! _What_ beach? I suppose there's more than _one_ in
your horrid old New England."
This insult to the land of her fathers provoked Eleanor, not without
reason. She tossed her head and answered snappishly:
"Mother says I shouldn't tell all I know to every stranger."
She turned and started to walk away, but not very eagerly. Jacqueline
mastered the desire to shake her, got up, and went after her.
"Now don't get peeved," she told Eleanor. "I've got a most special
reason why I want to see--er--Jacqueline."
"Well, what of it?" Eleanor muttered ungraciously, but without walking
on.
"It's a great secret," Jacqueline admitted. "Maybe some day I'll tell
you." She smiled--and you may remember that she had a quite bewitching
smile.
"Will you tell me? Honest and truly?" Eleanor asked.
"Cross my heart and hope to die if I don't," Jacqueline rattled off
glibly. "There's a mystery--and I'll let you in on it some time--if
you'll only tell me where she's gone."
"Oh, dear!" whined Eleanor. "But I don't know."
"Don't know?" repeated Jacqueline blankly, while once more the green
world seemed to rock beneath her.
"She didn't tell me," Eleanor explained in an injured tone. "She cooey'd
over the hedge, and said they were going off, so we couldn't play tea
party in the afternoon, and they went in the limousine with the trunks
in the carrier, and Sallie and Hannah--that's the cook--went on a
vacation, and she said the beach, but she didn't say what beach, and
Mildred was all dressed up in a sailor suit with such a ducky hat,
and----"
"When did they go?" Jacqueline stemmed the torrent of words.
"Why, just yesterday."
Yesterday! Only yesterday! By such a narrow margin she had missed
Caroline.
"Dumb-paste it!" cried Jacqueline, beside herself.
"That's a bad word," said Eleanor austerely.
"'Tisn't either," Jacqueline retorted. "Don't you ever paste things?"
"Not that way," insisted Eleanor.
"Well, I don't care," said Jacqueline morosely. "I suppose she isn't
going to write you?" she caught at the last rag of fluttering hope.
Eleanor was eager with explanations:
"I asked her to, but she looked scared, and said she never wrote
letters."
Oh, docile Caroline! Only too well had she remembered and carried out
the instructions of her leader. The reward of her docility was that
Jacqueline merely yearned to shake her.
"Well," Jacqueline controlled herself with effort. "It looks as if I
couldn't get at her till she comes back."
"It looks that way," agreed Eleanor.
Jacqueline gazed hopelessly at the big house, her haven of refuge,
shuttered, bolted, barred against her, by people who were gone, no one
could tell her where.
"You're sure," she faltered, "that even the maids have gone? Perhaps
they could tell me----"
"Sure they're gone," said Eleanor cheerfully. "They asked our Maggie to
feed the gray cat that comes round their garage."
Jacqueline drew a long breath.
"Well," she said, like a game little echo of her Uncle Jimmie. "I guess
I'd better be on my way." Eleanor tagged at her side through the
fragrant garden.
"Couldn't you stay and play with me?" she suggested.
"Not to-day, kid," Jacqueline told her loftily. She felt herself older
than Eleanor--immeasurably older. Wasn't she suddenly called upon to
face a problem beyond Eleanor's grasping--a problem such as she had
never expected to be called upon to face?
Out in Longmeadow Street, which was all a pleasant checker-board of
light and shadow, Jacqueline lagged slowly toward the Post Office. What
should she do, she asked herself, over and over again? She _must_ get
some money. But she couldn't reach Caroline, not for weeks and weeks.
She would have to write directly to Judge Blair, and ask him to address
the answer to her as Caroline Tait, and she would have to tell him why.
Not that! For he would be sure to write the whole story to Aunt Eunice
(he, no doubt, in the inscrutable wisdom of grown-ups, would know where
to find her) and then----
Jacqueline might be mad enough at Caroline for letting herself be
whisked away, no one knew where, without a word to her, but still she
wasn't going to let her in for the sort of scolding she was sure that
pinch-faced Cousin Penelope was bound to give her, when she found her to
be an impostor. No, she'd got to grin and bear it. No money--no chance
to get money--and all the work to do--and Aunt Martha tired out--and
Grandma crying in her feebleness for the thin china that no one could
afford to buy her.
Oh, prancing camelopards, and bounding orang-outangs! Also
chisel-toothed baboons! There were not beasts enough in the menagerie,
nor words enough in the unabridged dictionary to express the feelings
that surged in Jacqueline's bosom beneath the faded pink and white
checked gingham! She felt the tears of hot anger and disappointment and
pity, too, for little Grandma, well up into her eyes. To hide them from
the curious gaze of two young girls, who came sauntering toward her
along the graveled sidewalk, she stopped, and stared hard into a
convenient shop window, which happened to be Miss Crevey's.
There were all sorts of things displayed in the window--cards of white
ruching, edged with black, novels by Mary Jane Holmes, glass jars of
wilted candy sticks, china boxes with the words "Souvenir of Longmeadow"
painted in gilt upon them, sheets of dusty paper dolls in staring
colors. Jacqueline's gaze passed over the queer assortment of articles,
and rested on the little shelf against the wall, at one side of the
window. On the shelf was a glove box of birch bark and cones and a
bright-colored copy of "The Angelus," and between them----
She rubbed her eyes. She looked again. Yes, between them stood what Aunt
Martha had vowed no longer could be had for love nor money--a cup of
thin china--an ancient cup--with a pattern of green dragons.