IN THE HOUSE OF HER KINSFOLK
Jacqueline fairly ran up the steps to the porch of The Chimnies. She was
laughing in queer little gasps which were very much like sobs. Oh, but
this was too good to believe! Right in the nick of time, when she had to
have help, and didn't know where on earth to find it!
Rat-tat-tat, the knocker clanged gayly under her hand. There were some
bad minutes of explanation ahead, perhaps, but like a session at the
dentist's, they would be over some time and she would run back with the
money to that hateful shop, where after to-day she would never set foot
again. She would thrust the money into Miss Crevey's claws and get back
the beads. She would say something polite, but oh! so cutting to Miss
Crevey, and----
The door opened before her into the dim hall with its white paint, and
gilt-framed mirrors, and its staircase curving upward into cool
distance. On the threshold stood Sallie (only Jacqueline didn't know it
was Sallie!) in a blue gingham dress, with her sleeves tucked up.
"Well, what is it?" asked Sallie brusquely. She didn't waste her company
voice and manners on a little girl in Peggy Janes and trodden sneakers,
with an armful of packages done up in brown paper.
"I want to see Car--I mean Jacqueline," the real Jacqueline corrected
herself just in time. "The little girl that lives here."
"She ain't here now," Sallie answered, with a carelessness that seemed
to poor Jacqueline downright brutal. "She's off to the beach."
"But _you're_ here!" Jacqueline cried despairingly.
"Nobody said I wasn't," retorted Sallie. "Me and Hannah Means got here
to-day, to open up the house, but the folks won't be here till last of
this week or maybe first of next."
She started to shut the door, but she wasn't able to. For Jacqueline, at
this last cruel blow, simply slumped down on the threshold and let go
the tears that she had held back so long.
"Oh, dumb it!" she wailed. You remember Jacqueline usually cried more
for anger than for sorrow. "What'll I do? Oh, sniveling opossums,
what'll I do now?"
"Well, you can't sit there crying," said Sallie.
"I can! I am!" howled Jacqueline.
"What's the matter?" boomed a deep voice from the hall behind them, and
Hannah Means, the tried and trusty cook at The Chimnies, bore down upon
them, with her head done up in a dust cloth. "What young one's that,
Sallie? And whatever ails her?"
Jacqueline wept regardless. Sallie started to shake her, but changed her
mind and patted her shoulder instead.
"Have you lost something?" asked Sallie.
"Have you got a stomach ache?" questioned Hannah, in the same breath.
"No, no!" sobbed Jacqueline.
"Did you get a licking?" pursued Sallie.
"Are you hungry?" Hannah demanded.
"No," said Jacqueline, cross and ashamed of herself. "I'm all right."
Sallie looked at her sharply.
"You're one of the Conway children, ain't you?" she asked.
Jacqueline nodded.
"Guess she got tuckered out walkin' up from the Meadows," Hannah
suggested.
The two women exchanged glances.
"You better sit and rest a spell here on the porch," Sallie bade
Jacqueline, as she rose from beside her.
"Come into the kitchen," Hannah bettered the invitation. "The
grocery-boy's just been here with the things, and I can let you have a
tumbler of milk."
Shyness descended upon Jacqueline. She scrambled to her feet, with a
"No, thank you!" on the tip of her tongue. But she never uttered it. For
once on her feet, she realized that she felt "all gone." Her knees were
wobbly and there was a fluttering in her wrists. Rest and a drink of
milk sounded good.
As the guest of Hannah and Sallie, she passed through the doorway of her
great-aunt's house, and presently was seated in a rocker by the open
window of the big kitchen, with its enameled sink and many cupboards.
She slowly sipped the milk that Hannah had poured for her into a thick
glass. She didn't want to hurry. How should she ever drag herself the
hot miles home through the Meadows, burdened with the weight of cares
that Miss Crevey's threat had laid upon her?
Other people had their troubles, too, she realized, as she listened to
Hannah's grumbling.
"In one ear and out the other," Hannah muttered, as she unpacked the
basket of groceries that stood on the kitchen table. "Ain't no use
tellin' folks nothin' nowadays! I said saleratus, and they've went and
sent me salt, and there ain't no bacon, and they've forgot the
molasses."
"Where's my cleaning powder?" sang out Sallie, from the butler's pantry.
"Ain't I tellin' you?" cried Hannah. "They've went and left out half the
things."
Sallie bustled out from the pantry and did a little inspecting on her
own account.
"No scouring soap--no cleaning powder--and no scrubbing brush, like I
ordered and you heard me," she said crossly. "Well, I can't do nothing
without 'em. I'll phone and give 'em a piece of my mind, and tell 'em
they can just hustle those things over--save 'em trouble if they'd done
it in the first place."
"Lot o' good 'twill do you to phone the store," scoffed Hannah. "They
won't send nothin' over till to-morrow. They're independent as hogs on
ice.
"Then here's a whole afternoon wasted," snapped Sallie. "Goodness knows,
_I_ won't walk up to the store and fetch them things in this heat."
Jacqueline grabbed at opportunity with both hands.
"I don't mind the heat," she cried. "I'll run up to the store and get
your soap and things."
"Well, I'll say that's real nice of you," conceded Sallie.
"That is," stammered Jacqueline, "if you want to pay me ten cents for
going."
She turned as red as fire as she said the words. She had never felt so
awful in her life, and after drinking the milk that these women had been
kind enough to give her. But she thought of Grandma, without her cup!
and Caroline, without her beads! What was her own pride or even decency
by comparison? She just _had_ to get some money.
"Well, of all the nerve!" Hannah broke the silence that seemed to
Jacqueline to have lasted an hour. "I'll pay you ten cents to go--and
you can pay _me_ ten cents for the milk you've drunk."
Jacqueline quailed. Grown-up people somehow always had one at a
disadvantage.
"I'm going home now," she quavered. "Good-by."
"Hold on!" bade Sallie. "I'd rather pay a dime than walk to the store
and back, and I can't let this afternoon go wasted, when to-morrow like
as not will be a scorcher. You scoot up to the store and fetch my
things, and if you're back in twenty minutes you shall have your ten
cents."
"I'll run!" promised Jacqueline. She was all smiles again, and at her
smile Hannah melted.
"Don't let her run her legs off," she boomed. "And she can get me the
saleratus while she's about it."
In the well-worn Peggy Janes, Jacqueline went sprinting back up the
street. Hope was in her heart. Ten cents wasn't much, perhaps, but every
little bit added to every little bit you've got--and she had until
to-morrow night to make up the five dollars!
Promptly on the tick of ten minutes to three, she pattered once more
into the kitchen of The Chimnies. In the basket that she tugged were
scouring soap and cleaning powder, a new yellow scrubbing brush, a
package of saleratus, a paper of bacon, and even a can of molasses.
"Well," Sallie admitted, as she rocked in comfort, "I'll say it's worth
ten cents."
Jacqueline blushed and pocketed the dime.
"Crazy to earn money, ain't ye?" said Hannah, as she unpacked the
basket. "What's it for? Circus coming to town?"
"I--I guess so." Jacqueline answered vaguely.
Sallie gathered up her soap and cleaning powder but not with great
enthusiasm.
"I'm killed with a crick in my back that takes me whenever I stoop," she
complained, and turned to Jacqueline. "Look here, sister, d'ye know how
to scrub out a bathtub?"
Jacqueline laughed.
"I'll say I do!" she answered.
"There's two bathrooms upstairs," Sallie told her. "I'll give you
another dime if you'll go over 'em real good for me."
Jacqueline stated her position, calmly and unashamed.
"That's not enough. The Japs get fifty cents an hour for cleaning, and I
guess I'm as good as any Jap."
"What's Japs got to do with it?" asked Hannah. She, you'll note, was not
a Californian.
"Fifty cents an _hour_," gasped Sallie. "_Fifty cents!_ Good-_night_!"
Jacqueline decided that this was a time for compromise.
"Well," she admitted, "I'm not as big as a Jap, so maybe I ought to come
down on my price to _you_. I'll work for twenty-five cents an hour, not
a cent less, and I'm an awful good worker."
"You won't work for _me_," said Sallie, with decision. "What do you take
me for? John D. Rockerfeller?"
Jacqueline hesitated. She was torn between pride and dire need.
"I'd get both bathrooms done in an hour," she suggested. "I'm pretty
spry."
"Ah, now, let her!" Hannah struck in unexpectedly. "If you break your
back over them tubs, you'll be groaning all night and spoiling my rest."
"Well, if you're sure you can do 'em in an hour," Sallie hesitated.
"Surest thing I do!" cried Jacqueline, all smiles. "Let me get at 'em
right away."
Eagerly she capered at Sallie's heels up the back stairs. Above was a
long hall with doors at either side, just the sort of hall that
Jacqueline had expected to find in Aunt Eunice's house. Sallie pushed
open one of the doors, and led the way into a room that was all cool
gray and leaf-green with here and there, in hangings and in wall-paper,
a flash of canary yellow.
"This is the little girl's room you was askin' for," said Sallie. "Don't
you touch nothin' now. Here's the bathroom, and t'other one is cross the
hall."
"All right," Jacqueline answered stiffly. She didn't at all like the
insinuation that she would touch things. "Give me the cleaning rags, and
I'll go to it."
For a moment Sallie lingered, until she was sure that Jacqueline was
attacking the nickel and enamel in a professional manner. Then with a
parting hint that Jacqueline would have to work fast, if she expected to
finish in an hour, she went away downstairs, and Jacqueline was left in
possession of the second story.
She had no time to feel lonely in those empty rooms. She was too busy to
think. She scrubbed and she polished, while the perspiration ran down
her face, and her fingers grew stiff and gritty from the soap and the
coarse powder that she used. When she rose at last, and looked down at
the shining tub and the clean tiling of the floor, she felt some
sympathy with poor Sallie. She too, had a "crick in her back."
Through the open door into the bedroom she glimpsed the green and gold
of the chintz curtains, the dressing-table, with its lady pin-cushion
and its dainty china boxes, the comfortable, low rocker beside the
well-filled bookshelves. So that was Caroline's room--the room that
rightfully was hers!
Smiling somewhat ruefully, Jacqueline tiptoed across the threshold and,
planted on the oyster white rug, stood gazing about her. This might all
have been hers--this soon would be hers. She would sleep in that cozy,
soft bed, with no fretful children to disturb her. She would rise in the
morning and dress. Her clothes would hang, no doubt, behind that door,
which was all one mirror.
She bowed to the reflection in the mirror--the sunburnt, rough-haired,
little brown girl in Peggy Janes and venerable sneakers. Then she opened
the door and peeped into the closet. Why, here were some of her dresses,
of net, and organdie, and gingham, her riding clothes, her boots. She
chuckled to herself. What faces Hannah and Sallie would wear, if she
should put on her clothes--her own clothes!--and go down the stairs, and
appear before them. Well, very soon she would!
But before that day came--oh, what might not happen! All her troubles
thronged back upon her, and to think that she must suffer so much, for
what always before in her life she had thought a little sum of money! If
only she had now one of the five-dollar bills that she had often wasted!
If she could open her little vanity bag, and find in it some money--her
own money!
Fascinated with the thought, she stepped into the closet, and looked to
see if one of her little bags were perhaps hanging from the hooks. Of
course not! She might have known that fussy little Caroline would put
them carefully into a drawer, as she herself had always been told to do.
She came out of the closet, and softly closed the door, and hurried to
the bureau. Without scruple--for weren't these things all her own, and
the room meant for her?--she opened the drawers and hastily peeped in.
She found only one of her bags, the gray one with beads, and it was
quite empty.
Disappointed, she closed the drawer, and with a sigh turned away. Once
more she saw her reflection in the mirror of the dressing-table, and
hesitatingly she drew near. She hadn't been able half to see herself in
the wavering looking glass at the farm. My, but she had put on a great
coat of tan this summer!
From the reflection in the mirror, her eyes dropped to the pretties on
the dressing-table. Little boxes and toys of Dresden china--delicate,
dainty things. She touched them lightly--as Sallie had told her not to
do. Sallie, indeed! She guessed she had the right. She lifted the cover
of the little trinket box that she was fingering, and there, coiled in
its white depths, a chain of gold beads--her own gold beads--twinkled up
at her.