A BUSINESS TRANSACTION
At five minutes after four Jacqueline appeared in the kitchen. In her
hand she carried the tin housemaid's assistant, with its soap and
powder, rags and nickel polish.
"I've finished," she announced briefly.
Hannah looked down from the step-ladder, where she was standing to clean
the cupboard shelves. Sallie poked her head out from the butler's
pantry, where she seemed totally surrounded with hot soap-suds and china
dishes.
"I bet you give 'em a lick and a promise," she said morosely. "I'm going
up and see for myself."
Up the stairs she went, while Jacqueline stood pawing with impatience.
"Better sit down," boomed Hannah, from the step-ladder. "You must be
plumb tuckered out."
"I can't," said Jacqueline. "I'm in an awful hurry."
She gathered up her brown paper parcels, with nervous, eager fingers.
Why didn't Sallie hurry back? Could it be that she--suspected something?
Oh, blithering kangaroos! She didn't want explanations now, and with
Sallie, of all people.
But explanations were not needed. Down came Sallie in due season, with
nothing worse to grumble over than the misery in her back.
"You ain't done such a bad job," she conceded, as she doled two dimes
and a nickel into Jacqueline's hard little palm. "Say, don't you want to
come round again to-morrow?"
"Oh, no, thanks," Jacqueline answered carelessly. "I've got all I can do
at home."
"I told you so," chuckled Hannah. "Money enough for the circus, and then
she quits."
Jacqueline barely heard her. Over her shoulder she called good-by, and
in two jumps she was out at the back door, and down the steps. Almost
running, she hurried across the garden toward the short-cut that would
bring her most quickly into Longmeadow Street. She was heading for Miss
Crevey's shop, and in the pocket of her Peggy Janes was a string of gold
beads.
Of course she had a perfect right to them, for they were her very own.
She would give them in exchange for Caroline's beads, and so the
green-dragon cup would be safe, and Caroline's beads would be safe, and
Miss Crevey would have _more_ than the five dollars that had been
promised her. For Jacqueline's beads were worth ten dollars. She knew,
for she had bought them herself, Christmas before last, with the check
that her mother's cousin had sent her from Honolulu.
But would that disagreeable Miss Crevey consent to the exchange?
Jacqueline asked herself the question with a sinking heart, about the
time she reached the gap in the hedge. For Miss Crevey wanted ready
money, and Mrs. Enos Trowbridge's cousin, who had offered cash for
Caroline's ancient beads, would not give it perhaps for beads that were
modern.
"Oh, slithy alligators!" groaned Jacqueline, and paused disheartened in
the short-cut, while she asked herself: what next!
Then from the swing that hung from a branch of the big elm in the
Trowbridge garden, a shrill voice hailed her.
"Hello!" cried Eleanor Trowbridge.
Jacqueline turned and across the rose tangle surveyed the stout child
with disfavor.
"'Lo yourself!" she cried.
Eleanor sprang from the swing and came up to the rose tangle, all ready
to be entertained.
"Did you want to see Jacqueline?" she asked cheerily, "Well, she isn't
home yet."
"Don't I know it, smarty?" Jacqueline answered crossly.
"Smarty yourself!" retorted Eleanor, and turned, but she didn't walk
away.
All the afternoon she had been alone in the garden, forbidden to have
playmates, because her grandmother was giving a bridge-party in the
house, and mustn't be disturbed with the shouts of children, and now she
was really dying for some one to talk to.
"My grandmother's having a party," she told Jacqueline, by way of
resuming cordial relations.
"I won't stop her," Jacqueline answered rudely.
"_I_ had a party yesterday." Eleanor turned to her eagerly. "I was ten
years old. I don't suppose _you_ ever had a party."
"Don't get fresh," cautioned Jacqueline. "I've had more parties than
ever you've had. I've had dozens of them."
Perhaps the party hadn't improved Eleanor's temper. The day after, as we
all know, is apt to be trying. At any rate she looked at Jacqueline's
shabby clothes, and was so snobbish and ill-mannered as to sneer.
"Dozens of parties? I don't believe you."
"You don't have to," snapped Jacqueline. "And I don't have to believe
you had a party yesterday, and I don't, so there!"
"I did, too," said Eleanor. "And I had lots of presents. I guess you'd
believe me, if you saw them."
"If I saw 'em, maybe," Jacqueline tantalized. She didn't know why she
should pause at that moment to tease Eleanor, but there was something
about Eleanor's pink and white complacency that rubbed her the wrong
way.
"You crawl through the gap here, and I'll show you." Eleanor accepted
her challenge. "Come on--unless you're scared to."
That was a dare, so Jacqueline promptly scrambled through the rose
tangle and found herself in the Trowbridge garden. In the moment of her
arrival the paper bag that held her Crevey purchases broke, and the bone
buttons, a size too small cascaded to the ground.
"You pick 'em up," bade Eleanor, "and I'll go get some of my things."
If it hadn't been for those fateful buttons, Jacqueline would very
likely have posted off to Miss Crevey's, and left Eleanor without
regrets. But she had to recover the buttons, every one of them, and
before she had picked up the last of them, Eleanor came panting back.
By this time Eleanor had forgotten that she and Jacqueline were on
snappish terms. She was just a roly-poly child, eager to show her new
treasures to another child.
"See here," she said, as she plumped down on the turf beside Jacqueline,
and displayed the articles which she lugged in the slack of her skirt,
"this is scent, real grown-up scent, and the bottle that it's in is cut
glass. This cunning brush and comb and mirror set is for my doll--my
biggest French doll. Have you got a doll?"
"I'm sick of dolls," yawned Jacqueline.
"You wouldn't be," Eleanor told her patronizingly, "if you had a doll
with real hair, like my Gladys. I had a chair for her, too, and a bed,
but they were too big to bring out here, and a parlor set for my
doll-house. I had this ring--it's a scarab. And this seal for my
envelopes, and some sealing-wax, all colors, and some teeny-weeny
candles. And here's a handbag, with a purse and a mirror. Have you ever
had a handbag?"
"Sure," Jacqueline told her languidly.
Eleanor opened the little red leather bag. Clearly enough, she was proud
of the pretty gift. She took out the little mirror, and the wee brown
handkerchief, sown with red rosebuds, and showed them to Jacqueline.
Last of all, she took out the little red leather purse, and opened it,
and disclosed a folded bill.
"That's my five dollars from Grandpa," she explained.
Jacqueline forgot to be languid. Distinctly she sat up and took notice.
"Five dollars!" she repeated enviously. "What you going to do with it?"
"I d' know," admitted Eleanor. "Buy me some silver bangles, I guess."
"You don't want bangles," Jacqueline declared with finality. "They slip
down over your hand and get in your way all the time. I should
think----" She hesitated, as one about to make a desperate plunge. "I
should think you'd much rather buy a chain."
"Well, maybe I will," Eleanor said vaguely.
"A chain of gold beads would be nice, don't you think?" Jacqueline spoke
in honeyed accents. "Have you got any gold beads?"
"No," confessed Eleanor.
"Everybody ought to have gold beads," Jacqueline laid down a law that
she had invented on the spur of the moment. "Most all the girls I knew
at school had gold beads--all the big ones, that is, of course, the
little third and fourth graders didn't."
"I'm going into the fifth grade," Eleanor said quickly.
"If you have some gold beads when you go back to school," suggested
Jacqueline, "the others will all be just green with envy."
Eleanor wavered.
"I guess perhaps I will get me beads," she said, and snapped the purse
upon the precious five dollars.
"You haven't got much time before school opens," Jacqueline insinuated.
"And you can't buy good beads in Longmeadow, or in Baring Junction,
either."
"Maybe we'll go to Boston next week," Eleanor said hopefully.
Jacqueline dared all.
"I have some gold beads," she said, and took the golden strand from the
pocket of the Peggy Janes, and dangled them before Eleanor's astonished
eyes. "Say, aren't they crackerjacks?"
"Go on!" sniffed Eleanor. "They're brass from the ten-cent store."
"Much you know about beads!" scoffed Jacqueline. "Just you look at that
clasp, with a real pearl in it. Fourteen carat gold those beads are, and
they cost ten dollars. I got 'em Christmas before last."
Eleanor fingered the beads with a reverence that was tinged with envy.
"You can't buy beads like that for any measly five dollars," Jacqueline
told her patronizingly.
"Well, who says I want to?" Eleanor told her, but with a
half-heartedness that was not lost on Jacqueline.
"Look here!" said Jacqueline, like one conferring a favor. "Since you
can't get to Boston to buy your beads before school opens, maybe I'll
sell you mine."
"Don't want 'em!" muttered Eleanor, but she still kept the beads in her
hand.
"They cost ten dollars," Jacqueline said honestly, "but you can have 'em
for five, because I want the money, and look here, if you don't like 'em
after all, I'll buy 'em back from you next week."
Eleanor began to sparkle with interest.
"Would you, really and honest?" she asked.
"Why, sure," said Jacqueline heartily. "You give me the five dollars,
and you can keep the beads, and wear 'em all you like--they'll be yours,
you know--and then if you get tired of 'em, and want your silly old
bangles after all, why, you can have your money back. That's fair, isn't
it?"
"Why, yes," admitted Eleanor, swept off her feet, as Caroline had been
swept on an earlier occasion, as you'll remember, by Jacqueline's sheer
force of will.
"All right," Jacqueline caught her up. "You've got the beads, now give
me the money. I've got to beat it home."
She fairly took the bag from Eleanor's bewildered hands, and scooped the
green bill from its resting place.
"Remember!" she said. "Next week, if you don't like the beads."
Then she scrambled to her feet, with the bill clutched in her hand, and
before the dazed Eleanor had time to change her mind was off through the
short-cut, and speeding toward Miss Crevey's shop, and Caroline's gold
beads, and relief from all the cares and worries that beset her.