TURN ABOUT AGAIN!
Jacqueline wasn't at the Conway farm, when Caroline, in frantic quest of
her, came stumbling into the kitchen, on Aunt Martha's invitation.
Instead she was down on the knoll by the river having a picnic with the
young Conways.
It was a most unusually nice picnic. Dickie had gone early to the knoll,
and with his Boy Scout lore had built a fire and set potatoes to roast
in the hot embers. Some of them were a little underdone at supper time,
and some were a little overdone, but smeared with butter, they tasted
ever so much better than the baked potatoes that one ate off a plate at
home in the dining room. Besides the potatoes there were apple
turnovers, made with flaky pie crust, as a special treat. Aunt Martha
had time to do some of the cooking herself, now that Grandma was able to
sit up.
The picnickers left nothing for the birds but a very few crumbs, and
they straggled home through the onion fields, just before sunset, fed-up
and contented, so that even the thought of the good-night chores
couldn't damp their happiness.
"I'll stir up a batch of Graham bread and set it to rise," Jacqueline
murmured, "but first I'll give Annie and Freddie their baths. And you've
got to take a bath, too--you hear me, Nellie? Not just your feet and a
lick at your neck, but all over."
"I did yesterday," protested Nellie.
"You will to-day," said Jacqueline in her bossiest voice, "or else you
won't sleep in the bed with me, and don't you forget it."
Quite as important as the mother of a large family, Jacqueline bustled
into the kitchen, which was now growing dusky. Soft splashings from the
washroom and gurgles from Freddie told her that Aunt Martha had
forestalled her at part of her labors. She must already have bathed and
bedded Annie, and now she was at work on Freddie.
Honestly Jacqueline was sorry to seem to have shirked.
"Oh, come now, Aunt Martha!" she spoke into the washroom. "You didn't
need to do that. You knew I was coming."
Aunt Martha looked up from where she knelt in the lamp light to scrub
Freddie.
"'Tisn't likely you'll have time for any chores to-night," she
explained. "Your folks'll be sending for you any minute now."
"Oh!" said Jacqueline, with a squeak like the squeak of a rubber pig
when you let the air out of it. "You mean--but they can't be! They
haven't got back from the beach--not yet!"
"Everything's happened all in a heap," Aunt Martha told her. "They've
come back from the beach, sure enough, to meet your aunt and uncle. They
must be here by this time. Caroline turned up 'bout five o'clock with
the news."
"Caroline is here?"
"Yes. She looked pretty well done out, poor young one. I just took time
to call up the Judge and ask him to step right over to your Aunt
Eunice's, and tell her the whole story and how both you children were
here at the farm, waiting for them to send and get the one that really
belongs to them. Then I packed Caroline off to bed. She's in your old
room. Better kite upstairs and speak to her. You may not have much
time."
That was all Aunt Martha said. Matter of fact like that, and scrubbing
Freddie's neck while she talked, so vigorously that he began to whine!
Jacqueline herself had no choice but to take matters calmly, though she
felt this to be a most exciting hour of her life. What would she say,
that horrid old Cousin Penelope, when she found the little girl she had
snubbed was really her cousin's child? Jacqueline chuckled a little to
herself, as she scampered up the narrow stairs to the north chamber.
In the big bed in the corner Caroline rose on one elbow and looked at
her--a white-faced Caroline with dark smudges under her eyes. She was
wearing one of the scant, thin little gowns that Jacqueline had worn all
summer, and she held Mildred in her tiny be-trimmed nightdress, close
against her breast.
"Hello, Carol!" said Jacqueline. But her voice didn't sound so jaunty as
she meant it to.
"Oh, Jackie!" Caroline cried at sight of her. "Did Aunt Martha tell
you?"
"Sure," answered Jacqueline, and sat down in her dusty Peggy Janes, upon
the edge of the bed.
"She's awful good," said Caroline, in a wavering voice. "She said not to
worry about the cows--the boys look after them. And she wanted me to eat
some supper but I couldn't. She didn't scold, not one bit. Oh, Jackie,
I'm afraid Cousin Penelope will scold you--dreadfully."
"I should worry," said Jacqueline.
Caroline looked at her for a moment with all the old admiration, and
then she shook her head woefully.
"We shouldn't have done it, Jackie--it was an awful thing to do."
"Well," said Jacqueline defensively, "you liked the piano, didn't you?"
"Y-yes," Caroline confessed, and then the tears began to drip down her
cheeks, and she hid her head in the pillow.
"Oh, suffering chipmunks!" Jacqueline cried angrily. "Don't do that!
Don't do that, I tell you! Would you rather we hadn't?"
"I-I don't know!" wept Caroline. "No, I guess not. Yes, I guess
so--perhaps." She dried her eyes uncertainly with the front of her
wrist. "There are your clothes, Jackie," she said in a voice that she
tried vainly to keep steady. "All folded up on the chair. I put them on
fresh this morning--down at Monk's Bay--in the beautiful Shieling." She
bit her lip that trembled, and went on: "Don't you believe--you could
wear them back?"
Jacqueline gave her a startled look.
"But I want to wear the Peggy Janes," she said, "and knock 'em dead with
surprise."
Couldn't she just see herself "making an entrance" at the Gildersleeves'
poky house--the dismay of that starched Cousin Penelope--the amazement
of Aunt Edie and Uncle Jimmie?
"But they are my Peggy Janes," said Caroline wistfully, "and I've got to
have some clothes to wear."
"You can have those duds of mine," said Jacqueline, with an airy gesture
toward the kilted pongee skirt, the orange silk slip-over, the leghorn
hat, the ruffled underwear. "We'll swap."
"No, no!" Caroline cried in such a distressful voice that Jacqueline was
amazed. "I don't want 'em--I don't want ever to see 'em again--take 'em
away, Jackie, please--please!"
"Why, sure," said Jacqueline, somewhat hurt, "if you feel it that way."
Hastily, as she had changed on the train, weeks before, she shed the
Peggy Janes and the sneakers, and put her dusty self into her own
lawful, rather dusty clothes. While she changed, she let her tongue run
on. Somehow she dreaded to have a silence fall in the room where
Caroline crouched so white-faced in the big bed.
"You didn't see my Aunt Edie and my Uncle Jimmie," Jacqueline
questioned, "did you?"
"No," said Caroline. "I ran right away when I heard they were coming.
It's an awful long way from Longmeadow to the farm."
"Pretty nice, though, when you get here," said Jacqueline, as she
wriggled into her own sand-colored silk socks.
Caroline drew a quivering breath.
"This is a bigger room than at Cousin Delia's," she said. "Nellie and I
will have it together, Aunt Martha told me. I haven't seen Nellie, but
the babies are real cunning. I know I shall love them. Aunt Martha's
going to make me a winter coat out of an ulster of hers, and dye it
blue. It's cold here winters--and there'll be lots of chances to
slide--and there's a pond where Ralph will teach me to skate. Aunt
Martha's awful good."
"I'll say she is," assented Jacqueline, as she thrust herself into the
slip-over. "Crazy elephants! I've gone and grown this summer."
She stepped to the wavery looking-glass, and grinned at her own
sunbrowned reflection. From the mirror her glance traveled to the window
close by--the window that looked out on the road--and at sight of what
was passing on the road, she gave a whoop that made Caroline sit up.
"Oh, jumping skeeters! It's my Uncle Jimmie--and the Judge! They've
come--they've really come! I've got to go."
She caught up the leghorn hat. She was Jacqueline herself again, just as
if the summer masquerade had never happened.
As if it had never happened--and Caroline's black-smudged eyes fairly
stabbing Jacqueline with their woefulness!
Jacqueline swooped down on the bed, and threw her arms round Caroline,
and kissed her tumultuously.
"Don't you care!" she said. "Think of the fun you had--and we'll have
some great times together yet. I'll come back to-morrow--and you'll come
and see me at Aunt Eunice's."
Caroline said nothing, but it was only afterward that Jacqueline
remembered that she had been silent. Jacqueline gave her a last hug--she
couldn't linger, with Uncle Jimmie at the door--and then she galloped
down the narrow stair into the kitchen.
Aunt Martha was there, and Freddie, in his little Teddie sleeping suit.
Nellie was minding him, and Nellie's eyes were round with amazement.
"I was just going to call you," said Aunt Martha. "They won't come
in--they're in an awful hurry. Say good-by to Grandma. I've sort of
prepared her."
Jacqueline went quickly and quietly into the parlor that still was
Grandma's room. Grandma sat in her worn old wrapper in the big wooden
rocker. An oil lamp burned on the table beside her and her knitting
rested on her knees. Thank goodness, she often said, she could at least
knit again. She didn't have to sit round any longer like a bump on a
log!
Grandma turned her head and looked at Jacqueline, and suddenly
Jacqueline felt lumpy in the throat, and teary round the lashes. It
wasn't funny at all, what she had done and put Caroline up to doing. And
she wasn't going to enjoy this hour a little bit, even if she got a
hundred rises out of stuck-up Cousin Penelope.
"So you ain't our Jackie, after all," said Grandma, in the trembly voice
that was hers since her illness.
Jacqueline went to Grandma's side and took the veined old hands tight in
both hers.'
"I'm _your_ Jackie," she said painfully. "Oh, Grandma, I sure will miss
you! I'll run in to-morrow, and I'm coming back to visit next summer, if
Aunt Martha'll let me."
Grandma smiled, the saddest sort of smile.
"To-morrow's another day, child--and summer's a long ways off. There,
now, just you kiss me and run along to your own folks."
Jacqueline bent and kissed the withered old cheek.
"Don't ye cut up no more crazy didoes," Grandma whispered with a queer
little chuckle that might as well have been a sob.
"I won't," said Jacqueline, stifled.
She went out of the room very quickly. If she had stopped or looked
back, she realized that she might have begun to cry. Oh, fuzzy
caterpillars, what was the use of talking grandly to one's self about
wheelchairs for Grandma and china dishes? Some things you couldn't make
up for. Some things you couldn't set right.
Aunt Martha didn't aim to have prolonged leave-takings. She was out on
the doorstep, with Freddie, beshawled, in her arms, and the children
standing round her with perplexed faces, all of them; even Ralph. In the
roadster sat Judge Holden, and Colonel Jimmie Knowlton stood by the
running board with his cap in his hand, talking with Aunt Martha.
Jacqueline threw herself upon Uncle Jimmie and kissed him. She wanted to
get through with everything very quickly, and drive away. She kissed
Nellie. She kissed Freddie. She dabbed at Aunt Martha's cheek.
"Oh!" cried Nellie suddenly. "Don't go, Jackie--don't go!"
"S'long," Jacqueline nodded to the boys. "I'm coming back to-morrow.
I'll say you've shown me one grand time!"
They were looking at her with big eyes, as if she were a stranger. Oh,
dumb-paste that skirt and slip-over! If only she could have kept the
Peggy Janes.
"Jump in!" bade her Uncle Jimmie, in his military voice, which
Jacqueline fancied only when he joked. She suspected that he was in no
mood for joking now.
She scuttled into the wide seat of the roadster beside Judge Holden, who
nodded to her gravely. Uncle Jimmie folded his long legs into the seat
beside her.
"Good-night, Mrs. Conway, and many thanks," he said.
The car was turning. In a moment the top would shut away the sight of
them, the dear friendly people who were not her own, standing there with
surprised, reproachful faces, in the dusk that was about to swallow them
up.
"Good-by, Aunt Martha," Jacqueline called. "I'll see you to-morrow."
The roadster had quite turned now, and was heading for the road.
"Jackie! Jackie!" That was Freddie's voice, lifted in a howl of anguish.
"I want my Jackie--Jackie!"
Uncle Jimmie looked down at Jacqueline beside him. She could feel his
eyes boring through her and she could feel herself shrinking smaller and
smaller, till a crack would have held her.
"Well," said Uncle Jimmie in the tone, she felt, in which he sent men to
be court-martialed--a tone that left you flat, crushed under tons of
righteous disapproval. "I'll say that for a nickel-plated,
triple-riveted Miss Mess-it you've broken the world's record this trip."