IN THE MEADOWS
Caroline, all unaided, had baked a "toad in the hole" for dinner. Do you
know what "toad in the hole" is? Scraps of meat baked in a deep dish, in
a kind of custard batter. Caroline had learned from Cousin Delia how to
make it. She was remembering now all sorts of things she had forgotten
since she left Cousin Delia--all the things she had let herself forget
at The Chimnies. She and Nellie had washed the dinner dishes, and then
Caroline had scrubbed the kitchen floor and polished the stove, as a
surprise for Aunt Martha. She did so want to show Aunt Martha that she
could be as helpful as Jackie, even if she _was_ a "scare batty" (as
Neil called her) in regard to cows.
Now Caroline, in her Peggy Janes and sneakers, which Jacqueline had run
down at the heels very badly, was out in the barn with Nellie and the
babies. Nellie had brought along her cloth doll, a lumpy creature named
Gertrude, and Caroline was making it a dress, out of some pieces of
calico that Grandma had unearthed from her scrap-bag.
Mildred looked on in a stately, rather disapproving manner. Mildred wore
a little dress of ruffled dimity, pink with a fine white stripe, and a
pink sunbonnet. All Mildred's silks and satins, which Aunt Eunice and
Caroline had made in the summer house for Mildred to wear in foreign
climes, were packed away in the satin box in the bureau drawer in the
north chamber. Caroline had cried a little as she laid them away. She
didn't mean to look at them again for a long time--not till she was able
to forget that life at The Chimnies had been real--not till she was able
to think of it, as she hoped to think of it some day, as a lovely dream
that she should always cherish.
The sunlight came through the big rear door of the barn, and crept
farther and farther into the dusk that smelled of cows and new hay, as
the sun moved nearer to the western hills. "To-night it is Saturday
night," Caroline remembered the first line of a little child-song that
her mother sometimes used to sing to her. To-morrow would be Sunday, and
then her second week at the farm would begin, and after it weeks and
weeks, and months, and years would follow.
"But there'll be lots of chances to slide," Caroline kept repeating to
herself, "and Ralph will teach me how to skate--he said so himself! And
Grandma is going to show me how to knit. Maybe I can knit things for
Christmas presents. If only I could crochet a sweater for poor Gertrude,
like the one Muzzy made for Mildred."
"Look-it! Look-it!" Freddie cried suddenly, and Nellie, all excited,
raised her voice at the same moment: "It's an automobile, comin' into
our yard--it's a limousine!"
Caroline lifted her eyes from her sewing, and looked. She recognized the
car in a single glance. It was the limousine that she had so enjoyed
riding in--Aunt Eunice's own car. It was stopping at the door of the
farm. Oh, cried guilty conscience, here was Cousin
Penelope--Jacqueline's Cousin Penelope!--come accusingly, as Caroline
had always feared she would come, to tell Caroline what she thought of
people who pretended to be other people, and let you be good to them,
with dentists and pianos, and all the time were deceiving you!
Caroline dropped Gertrude, so violently that it was well she was not
made of anything more breakable than painted cloth and cotton. She
caught up Mildred in a frantic clasp.
"You mind the babies, Nellie!" she bade. "I won't come back till she's
gone, not even if she stays here ten thousand years!"
She scuttled out at the rear of the barn, just as the stately limousine
came to rest alongside the kitchen door. She ran round to the south side
of the barn, where there was a pile of old lumber, and a disused
hen-house. She crawled into the hen-house--she wasn't very big in the
Peggy Janes!--through a hole that looked hardly large enough for a
good-sized dog.
It was hot and rather stifling in the hen-house, but Caroline felt as
safe as if she were in a diving-bell at the bottom of the sea. She
cuddled in a corner and held Mildred tight and comforted her. She was
just assuring Mildred that there was nothing to fear, for Cousin
Penelope would go away very soon, and then they would crawl out where it
was cooler, when she heard steps close at hand, and the rustle of
garments among the tall weeds by the lumber pile, and voices.
One voice unmistakably belonged to Cousin Penelope.
"Where _can_ she have vanished to?"
"I bet I know!" That shrill pipe was Nellie's, the little traitor! "I
bet she's gone and hid in the old hen-house."
"But she couldn't possibly have got in there," gasped Cousin Penelope.
"'Course she could," insisted Nellie. "Want me to crawl in and show you
how?"
There was a second of silence, in which Nellie evidently waited
hopefully for Cousin Penelope to say she would follow her through the
hole into the hen-house. But when Cousin Penelope did speak, what she
said was:
"Run back to the house now, little girl."
She spoke in the sort of tone that would make any little girl run away.
Nellie ran, no question! But Cousin Penelope stayed. Caroline could
almost hear her breathing while she held her own breath and listened.
"Caroline!" That was not a bit like the voice in which Cousin Penelope
had spoken to Nellie and it came from a Cousin Penelope who must be
kneeling on the ground (Cousin Penelope kneeling!) in order to throw the
voice into the hen-house. "Are you in there, dear? Please come out! I
understand--I'm not angry with you. We've all suffered enough--some of
us deserved it." (Could it be that Cousin Penelope was crying just a
little?) "Come out, dear, please! We've come to see you, Aunt Eunice and
I. You're not afraid of Aunt Eunice, I know. Oh, don't be afraid of me
any more!"
And Caroline wasn't afraid of this Cousin Penelope--the Cousin Penelope
who had come to her room on the night when it thundered and
lightened--the Cousin Penelope who had walked with her on the downs. She
crawled out of the hen-house, with a long new rip in the Peggy Janes,
and before she could rise to her feet, she found herself and Mildred
fast in Cousin Penelope's arms, and Cousin Penelope, in her lovely white
and green summery things, was actually hugging a dusty Meadows child,
and kissing her--yes, kissing her.
"You're coming home with us now, Caroline," Cousin Penelope whispered.
Yes, she had been crying. Caroline could feel that the cheek pressed
against her own was wet. And Caroline wanted to cry, too, but she
couldn't.
"Oh, no!" she said achingly. "Oh, no! I want to like anything--but I
couldn't! I couldn't bear to go away again--I thought last time I was
going to die."
"But you're not going away again, ever," said Cousin Penelope. "You're
coming home with us to stay--always. Don't you understand, dear? Aunt
Eunice wants you--and I want you, too, Caroline--I want you to be my
very own little girl."