"HAPPY EVER AFTER!"
Not more than fifteen minutes later Caroline actually was riding away
from the farm in the gray-lined, soft-cushioned limousine. She sat
between Aunt Eunice and Cousin Penelope. She had Mildred on her knee,
and her old suitcase rested on the rug at her feet. In the suitcase were
her comb and brushes and nightdress, the satin candy box that held
Mildred's wardrobe, the old lacquer box, tied with a crumpled
hair-ribbon, the little chintz cases, marked with the cross-stitched
initials, F. T., which were her mother's initials, and the worn
bed-shoes that her mother had crocheted for her months ago. All her
other worldly goods Caroline had bequeathed to an astonished Nellie.
Aunt Martha waved a good-by from the doorstep.
"Seeing folks off seems to be a habit of ours this summer," she said to
Nellie and Dickie and Neil, who stood looking after the departing
limousine, too dumbfounded at the disappearance of yet another playmate
to utter a single word.
Just then, at the very moment when it should have happened, something
nice did happen to Aunt Martha and her brood. Ralph in the Ford came
clattering down the road, up which the limousine, with the happiest
little girl in the world inside, was rolling so smoothly. He stopped the
car at the doorstep, and tumbled out in great excitement and took from
the tonneau a box. It was quite a big box, addressed to Aunt Martha, and
sent by parcel post from a New York store.
You had better believe there was an instant chorus:
"Open it, Mother, please! Right off! Please do!"
Aunt Martha had Ralph carry the box into Grandma's room, and the
children all crowded round, from little Annie, on Grandma's knee, to
Ralph, who was as eager as the youngest. Aunt Martha untied the nice
stout string very carefully and gave it to Grandma to roll up and save,
and she removed the strong wrapping paper and folded it, to be put away
in the drawer of the old dresser.
"Candy!" cried Neil, as the corrugated paste-board (Aunt Martha saved
that, too!) was removed from a stack of dazzling white boxes. "I can
just smell it."
"Yumy-yumy!" sniffed Nellie in ecstasy.
It certainly was candy, and sent in the most thoughtful way, a box for
each member of the family, marked with his or her name. There were
chocolate-coated peppermints and gum-drops, her favorite sweets (as
Somebody knew!) in Grandma's box, and caramels of all kinds in Neil's.
There were bon-bons of every luscious color in Nellie's box, and
crystallized fruit in the one marked Ralph. There were chocolates for
Dickie and Caroline (who wouldn't need her box!) and there were
fruit-drops and chocolate-coated molasses chips for Freddie, and dear
little striped sticks of all colors and flavors for Annie to suck. For
Aunt Martha there was the most beautiful two-pound box of chocolates and
bon-bons, and on top, among the candied leaves of violets, was a card
that read:
"I hope this will poison any kid who goes and eats it up on Aunt
Martha.
JACKIE."
"Why, of course it's Jackie," smiled Grandma. "Who else in the wide
world would ever have thought out everything so nice?"
"She shouldn't have!" gasped Aunt Martha.
"Oh, gee!" cried Ralph. "There's a letter for you, and I guess it's from
her, and I was forgetting it."
He took a letter from his pocket--a thick letter, written on the paper
of a New York hotel. The writing left much to be desired in the way of
beauty, but it was readable, and it was identical with the writing on
the card in Aunt Martha's box of candy.
"Of all the extravagant young ones!" Aunt Martha repeated, as she opened
the envelope. "Her folks shouldn't have let her."
Then she read the letter, but mostly to herself, for she was so
"flabbergasted" that her voice gave out completely. This was the letter
Jackie had written:
"DEAR AUNT MARTHA:
I am here in New York at a hotel with a roof garden with my Aunt
Edie and Uncle Jimmie and we sail on Saterday but it is not a
strick school I am going to. I have been shopping all day with
Aunt Edie and I boght some things and she said I could and
helped me sellect them and I hope you will take them and let the
children take them. They are un-Christmas presents and if you do
not take them I shall think you are mad at me for what I did and
I shall be dretful unhappy if I think you are mad at me so I
hope you will take them please and if I was there I could show
Neil how the magic lantern goes.
The things will be sent from the shops and they are all adressed
to you but I will tell you which is for which. The wheel-chair
is for Grandma of course and the red silk wadded gown is for her
to. I got a cherful color and the long taled birds on it are not
storks but cranes. The dishes are a present to the house and I
tried to get green dragons but they do not seem populer any more
so I got green leaves and pink rosebuds. The wooly rabbit is for
Annie and when you press him he jumps and the bonnet is for her
to because she will be so cunning with swans down round her
face. The kiddy kar is for Freddie and the curly haired doll is
for Nellie. The sutecase goes with the doll and there are three
dresses and a coat and a hat and her shoes and stockings take
off and she shuts her eyes. The magic lantern is for Neil and he
doesn't need any more slides because you can use postcards like
the directions say and I will send him odles of postcards from
Europe. The Boy Scout suit is for Dickie. I think he is average
twelve years old but if it isnt right you can send it back to
the shop and they will change it. The belt is for Ralph and his
initials are on the buckle so of course there could be no
misstake and the fur gloves are for you in the car next winter
if you will please accept them with my love. The little straw
hat is for Mildred that is Carol's child and the winter coat
with the fur collar is for Carol to and tell her please I will
write her a long letter from the steamer. I can't write any more
now because I have a crick in my hand and anyway it is prety
near dinner time. I hope you are all very well and do not forget
me and I remain as ever most respectfully
Your most affectionate
JACKIE GILDERSLEEVE."
"My land!" said Aunt Martha, when she had finished and found her breath.
"They shouldn't have let her--big presents like that--and I ought not to
let you children----"
"Has my doll real hair that I can brush?" Nellie interrupted, with
shining eyes.
"A red silk gown with long-tailed birds on it!" Grandma shook with
laughter. "I'll look like the Queen of Sheba. Lord bless the child! At
my time o' life!"
She peered into her box of sweets, and chose herself a plump sugary
gum-drop.
"I'm going to let you take 'em, just the same," said Aunt Martha, with
decision. "There's no sense in standing on your pride to the hurt of
other folks' feelings when it's kindly meant and the things a real
Godsend. She must have taken a lot of thought and time--and that's more
than money!--picking out presents for all of us, and just when she'd be
full of her own plans and pleasures, too! She's a dear, good child."
Aunt Martha blew her nose quite savagely. "Only you don't need to go
imitating _all_ her qualities, remember!"
"She's a crackerjack." Neil spoke as well as he could with his mouth
full of caramels.
"Now put up that candy, every one of you, till morning!" Aunt Martha
tucked away her handkerchief and was her brisk self again. "I can't have
you all sick on my hands. And put Caroline's box to one side. It's hers
and must go to her, whether she's here or at the Gildersleeves."
But what was a box of chocolates to Caroline in that hour? The limousine
had rolled up to the porch, down which she had stumbled in heart-broken
flight, not a week before. She stood again in the dim spacious hall,
with its gleam of gilt-framed mirrors and its tall, flaming gladioli in
dull green jars. She had gone up the stairs into the room with the pale
gray furniture, the fairy-tale pictures, the canary shapes that
glittered amid the green.
"It will always be your room now, dear," said Aunt Eunice, and patted
Caroline's hand that she had kept fast in hers, ever since they found
each other at the farm.
Cousin Penelope pulled open a drawer of the bureau. She took out things
while Aunt Eunice gasped, as amazed and as delighted, too, as Caroline
herself. There were white frilly underthings for a little girl of
eleven, and socks of black silk, and shoes of black patent leather, with
buckled straps. There was a frock of fine brown and white checked
gingham, with flame-colored silk stitchings on the belt and cuffs and
collar, and a little chemisette of sheer white lawn.
"I got these in the city," said Cousin Penelope, smiling and unashamed.
"I was going to send them to you, Carol, as a present for Sunday wear.
There's a little coat, too, in the closet and a fall hat. To-morrow
we'll go to the city, and get you more things, and we'll go to the
dentist's, too, and Madame Woleski will take you for a lesson the last
of the week."
And when the sun went down on that Saturday night, in great splashes of
color into the sea, Jacqueline was a happy little girl, as she stood
with feet firmly apart on the deck of the great ocean liner, at her
Uncle Jimmie's side, with new sights and new experiences in a new world
before her. But she was not half so happy as was Caroline, all clean and
fresh in clothes that were her very own, not Jacqueline's, as she sat at
the table in the softly lighted dining room at The Chimnies and beamed
at Aunt Eunice and Cousin Penelope. For Caroline was telling herself:
"They want me--really me myself--not Jackie. I'm theirs--and they love
me, but oh! not more than I love them, and will love them all my days."
But if you'll believe it, Cousin Penelope was as happy as anybody. For
she had changed back to her old place at the table, and she looked
straight at Great-aunt Joanna's portrait. Blood will tell--once more she
said it defiantly! Weren't the Taits and Conways and Gildersleeves and
Holdens, all those sturdy pioneers who were her forbears, just as much
the forbears of little Caroline?
"Do you know, Mother," said Cousin Penelope serenely, "Caroline really
looks very much like Great-aunt Joanna?"
Caroline twisted round in her seat. She didn't feel afraid to look at
Great-aunt Joanna, now that she wasn't pretending to be her
great-grandniece.
"She looks fiercely proud, doesn't she, Cousin Penelope?" she said.
Cousin Penelope laughed. They were all three very quick to laugh that
evening, perhaps because they could as easily have cried.
"Well, pride's a good thing," said Cousin Penelope, and the look that
passed between her and Aunt Eunice was a look of new understanding.
"That is, it's a good thing if you know when to use it--and when to lose
it."
End of Project Gutenberg's The Turned-About Girls, by Beulah Marie Dix