“Jackie!” a voice called clearly and firmly. “Is that you? Jackie!”
Jacqueline found her feet, though a second before she would have vowed she hadn’t enough strength left ever to stand again. She flew, stiff-legged, through the crumbly dust and the strong-smelling onion tops, into the road. She cast herself upon the running board, she flung herself into the seat of the car, and hung about the neck of the woman at the steering wheel.
“Oh, Aunt Martha!” she cried. “Aunt Martha!”
And Martha Conway, if you’ll believe it, grabbed that bad Jacqueline and hugged her just as tight as if she were clean and sweet, instead of the dirtiest, sweatiest, tiredest ragamuffin that ever crawled penitently out of an onion bed.
CHAPTER XXIV
NEVER AGAIN
Perhaps blood doesn’t tell quite as much as Cousin Penelope believed it did. Certainly Jacqueline and Aunt Martha, who were no relation to each other, were more alike than Caroline and Aunt Martha could ever have been. So much alike they were that almost instantly each drew back into her own corner of the seat, as if they were ashamed of the way in which they had clutched each other.
Aunt Martha gave her attention to backing and turning the Ford, with the least possible damage to the lawless onions that overflowed into the highway. Jacqueline leaned back in her seat and stretched her tired legs and sighed with blissful relief. Neither spoke till the car was safely headed homeward. Then Jacqueline found her voice—such a meek voice!
“Were you—looking for me, Aunt Martha?”
“Didn’t think I’d be driving to the village at this time of evening just for the fun of it, did you?”
Such a cool, clipped, everyday voice Aunt Martha spoke in! Who would have dreamed to hear it that she had hugged Jacqueline two minutes before?