“How did you know—I’d gone to the village? I might have been most anywhere.”
“I shouldn’t have known where to look for you, more’n if you’d been a needle in a haystack. I didn’t look for you,” said Aunt Martha defensively. “But when old Mrs. Gildersleeve called me up and said you’d been seen up in the village——”
“Mrs. Gildersleeve called up—about me?” Jacqueline repeated stupidly. Aunt Eunice had telephoned to Aunt Martha! Of all people! How did she know? Why should she care?
“She’s an awful nice woman,” Aunt Martha said warmly. “She’s the kind that’ll bow just as friendly to old Si Whitcomb on his hay-rack as she does to Judge Holden in his wire-wheeled car. She had to call twice before she got me, ’cause that feather-headed Williams girl on our party line was planning with the minister’s youngest daughter how she’d dye and turn and cut her last winter’s suit. I think they made a batch of devil’s food, too, and settled the reputations of half their neighbors before they got off that line. I know, ’cause I was trying to put in a call myself.”
Was it about her, Jacqueline wondered? But she decided it was best to ask no questions.
“Soon’s Mrs. Gildersleeve got me,” Aunt Martha went on, “I thought I’d best start out on the chance of meeting with you.”
“Thank you very much,” Jacqueline murmured, oh, so meekly.
Was Aunt Martha going to scold her now, she wondered? Well, perhaps it would be over before they reached the farm. She waited in the silence that grew worse and worse every minute, for every minute she realized, with a deeper sense of guilt, what a lot of trouble and anxiety she had given the Conways. At last she just couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Aunt Martha,” she burst out, “are you going to send me to an Institution?”
Aunt Martha turned and stared at her through the darkness. Jacqueline could see the whites of her eyes under the brim of her ugly, cheap hat.