Jacqueline thought of a picture in one of her travel books at home. In the picture some young women with bushy hair, and bone earrings, and wreaths of flowers round their necks, and not much else in the way of covering, were dancing round a huge stone image. Those were heathen, if you please! Aunt Martha couldn’t be like them if she tried for a hundred years. The mere thought of Aunt Martha looking like that made Jacqueline want to laugh. But she decided that she’d better keep the joke to herself.
They turned in presently at the Conway farm. How quickly they had come, and what an endless time it would have taken Jacqueline to cover the distance on her smarting feet! Aunt Martha ran the Ford into the barn, and with Jacqueline’s help closed and padlocked the great clumsy doors. None of the boys were there to help her. Why, it must be ever so late!
When they came into the kitchen, where a dim lamp burned, Jacqueline saw by the hands of the steeple-roofed kitchen clock that it was going on eleven—a desperate hour for the Conway farm! They had come in softly, but Grandma must have been lying awake and listening for she called instantly from her dark bedroom:
“That you, Martha? Did you find her safe?”
“All right, Mother Conway,” Aunt Martha spoke guardedly, so as not to waken Annie. Then she whispered to Jacqueline! “Go in and say goodnight to Grandma. It’ll be a load off her mind to see you’re all right.”
Jacqueline didn’t feel the least bit like laughing, as she went a-tiptoe into the little bedroom off the kitchen. She had been horrid, she realized. She almost wished that Aunt Martha and Grandma had been horrid and hateful and scolded her—yes, and let her find her way home, all alone, in the awful dark. If they had, she wouldn’t have needed to feel so hot and ashamed as she felt now.
She stole round Annie’s crib and paused at the bedside. Grandma put out her hard old hand, with its twisted knuckles, and caught at Jacqueline’s hand.
“Ye ain’t come to no harm, Jackie?”
“No, Grandma,” whispered Jacqueline.
“’Tain’t like it used to be when I was young. The Meadows ain’t the best place for little folks to run about in after dark. Don’t ye do it again, Jackie, ever!”