“The water’ll be more than blood warm by the time you’ve eaten,” said Aunt Martha. “Take a pitcher full upstairs and wash your feet before you get between the sheets. You’ll have to wash your hair to-morrow. You look as if you’d burrowed head first into a sand bank.”
Jacqueline blushed, and wondered if Aunt Martha would make any more near guesses at the truth. But Aunt Martha made no further comments. She busied herself in putting the cat outside, and locking doors, and bolting windows. Meantime Jacqueline fetched her cookies and her pitcher of milk, and sat down at the kitchen table, in the dim light of the one oil lamp, and ate and drank, hungrily and thirstily. To look at her, you wouldn’t have guessed that she wanted to say, “I’m sorry!” But she did, and the dryness in her throat took half the good taste out of the milk and the cookies.
“Aunt Martha!” she spoke suddenly.
Aunt Martha paused in winding the clock, and looked over her shoulder at Jacqueline.
“I’m going to get Grandma some new cups,” said Jacqueline.
A smile that was quizzical and a little bit pitying played round Aunt Martha’s lips. But all she said was:
“That’s the right idea. Get a box to-morrow and put your pennies in it till you’ve saved enough. It’ll take some time, but it’s no more than fair. Now trot along and get some sleep while it’s cool. It’ll be a clear, hot day to-morrow, or I miss my guess.”
And to-morrow was Caroline’s party! Suddenly Jacqueline felt her crushed spirits revive, and her dampened pride rekindle within her. If Aunt Martha, and Grandma, and Aunt Eunice, too, had all most unexpectedly been good to her, she at least had evened up things a little by being good to Caroline.
“I’m glad I didn’t quit,” Jacqueline told herself, as she toiled up the stairs, dead tired, with her pitcher of lukewarm water. “I’m glad I told Caroline I’d stick it out here, and oh! I’m going to be glad for all my life that I let the kid have her old party.”