“She’s going to get well! Grandma’s going to get well!” Jacqueline chanted under her breath, while she jumped up and down softly in her sneakers.
“Glad you’ve spunk enough left to hop,” said Aunt Martha.
“Hop?” beamed Jacqueline. “I could run a mile. Oh, Aunt Martha, can’t I go to the village this afternoon? I won’t be long. I’ll run most of the way——”
Then she stopped. For she saw, by Aunt Martha’s face, that she was no more going to Longmeadow that afternoon than she was going to Timbuctoo.
“I’d like to let you go right well, Jackie,” said Aunt Martha, “but I don’t see how I can spare you. I’ve got to get over to East Baring and see about selling the wood lot. It’s a piece of business Ralph can’t tend to. I was counting on leaving you to sit with Grandma.”
Jacqueline shivered a little. Honestly she was afraid of the strange, white, withered woman who lay helpless in Grandma’s bed. And for all their sakes she wanted to see Caroline and arrange about getting that money just as quickly as possible. But she had no choice in the matter. She couldn’t explain to Aunt Martha why she wanted to go to Longmeadow and she couldn’t expect Aunt Martha to alter business plans just on account of what must seem to her a child’s desire to take a holiday.
So Aunt Martha drove away that afternoon in the Ford, and took Freddie with her, to relieve Jacqueline of one care, and Jacqueline settled herself by the north window in the parlor, ready to be of service, if Grandma so much as whispered. Jacqueline might have read story papers while she sat there, but she hated even the thought of those story papers. If she hadn’t sat reading, all that hot day before the day of the party, and left the work to Grandma, perhaps Grandma wouldn’t have been taken ill. She didn’t dare ask Aunt Martha if this were so. She kept the thought to herself, and was tortured with it. She never wanted to see that pile of story papers again, as long as she lived. In their place she got out the big, overflowing mending basket (Grandma’s basket!) and darned stockings patiently through the long afternoon.
She had hoped that Aunt Martha would be home at four o’clock to give Grandma her cup of broth. But there was never a sign of Aunt Martha, when four o’clock struck. “Root, hog, or die!” as old Abe Lincoln said of a disagreeable job. Jacqueline went into the kitchen, and warmed the broth, and put it into a thick white cup, and carried it to Grandma.
The feeble old white head shifted itself on the pillow, as Jacqueline slipped an arm beneath it, as she had seen Aunt Martha do, and gently raised it. The pale old lips approached the thick edge of the coarse cup.
“No—no,” Grandma muttered, and turned away her head. “Not that. Cup.”