CHAPTER XXVIII
THE UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE
If Jacqueline had been given to quoting poetry, she might have said:
“‘I feel chilly, and grown old!’”
Not being given that way, she confessed merely to what Grandma called “a gone feeling.” She sat down suddenly on the steps of the porch, quite as if she had been hit a sudden hard clip in the stomach.
“What makes you look so funny?” Eleanor Trowbridge asked sociably. “Are you coming down with something? I went and nearly had rash but I didn’t.”
“Where have they gone?” Jacqueline interrupted Eleanor’s flow of confidences.
“To the beach, I told you.”
“For goodness’ sake! What beach? I suppose there’s more than one in your horrid old New England.”
This insult to the land of her fathers provoked Eleanor, not without reason. She tossed her head and answered snappishly:
“Mother says I shouldn’t tell all I know to every stranger.”