Jacqueline’s heart was beating fast.
“There’s a pin,” she said, “and there’s a pearl in it—or there’s gold beads—a chain of them. I know gold beads are worth a lot more than five dollars. Oh, couldn’t you take them?”
“How do I know till I see them?” snapped Miss Crevey. “You bring ’em in some day—then we’ll talk business.”
Jacqueline drew a long breath.
“I’m going to go and get them right straight off,” she said, “and don’t you sell that cup and saucer till I come back.”
Strange though it may seem to you, it didn’t enter Jacqueline’s head that she was doing a dreadful thing in taking Caroline’s precious keepsakes to use as a pledge. In a half-formed way she felt that Caroline, by going off to the seashore, had brought this trouble upon her, and so was bound to help her out, in any way she could. She felt, too, that the fact that Grandma was really a relation of Caroline’s, not of hers, made the whole arrangement perfectly fair.
Still, Jacqueline might have seen her conduct in a different light, if she had taken time to sleep upon it. But she took no time. For luck played into her hand in a breathlessly amazing fashion. When she burst out of Miss Crevey’s shop, with a crazy idea of running clear to the farm and back, before Ralph got to the Post Office at five o’clock, whom should she see, heading down the street toward his home in the Meadows, but friendly Mr. Griswold!
Shrieking like a lost soul, Jacqueline sprinted after him, and fortunately she made him hear. A moment later she was seated at his side in his ramshackle, blessed old car. A short half-hour later, with warnings to Nellie never to tell, she was creeping up the stairs to their old room, so paddy-pawed that Aunt Martha, busy changing Grandma’s sheets, behind the closed doors of the parlor, never heard a sound.
Without pausing one moment to think, she opened the lacquer box and took out the string of gold beads. She knotted them safely in the corner of a clean pocket handkerchief, and quietly as she had entered, slipped out of the house again.
She ran part of the long, dusty road back to the village. Suppose she should come too late—suppose she should find the cup already sold—suppose oh! suppose Miss Crevey refused to keep to the bargain! But none of these dreadful things came to pass. When she panted into the close little shop, she found the dragon cup and saucer still in the window, and she found Miss Crevey mindful of the agreement.