She spent a busy evening in helping Cousin Penelope select and pack in a little leather trunk the things that she would need at the beach. Fully half of Jacqueline’s pretty wardrobe was to be left at The Chimnies and some of the most valuable of her trinkets.
“I’ll put these pins and chains in the library safe,” said Cousin Penelope. “The house will be closed, you know, while we are away, and though we’ve never had such a thing as a burglar in Longmeadow, it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
Caroline agreed. She was ready to agree to anything. She went to bed, full of happy thoughts of the journey before her, and then for the first time she remembered Jacqueline, and grew uneasy. Was it fair to stay in Jacqueline’s place, even at Jacqueline’s bidding, and enjoy this trip to the beach that Jacqueline had not foreseen? But she couldn’t give away the secret that was one-half Jacqueline’s and that Jacqueline had ordered her to keep, until she had consulted with Jacqueline.
And how was she to get at Jacqueline? She couldn’t go herself to the Meadows, even if she had had the time to do so, and she couldn’t telephone. She fairly quaked in her cozy bed as she thought of the stern, accusing face that Cousin Penelope would turn upon her, should she catch her actually telephoning to the house in the Meadows that sheltered the child she had denounced as rude and pushing. She would rather die than attempt to telephone Jacqueline from The Chimnies—but there were other telephones in Longmeadow!
What a ninny she had been not to think of that before! First thing in the morning she would run over to the Trowbridges’. She could venture it, for she and Eleanor were now quite intimate friends. She would telephone Jacqueline, and let her know that they were going away to the beach. Not that it would make any difference to Jackie, but she would feel better herself to have done what she felt was the fair thing to do.
Wasn’t it strange that when so much depended on her waking early, Caroline should oversleep? Actually she waked only when Cousin Penelope, in her lavender dressing-gown, stood laughing over her.
“Hurry, little Sleepy-head!” cried Cousin Penelope. “I let you rest till the last minute, but breakfast will be on the table now before you can say Jack Robinson, and we must start right after breakfast, or we’ll have to travel in the heat of the day.”
You know yourself how it is when you rise late and dress in a hurry. Stubborn snarls in the brown locks that just wouldn’t come out—button-holes in the freshly laundered garments that closed their mean lips and wouldn’t admit the buttons—a hair-ribbon that peevishly had lost itself—finally a weakened clasp on the chain of tiny gold beads that she meant to wear, which let the whole string go slipping coldly down within her undergarments.
Caroline had just recovered the beads, when she heard the soft notes of the Chinese gongs that made always such a pleasant prelude to meals at The Chimnies. She dared not trust the shallow pockets of her mouse-colored smock, so she left the beads upon the dressing-table. Later she would put them into her little vanity bag (Jacqueline’s vanity bag!) when she came back to her room for her hat and her coat and Mildred, who was all dressed and waiting. But she couldn’t stop now, not even to open the vanity bag. One must never be late to meals.
Such a hurried breakfast, thrilled with the pleasant sense of a journey to follow! Cousin Penelope was already hatted, with her veil of palest mauve pushed back from her eager face. Sallie, as she waited at table, was all smiles and good cheer. She, too, was happy at the thought of a long holiday. Aunt Eunice’s old cheeks were delicately flushed. Perhaps after all she really needed sea air, as Cousin Penelope so generously had suggested.