“The box is mine,” snapped Jacqueline. “I can give it away if I want to, can’t I? I’d like to see the Fish stop me.”
Suddenly the hard little termagant softened. She put her arm round Caroline and Mildred.
“Of course your half-aunt will like you,” she said, “and you’ll stay with her, and maybe there’s a piano. Does she live in Boston?”
“No,” answered Caroline, nestling close to her new friend. “She lives on a farm in a place called Longmeadow.”
“Longmeadow?” parroted Jacqueline.
“And I get off at a place called Baring Junction.”
Jacqueline suddenly squeezed Caroline in a hug that really endangered Mildred.
“Can you beat it?” she cried. “I get off at Baring Junction, and I’m going to Longmeadow, just the same as you!”
CHAPTER IV
THE BIG IDEA
The fact that the two little girls were going to the same town was the finishing link in the chain of friendship that they had forged so rapidly. They talked that evening about their schools, and their games, and the books they had read until Miss Fisher and Caroline’s own sense of propriety plucked them apart. In the morning they began where they had left off, while Miss Fisher, who was quite exhausted, after a car-sick night, remained aloof and shook her head in utter helplessness.