But Caroline at that moment (if you except Jenny, who was buttering hot little tea-biscuits in the kitchen) was the only tranquil person in Cousin Marcia Vintner’s cottage.
In the brown-sheathed living room Cousin Penelope and Aunt Eunice exchanged distressed glances, as soon as Caroline had fled from their presence.
“Penelope!” Aunt Eunice spoke as chidingly as if Cousin Penelope were just a little girl again.
“I can’t help it, Mother,” whispered Penelope. “Jack’s child—the poor little thing—so happy with us—like a different being since she came to us. You can see it yourself.”
“I know,” Aunt Eunice sighed pitifully.
“What right has this Delane woman to take her away from us?” Penelope asked fiercely. “She’s starved her all these years—oh, of course I don’t mean food, though her diet hasn’t been properly regulated, and her teeth are in shocking condition. But I mean the things a child needs more than food—books and pictures and the music that’s more to that little thing than the air she breathes. That Delane woman doesn’t understand her as we do—she doesn’t love her as we do——”
“Hush, hush, Penelope!”
“And the child doesn’t like her——”
“You’ve no right to say that.”
“I’m going to say it, Mother. You’ve seen it yourself. Jacqueline never speaks of California or her mother’s people. She wants to forget them. She’s never written to them in all these weeks. She’s barely glanced at the post-cards that woman has sent—and you saw her just now when she got that letter.”