But before to-morrow night, somehow, she herself must find the way out. How, she wondered desperately, how? And while she wondered, she had walked southward, like one in a daze, down Longmeadow Street, and now, when she came to herself, she realized that she was at the very gate of The Chimnies. She paused and looked through the iron grill work, and then, as if in answer to her un-worded prayer for help, she saw that the shutters were open, and the windows flung wide, and life at last, and hope for her, had come into the silent house again.
CHAPTER XXXIII
IN THE HOUSE OF HER KINSFOLK
Jacqueline fairly ran up the steps to the porch of The Chimnies. She was laughing in queer little gasps which were very much like sobs. Oh, but this was too good to believe! Right in the nick of time, when she had to have help, and didn’t know where on earth to find it!
Rat-tat-tat, the knocker clanged gayly under her hand. There were some bad minutes of explanation ahead, perhaps, but like a session at the dentist’s, they would be over some time and she would run back with the money to that hateful shop, where after to-day she would never set foot again. She would thrust the money into Miss Crevey’s claws and get back the beads. She would say something polite, but oh! so cutting to Miss Crevey, and——
The door opened before her into the dim hall with its white paint, and gilt-framed mirrors, and its staircase curving upward into cool distance. On the threshold stood Sallie (only Jacqueline didn’t know it was Sallie!) in a blue gingham dress, with her sleeves tucked up.
“Well, what is it?” asked Sallie brusquely. She didn’t waste her company voice and manners on a little girl in Peggy Janes and trodden sneakers, with an armful of packages done up in brown paper.
“I want to see Car—I mean Jacqueline,” the real Jacqueline corrected herself just in time. “The little girl that lives here.”
“She ain’t here now,” Sallie answered, with a carelessness that seemed to poor Jacqueline downright brutal. “She’s off to the beach.”
“But you’re here!” Jacqueline cried despairingly.
“Nobody said I wasn’t,” retorted Sallie. “Me and Hannah Means got here to-day, to open up the house, but the folks won’t be here till last of this week or maybe first of next.”