As the guest of Hannah and Sallie, she passed through the doorway of her great-aunt’s house, and presently was seated in a rocker by the open window of the big kitchen, with its enameled sink and many cupboards. She slowly sipped the milk that Hannah had poured for her into a thick glass. She didn’t want to hurry. How should she ever drag herself the hot miles home through the Meadows, burdened with the weight of cares that Miss Crevey’s threat had laid upon her?
Other people had their troubles, too, she realized, as she listened to Hannah’s grumbling.
“In one ear and out the other,” Hannah muttered, as she unpacked the basket of groceries that stood on the kitchen table. “Ain’t no use tellin’ folks nothin’ nowadays! I said saleratus, and they’ve went and sent me salt, and there ain’t no bacon, and they’ve forgot the molasses.”
“Where’s my cleaning powder?” sang out Sallie, from the butler’s pantry.
“Ain’t I tellin’ you?” cried Hannah. “They’ve went and left out half the things.”
Sallie bustled out from the pantry and did a little inspecting on her own account.
“No scouring soap—no cleaning powder—and no scrubbing brush, like I ordered and you heard me,” she said crossly. “Well, I can’t do nothing without ’em. I’ll phone and give ’em a piece of my mind, and tell ’em they can just hustle those things over—save ’em trouble if they’d done it in the first place.”
“Lot o’ good ’twill do you to phone the store,” scoffed Hannah. “They won’t send nothin’ over till to-morrow. They’re independent as hogs on ice.
“Then here’s a whole afternoon wasted,” snapped Sallie. “Goodness knows, I won’t walk up to the store and fetch them things in this heat.”
Jacqueline grabbed at opportunity with both hands.