Up the stairs she went, while Jacqueline stood pawing with impatience.
“Better sit down,” boomed Hannah, from the step-ladder. “You must be plumb tuckered out.”
“I can’t,” said Jacqueline. “I’m in an awful hurry.”
She gathered up her brown paper parcels, with nervous, eager fingers. Why didn’t Sallie hurry back? Could it be that she—suspected something? Oh, blithering kangaroos! She didn’t want explanations now, and with Sallie, of all people.
But explanations were not needed. Down came Sallie in due season, with nothing worse to grumble over than the misery in her back.
“You ain’t done such a bad job,” she conceded, as she doled two dimes and a nickel into Jacqueline’s hard little palm. “Say, don’t you want to come round again to-morrow?”
“Oh, no, thanks,” Jacqueline answered carelessly. “I’ve got all I can do at home.”
“I told you so,” chuckled Hannah. “Money enough for the circus, and then she quits.”
Jacqueline barely heard her. Over her shoulder she called good-by, and in two jumps she was out at the back door, and down the steps. Almost running, she hurried across the garden toward the short-cut that would bring her most quickly into Longmeadow Street. She was heading for Miss Crevey’s shop, and in the pocket of her Peggy Janes was a string of gold beads.
Of course she had a perfect right to them, for they were her very own. She would give them in exchange for Caroline’s beads, and so the green-dragon cup would be safe, and Caroline’s beads would be safe, and Miss Crevey would have more than the five dollars that had been promised her. For Jacqueline’s beads were worth ten dollars. She knew, for she had bought them herself, Christmas before last, with the check that her mother’s cousin had sent her from Honolulu.