She fairly took the bag from Eleanor’s bewildered hands, and scooped the green bill from its resting place.
“Remember!” she said. “Next week, if you don’t like the beads.”
Then she scrambled to her feet, with the bill clutched in her hand, and before the dazed Eleanor had time to change her mind was off through the short-cut, and speeding toward Miss Crevey’s shop, and Caroline’s gold beads, and relief from all the cares and worries that beset her.
CHAPTER XXXV
ELEANOR JOINS THE PARTY
Half an hour later Jacqueline was trudging stoutly through the powdery dust of the Meadows road. She was hardly conscious of the dust or the heat. She forgot that she was tired, and likely to be tireder before she reached the farm. For safe in her pocket she carried the precious gold beads that were Caroline’s, redeemed from Miss Crevey’s pokerish black drawer. She could chuckle to herself, as she remembered the cold, polite fashion in which she had laid down the five-dollar bill, and asked to have them back, and the chagrin in Miss Crevey’s sallow face as she complied—what else could she do?—and handed them over.
“All’s well that ends well,” Jacqueline told herself happily.
Right at that same hour, five by the clocks of Longmeadow, Eleanor Trowbridge walked into her grandmother’s long parlor, where the eight ladies who had made up the bridge-party were eating macaroon ice-cream and frosted cakes, and talking excitedly of doubles and slams. Eleanor was sniffling, with the very evident desire to attract attention and sympathy.
“Why, darling, what’s the matter?” cried young Mrs. Wheeler Trowbridge, who was Eleanor’s mother.
“Use your handkerchief!” bade Mrs. Enos Trowbridge, who was Eleanor’s grandmother.
“They’re—broken,” whined Eleanor.