The ladies rustled and whispered. Only Mrs. Enos Trowbridge spoke aloud, portentously.
“Some one sold them to my grand-daughter—sold them for a song—and mark my word, the person who was so eager to get rid of them, may know something about the other things that are missing from your house.”
CHAPTER XXXVI
CORNERED
The next day was a scorcher, even as Sallie had foretold, but Jacqueline “flaxed round,” as Grandma called it, and had her baking done by nine o’clock. She found the work mere play, because she was light-hearted. What else should she be, with Caroline’s beads safe upstairs in the old lacquer box, and Great-aunt Eunice coming back the last of this week or the first of next, and everything about to end happily? She was going to have great fun, looking back on this strange summer. As to Caroline—oh, well, Caroline had had the time of her life, and she’d get used to the farm pretty soon. After all, in this world one can’t have everything—which is a comforting reflection, and especially so to those who have a great deal!
Aunt Martha came into the kitchen, about nine o’clock, with her hands all grimy, where she had been working in the garden.
“Just keep an eye on the babies, will you, Jackie?” she said, as she filled the blue enamel basin at the sink. “It’s too hot for them to run about in the sun and Nellie can’t always manage ’em.”
So Jacqueline took the mending basket and went out into the side-yard, where the trees cast a strong shadow, if one had the sense to stay in it, and there was a ripple of wind—hot but at least stirring—which came across the onion fields from the western mountains.
Jacqueline sat in the old weather-beaten hammock, and darned stockings, and sewed on buttons while Nellie and Freddie and Annie played at her feet with two cups that had lost their handles, seventeen spools, and a headless toy horse. Presently, as the sun rose higher and work in the garden grew out of the question, Dickie and Neil came and dropped in the shade, like panting puppies. Dickie had his Boy Scout book; but Neil had nothing to do but whittle with his single-bladed jackknife.
Last of all came Ralph, with the leather strap collar that he wanted to mend for the brown bossy. He sat on the ground, tailor fashion, and punched holes in the stiff leather with a stout awl, and made terrible faces over the work, but Jacqueline knew better than to laugh at him. He was a frightfully serious person, that Ralph.
They were all busy in the shade, with their work or their play, when a dusty roadster came chirring down the road from the village, and of all things, turned in at the Conway farm.