“If that bawl-baby says I cheated her, it isn’t so,” she cried. “I gave her some gold beads, and they’re worth more than her nasty old five dollars.”
In the second that followed Jacqueline heard Aunt Martha draw a quick breath. But she couldn’t turn to look at her. She was watching the Judge, and wondering why he should put his hand into the pocket of his coat.
“I’m glad you told us this, Caroline,” he said. “You see, the little girl told her mother, and her mother told me all about it. Are these the beads you gave her for five dollars?”
It was the identical yellow strand—her own beads—that he drew from the pocket of his dusty gray coat. Jacqueline cast one careless glance at them.
“Sure,” she said.
The Judge’s voice was patient, and quite gentle:
“Where did you get them, Caroline?”
Jacqueline looked from the Judge to Aunt Martha, and caught Aunt Martha’s bloodless lips shaping the one word: “Found——”
“Martha, if you please!” the Judge fairly thundered.
“Well, I did find them, so there!” cried Jacqueline. “And you needn’t yell at Aunt Martha, even if you are a judge. They were in the china box in the bedroom next to the bathroom at the Gildersleeves’, you know, and I took them——”