“Well, Caroline got on the train at Chicago,” Jacqueline told her story in the intense silence, “and she was scared to death about going to the farm, because of the boys and the cows, and no piano—and I didn’t want to go to Great-aunt Eunice’s poky old house—and the two boys in the book changed round—and Caroline and I were both going on eleven, and had brown hair, and nobody in Longmeadow had ever seen either of us—and I thought it would be fun——”
Her voice began to falter, as she sensed the gravity of both her listeners. What she and Caroline had done, she realized now, was dangerous and dreadful. She dropped her eyes, thoroughly ashamed, but though she could not keep the quaver out of her voice, she spoke the words that it was only fair to speak.
“It was mostly me,” she confessed. “Caroline wouldn’t have done it, not even for the piano, but I said she was a quitter, and we changed clothes and things, only she kept Mildred, and when she got off the train at Baring Junction, the Gildersleeves just grabbed her—and I went in the Lizzie with Aunt Martha.”
“Well, I—never!” gasped Aunt Martha. She was amazed, she was a little angry, perhaps. But she wasn’t crying the way she cried when Jacqueline said she had taken the beads. “Did you mean to keep it up all summer, Jackie?”
“No, Aunt Martha,” Jacqueline admitted. “The day I broke the cups, you know, when I went up to the village I was going to change back, but Caroline was having a party next day—they thought she was Jacqueline, you know—and she cried. She’d never had a party nor nothing. So I told her we’d let things go till Aunt Edie came in September, and I wouldn’t have given the show away now, only I couldn’t stand it, Aunt Martha, to have you think—what you thought about me.”
Deplorably Aunt Martha hugged Jacqueline at this point, instead of shaking her, as really Jacqueline deserved to be shaken.
“There now, Judge!” Aunt Martha cried exultantly. “It’s all true, that part about her running off to the village, the day the cups were broken.” The Judge shook his grizzled head, above his finger tips.
“That may be true, Martha, but you’ll admit the rest of the story sounds pretty queer.”
“I don’t care how queer and far-fetched it sounds,” insisted Aunt Martha. “I’d believe any story before I’d believe this child isn’t honest. Why, Judge, whoever she is, she’s been round here with me, going on nine weeks now. I tell you, she couldn’t steal nor lie. ’Tisn’t in her.”
The Judge looked down a moment at his finger tips.