“Not before September,” said Jacqueline cheerily, “and by that time summer will be over, and we’ll have had our fun. Think of the piano!”
“Oh, I don’t know what to do!” wailed Caroline. She was a shivering little figure, barelegged, in her underclothes, with her soiled and mussed checked gingham in a heap at her feet.
“Now you do as I tell you,” counseled Jacqueline in her most masterful manner. “Why, Caroline, it’s nothing but a joke, and just the minute you want to, we’ll change back. Be a good sport now! Come on!” When Jacqueline smiled she was irresistible. She smiled now. Caroline wavered.
“If you don’t,” said Jacqueline sweetly, “you’re a quitter, and I’ll never speak to you again.”
To lose Jacqueline, the one friend she had in this new world into which she was being cast, was more than Caroline could bear.
“I’m not a quitter,” she vowed. “I’ll show you. Wait till I get out some clothes.”
The big shabby much-traveled suitcase that was Caroline’s, and the smart black leather case that was Jacqueline’s, alike held fresh changes of clothes. In these the little girls dressed themselves from the skin out. Caroline gasped a little at the silk socks, the delicate undergarments, the knickers and the frock of henna-colored crêpe in which she rather guiltily encased herself. Jacqueline tumbled gleefully into cotton socks, much-mended plain cotton underwear, and a fresh frock of brown and white gingham, with a big patch in the back breadth.
“I’m bigger than you,” she chuckled. “These clothes look awful skimpy on me. I’ll tell your half-aunt that I shot up last winter. I did really, so it isn’t a fib.”
“Your clothes look—nice on me,” said Caroline, as she caught a glimpse in the mirror of the strange child into which she had turned herself. “They fit me.”
“That’s because they’re short for me,” Jacqueline told her. “Aunt Edie has ’em made that way—it’s the smartest thing, this year. She’d think you looked dowdy with your skirt way down to your knees, but probably Great-aunt Eunice won’t mind.”