“Remember what day it was she got here, Martha?” he asked unexpectedly.
“Yes, Judge. The twenty-third of June. Her mother’s cousin wrote me the day and train I was to expect her, and ’twas the same day I had a bill to pay in Baring.”
“Hm!” said the Judge. “Yes, that was the day that Mrs. Gildersleeve’s little grandniece arrived from California. I remember because Mrs. Gildersleeve declined an invitation to dine with us that night—on my birthday. She’d counted a lot on seeing that child. The two girls came on the same train from Chicago, that much is sure. And you’d never seen this little niece of yours?”
“Judge, I wouldn’t have known her from a hole in the ground.”
“Did you ever notice anything in her behavior different from what you would naturally have expected in your brother’s child? I know you want to believe her story, Martha, but I trust you to be careful and exact.”
“Yes, there were some queer things, now I come to think of it,” Aunt Martha spoke eagerly, with her arms still round Jacqueline. “Why, Judge, this child didn’t know the look of her own trunk, nor where to find her trunk-key. I thought ’twas just because she was upset with the journey, but I see now how it came about. She had a pocketful of real expensive candy—she said it was given her by a little girl on the train.”
“I said a little girl on the train had a boxful,” murmured Jacqueline. “And the little girl was me!”
“And she hadn’t one single idea about the value of money,” Aunt Martha went on joyfully. “I thought ’twas just because they’d brought her up foolishly, but of course the Gildersleeves don’t have to count their pennies. Then she didn’t know how to do one blessed thing about the house, but she took hold nicely, and she’s been a real help to me all summer. Why, Judge,” Aunt Martha cried in sudden dismay, “if she’s Jacqueline Gildersleeve, she’ll be leaving us, and I don’t know how I’ll ever get along without her.”
Jacqueline hadn’t thought of that, when she planned her merry trick, there on the train. She was going to hurt Aunt Martha—Aunt Martha, who believed in her and stood up for her to the Judge. She began to sniffle, not for temper this time, and buried her face in Aunt Martha’s coarse, clean handkerchief.
“I didn’t think—’twould be like this,” she sobbed.