“It was by the merest chance,” the Judge rubbed it in, “that it wasn’t the town constable who came here after you, instead of me, but luckily some ladies, who know Mrs. Conway here and wanted to spare her as much trouble as possible, heard about the beads, and put the case up to me. That’s why I came to call this morning.”
“I can’t ever thank you enough, Judge,” Aunt Martha said, with a wavering sort of smile.
They followed the Judge out into the sunshine of the side-yard, where the children still were grouped under the shade of the trees where Jacqueline had left them such ages ago, as it seemed to her, when she thought of all that had happened since that moment.
“You understand, Martha,” the Judge said, as he settled himself in his roadster, “the little girl is still technically under suspicion. I’ll suspend judgment about this hocus-pocus, switched identity business, till I hear from that Los Angeles dentist. Meantime she’s remanded to your custody, and I’ll trust you to produce her at my office, if she should be needed.”
My, but that sounded as formal and dreadful as the clatter of prison bolts! Jacqueline shivered, in spite of the heat, and she was glad when she saw the Judge’s car disappear in the white, powdery dust of the highway.
Then Jacqueline turned to Aunt Martha.
“Oh,” she said and once more with weariness and excitement and remorse, she was half-crying. “I sure have got in awful wrong. I never thought, when I started things, there on the train! And now I’ve made you heaps and heaps of trouble, Aunt Martha—and you believed me—and stood up for me like all kinds of a brick—and you’re not my Aunt Martha, either, and oh! I’m sorry that you aren’t.”
Aunt Martha put her arm round Jacqueline’s shoulders.
“You’re a naughty child, Jackie,” she said tremulously, “to go and play such tricks on all of us—a very naughty child. Your folks will probably punish you.” She hugged Jacqueline close. “But I don’t have to, because you’re not my niece—but oh, dear me! don’t I just wish you were!”