The Turned-About Girls

by Beulah Marie Dix

Dr. Graydon in Los Angeles sent Judge Holden a telegram, brimful of dental technicalities, that convinced the Judge (Aunt Martha needed no convincing!) that it was indeed Jacqueline Gildersleeve who had posed all summer as Caroline Tait. So Jacqueline, secure in the thought that two people in Longmeadow knew that she was the little girl she claimed to be, waited at the Conway farm for the coming of Aunt Edith and Uncle Jimmie, who should set her entirely right in the eyes of all the rest of the whispering village. You can easily believe that she was now counting the days until the day, some time in September, when they should come.

Caroline, too, at Monk’s Bay was counting the days, only where Jacqueline told herself joyously: “One day nearer!” Caroline was sighing: “One day less!”

She hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry when Cousin Penelope, in her sudden fashion, told her one afternoon that they were going back to Longmeadow day after to-morrow. Caroline hated to leave the downs, where she had had such walks and shy talks with Cousin Penelope, and the white beach, and the ocean that made music like cathedral organs. But it would be blissful to have a few days more at The Chimnies, to sit with Mildred and Aunt Eunice in the summer house, and play for Cousin Penelope on the singing piano, and sleep in her own lovely room—no, Jacqueline’s room!—before she went away into the Meadows forever.

All the long ride home—no, it wasn’t home to her, as it was to Cousin Penelope and Aunt Eunice!—Caroline sat silent in her corner of the cushioned limousine. She held Mildred in her arms and was sorry for her. Mildred was going to miss the limousine.

Much of the time they drove along country roads, and in the pastures on either side there were cattle grazing, black and white Holstein cows, and Jersey cows, and cows that were just plain old red mooley. When Caroline looked at them, for all that they were only mildly feeding, she held Mildred tighter, and wished that she dared to whisper her not to be afraid, for maybe the cows at half-aunt Martha’s farm were kind cows.

And maybe the Conway cousins weren’t like the fearsome boys they passed on the road: middle-sized boys with air rifles and fishing rods, intent on killing harmless things; big boys, clattering in home-made automobiles; little boys banging on drums and blowing tin trumpets with a racket that split the ears. Oh, boys were terrible beings, noisy, and full of mischief and strange cruelties! Some boys, just for the fun of it, liked to break and rend a little girl’s dolls. Caroline held Mildred very close and almost fancied she could feel her tremble.

“But there’ll be lots of days yet,” Caroline told herself eagerly. “There’ll be ten days at least—maybe twelve—before I have to go to the Meadows.”

It was the middle of the afternoon when they rolled at last, almost as noiseless as a shadow, down the sunlight-checkered street of Longmeadow, and turned in at the iron gate of The Chimnies. How lovely the garden looked, with its rows of gladioli, like lances in rest, its tall sentinel hollyhocks, its masses of gillyflowers, and of bouncing zinnias! The pears were ripening on the trees, and a purple blush was on the plums. Caroline’s tongue unloosed itself, and she was talking fast as she pattered up the porch steps at Aunt Eunice’s side, but Cousin Penelope was moodily silent as she had been, Caroline now remembered, all through the long journey.

Sallie met them, beaming, at the door, and spoke at once of the tea that Hannah had all ready for them. Just a hasty freshening the travelers permitted themselves—time enough for Caroline to make sure that her green and golden room was as perfect as it was the day she left it—and then they were seated round the tea table by the open window in the long parlor that looked upon the garden.

Aunt Eunice poured the tea carefully into the shallow, fragile old china cups, and Sallie fetched in the mahogany curate’s assistant, with a plate of fresh cinnamon toast, a plate of olive and cheese sandwiches, and a plate of small, rich, chocolate cakes with a frosting thick with nut-meats—cakes such as Hannah alone could make.