“Your uncle and aunt,” Cousin Penelope spoke in a crisp voice, “are motoring up from Connecticut. They’ve just written that they’ll be with us—late this afternoon.”
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE END OF A JOURNEY
Aunt Eunice said she would lie down for a bit before dinner. Really she felt the need of rest after the long ride from Monk’s Bay. Cousin Penelope approved, but said that she would go herself to call on Madame Woleski. Would Jacqueline come with her?
Caroline shook her head. Please, she would like to rest, too, before dinner. She was tired out. And that last was no fib. She seemed to herself to be tired clear through to her very soul.
Up in the airy green and gold chamber that was Jacqueline’s, Caroline sat down in the low rocker, and wondered why the tears didn’t come. Tears would have brought relief but she couldn’t wait for them. She had no time to waste, for she was going to be out of that house before Cousin Penelope came back. No doubt she was a coward and a quitter, just as Jackie had called her, for she couldn’t—she simply couldn’t—face the awful, unknown uncle and aunt that didn’t belong to her, and even less could she face the amazement in Aunt Eunice’s kind eyes, and the anger in Cousin Penelope’s.
Of course, though, she must leave a word, so that they need not worry when they found her gone. She sat down at the pretty desk with the brass fittings that she had so longed to use, and for the first and only time she wrote a letter on the creamy thick paper with “The Chimnies, Longmeadow, Massachusetts” engraved upon it. This was the letter:
Dear Mrs. Gildersleeve:
I can’t say Aunt Eunice because you are not my aunt, and I am very sorry. And I have not hurt Jackie’s things, only holes in some of the sox and the clasp of the gold beads is broken. I am sorry about the dentist’s bill and the music lessons. I should not have let you but there are cows at the farm and so many babies at Cousin Delia’s. I am taking Mildred’s clothes you made because Jackie doesn’t like dolls and maybe they wouldn’t fit hers anyway and the satin box she gave me herself. I will send back Jackie’s clothes I have on and I am sorry.
Affectionately yours,
Caroline Tait, which is my name.