“Yes. She looked pretty well done out, poor young one. I just took time to call up the Judge and ask him to step right over to your Aunt Eunice’s, and tell her the whole story and how both you children were here at the farm, waiting for them to send and get the one that really belongs to them. Then I packed Caroline off to bed. She’s in your old room. Better kite upstairs and speak to her. You may not have much time.”
That was all Aunt Martha said. Matter of fact like that, and scrubbing Freddie’s neck while she talked, so vigorously that he began to whine! Jacqueline herself had no choice but to take matters calmly, though she felt this to be a most exciting hour of her life. What would she say, that horrid old Cousin Penelope, when she found the little girl she had snubbed was really her cousin’s child? Jacqueline chuckled a little to herself, as she scampered up the narrow stairs to the north chamber.
In the big bed in the corner Caroline rose on one elbow and looked at her—a white-faced Caroline with dark smudges under her eyes. She was wearing one of the scant, thin little gowns that Jacqueline had worn all summer, and she held Mildred in her tiny be-trimmed nightdress, close against her breast.
“Hello, Carol!” said Jacqueline. But her voice didn’t sound so jaunty as she meant it to.
“Oh, Jackie!” Caroline cried at sight of her. “Did Aunt Martha tell you?”
“Sure,” answered Jacqueline, and sat down in her dusty Peggy Janes, upon the edge of the bed.
“She’s awful good,” said Caroline, in a wavering voice. “She said not to worry about the cows—the boys look after them. And she wanted me to eat some supper but I couldn’t. She didn’t scold, not one bit. Oh, Jackie, I’m afraid Cousin Penelope will scold you—dreadfully.”
“I should worry,” said Jacqueline.
Caroline looked at her for a moment with all the old admiration, and then she shook her head woefully.
“We shouldn’t have done it, Jackie—it was an awful thing to do.”