“Why, sure,” said Jacqueline, somewhat hurt, “if you feel it that way.”
Hastily, as she had changed on the train, weeks before, she shed the Peggy Janes and the sneakers, and put her dusty self into her own lawful, rather dusty clothes. While she changed, she let her tongue run on. Somehow she dreaded to have a silence fall in the room where Caroline crouched so white-faced in the big bed.
“You didn’t see my Aunt Edie and my Uncle Jimmie,” Jacqueline questioned, “did you?”
“No,” said Caroline. “I ran right away when I heard they were coming. It’s an awful long way from Longmeadow to the farm.”
“Pretty nice, though, when you get here,” said Jacqueline, as she wriggled into her own sand-colored silk socks.
Caroline drew a quivering breath.
“This is a bigger room than at Cousin Delia’s,” she said. “Nellie and I will have it together, Aunt Martha told me. I haven’t seen Nellie, but the babies are real cunning. I know I shall love them. Aunt Martha’s going to make me a winter coat out of an ulster of hers, and dye it blue. It’s cold here winters—and there’ll be lots of chances to slide—and there’s a pond where Ralph will teach me to skate. Aunt Martha’s awful good.”
“I’ll say she is,” assented Jacqueline, as she thrust herself into the slip-over. “Crazy elephants! I’ve gone and grown this summer.”
She stepped to the wavery looking-glass, and grinned at her own sunbrowned reflection. From the mirror her glance traveled to the window close by—the window that looked out on the road—and at sight of what was passing on the road, she gave a whoop that made Caroline sit up.
“Oh, jumping skeeters! It’s my Uncle Jimmie—and the Judge! They’ve come—they’ve really come! I’ve got to go.”