She caught up the leghorn hat. She was Jacqueline herself again, just as if the summer masquerade had never happened.
As if it had never happened—and Caroline’s black-smudged eyes fairly stabbing Jacqueline with their woefulness!
Jacqueline swooped down on the bed, and threw her arms round Caroline, and kissed her tumultuously.
“Don’t you care!” she said. “Think of the fun you had—and we’ll have some great times together yet. I’ll come back to-morrow—and you’ll come and see me at Aunt Eunice’s.”
Caroline said nothing, but it was only afterward that Jacqueline remembered that she had been silent. Jacqueline gave her a last hug—she couldn’t linger, with Uncle Jimmie at the door—and then she galloped down the narrow stair into the kitchen.
Aunt Martha was there, and Freddie, in his little Teddie sleeping suit. Nellie was minding him, and Nellie’s eyes were round with amazement.
“I was just going to call you,” said Aunt Martha. “They won’t come in—they’re in an awful hurry. Say good-by to Grandma. I’ve sort of prepared her.”
Jacqueline went quickly and quietly into the parlor that still was Grandma’s room. Grandma sat in her worn old wrapper in the big wooden rocker. An oil lamp burned on the table beside her and her knitting rested on her knees. Thank goodness, she often said, she could at least knit again. She didn’t have to sit round any longer like a bump on a log!
Grandma turned her head and looked at Jacqueline, and suddenly Jacqueline felt lumpy in the throat, and teary round the lashes. It wasn’t funny at all, what she had done and put Caroline up to doing. And she wasn’t going to enjoy this hour a little bit, even if she got a hundred rises out of stuck-up Cousin Penelope.
“So you ain’t our Jackie, after all,” said Grandma, in the trembly voice that was hers since her illness.