Jacqueline smiled—at least she supposed she did. She stretched her lips, and Aunt Edie appeared satisfied, for she kissed her, and urged her to come have a bite of dinner, just to please Aunt Eunice.
“But if you’re going to cry again, never mind, lamb-baba!” she added hastily. “Get your bath and jump into bed, and I’ll come later to tuck you up.”
Then Aunt Edie was gone, and Jacqueline went to the bureau, to get herself a nightdress. She opened the drawers, full of snow-white, hand-made little undergarments, and many-colored socks, fine handkerchiefs and hair-ribbons, little bags and gloves and endless pretties. She shut the drawers noisily, and went to the closet for a kimono. All about her she found hanging little frocks, just as she remembered them, of net and organdie, crêpe and wool, slip-overs and coats, her precious unused riding suit.
For a second she glowed with the joy of having her own possessions once more. She cast a satisfied glance round the pretty room, with its pictures, and knick-knacks of china, its cozy bed, its shaded lights. But this was the room in which Carol had lived, all these weeks, and now Carol was lying in the north chamber at the farm, where the pictures were old and ugly, and the wall-paper covered with crazy rose baskets, upside down. Carol, who so loved pretty things and gentle ways!
All over, and everything all right again? That was what Aunt Edie thought, did she? Much she knew about it!
Jacqueline’s gaze traveled to the bookshelves in the corner, where the light from the desk lamp fell strong. She saw lying on the wide top shelf a fat volume in a gay jacket that was familiar. She launched herself upon it.
“Oh, dumb-paste you!” she cried. “I wish I’d never seen you, you beastly mean old ‘Prince and Pauper’!”
She dashed the book on the floor. She kicked it—yes, she actually kicked it. Then she ran and threw herself recklessly down on the beautifully made bed, and if Carol, in the lonely north chamber, cried to herself that night, Jacqueline, in the green and gold room at The Chimnies, was crying just as hard, and perhaps a little harder.
CHAPTER XLII
PRIDE AND PENELOPE
Aunt Edie and Uncle Jimmie and Jacqueline didn’t leave The Chimnies quite at crack of dawn, but they did really sit down to breakfast at five minutes after seven.