“Well, say it—say it!” Penelope cried, in a breaking voice. “Isn’t it what I’m saying to myself? If it hadn’t been for my pride, years ago—if I’d taken back some silly words I never meant—Jack would have stayed in Longmeadow—Jack would have married me.”
“Penelope—my baby!” Aunt Eunice cried the words in amazement and in pity.
“Didn’t you know—didn’t you ever guess?” Penelope’s voice was no more than a whisper. “That was why he went. I drove away the only man I loved—and if I could do that—for pride, and nothing else—I can put this wretched child out of my heart—and I’ll do it, I tell you, I’ll do it, even if it kills me!”
CHAPTER XLIII
IN THE MEADOWS
Caroline, all unaided, had baked a “toad in the hole” for dinner. Do you know what “toad in the hole” is? Scraps of meat baked in a deep dish, in a kind of custard batter. Caroline had learned from Cousin Delia how to make it. She was remembering now all sorts of things she had forgotten since she left Cousin Delia—all the things she had let herself forget at The Chimnies. She and Nellie had washed the dinner dishes, and then Caroline had scrubbed the kitchen floor and polished the stove, as a surprise for Aunt Martha. She did so want to show Aunt Martha that she could be as helpful as Jackie, even if she was a “scare batty” (as Neil called her) in regard to cows.
Now Caroline, in her Peggy Janes and sneakers, which Jacqueline had run down at the heels very badly, was out in the barn with Nellie and the babies. Nellie had brought along her cloth doll, a lumpy creature named Gertrude, and Caroline was making it a dress, out of some pieces of calico that Grandma had unearthed from her scrap-bag.
Mildred looked on in a stately, rather disapproving manner. Mildred wore a little dress of ruffled dimity, pink with a fine white stripe, and a pink sunbonnet. All Mildred’s silks and satins, which Aunt Eunice and Caroline had made in the summer house for Mildred to wear in foreign climes, were packed away in the satin box in the bureau drawer in the north chamber. Caroline had cried a little as she laid them away. She didn’t mean to look at them again for a long time—not till she was able to forget that life at The Chimnies had been real—not till she was able to think of it, as she hoped to think of it some day, as a lovely dream that she should always cherish.
The sunlight came through the big rear door of the barn, and crept farther and farther into the dusk that smelled of cows and new hay, as the sun moved nearer to the western hills. “To-night it is Saturday night,” Caroline remembered the first line of a little child-song that her mother sometimes used to sing to her. To-morrow would be Sunday, and then her second week at the farm would begin, and after it weeks and weeks, and months, and years would follow.
“But there’ll be lots of chances to slide,” Caroline kept repeating to herself, “and Ralph will teach me how to skate—he said so himself! And Grandma is going to show me how to knit. Maybe I can knit things for Christmas presents. If only I could crochet a sweater for poor Gertrude, like the one Muzzy made for Mildred.”
“Look-it! Look-it!” Freddie cried suddenly, and Nellie, all excited, raised her voice at the same moment: “It’s an automobile, comin’ into our yard—it’s a limousine!”