Your most affectionate
Jackie Gildersleeve.”
“My land!” said Aunt Martha, when she had finished and found her breath. “They shouldn’t have let her—big presents like that—and I ought not to let you children——”
“Has my doll real hair that I can brush?” Nellie interrupted, with shining eyes.
“A red silk gown with long-tailed birds on it!” Grandma shook with laughter. “I’ll look like the Queen of Sheba. Lord bless the child! At my time o’ life!”
She peered into her box of sweets, and chose herself a plump sugary gum-drop.
“I’m going to let you take ’em, just the same,” said Aunt Martha, with decision. “There’s no sense in standing on your pride to the hurt of other folks’ feelings when it’s kindly meant and the things a real Godsend. She must have taken a lot of thought and time—and that’s more than money!—picking out presents for all of us, and just when she’d be full of her own plans and pleasures, too! She’s a dear, good child.” Aunt Martha blew her nose quite savagely. “Only you don’t need to go imitating all her qualities, remember!”
“She’s a crackerjack.” Neil spoke as well as he could with his mouth full of caramels.
“Now put up that candy, every one of you, till morning!” Aunt Martha tucked away her handkerchief and was her brisk self again. “I can’t have you all sick on my hands. And put Caroline’s box to one side. It’s hers and must go to her, whether she’s here or at the Gildersleeves.”
But what was a box of chocolates to Caroline in that hour? The limousine had rolled up to the porch, down which she had stumbled in heart-broken flight, not a week before. She stood again in the dim spacious hall, with its gleam of gilt-framed mirrors and its tall, flaming gladioli in dull green jars. She had gone up the stairs into the room with the pale gray furniture, the fairy-tale pictures, the canary shapes that glittered amid the green.