“It will always be your room now, dear,” said Aunt Eunice, and patted Caroline’s hand that she had kept fast in hers, ever since they found each other at the farm.
Cousin Penelope pulled open a drawer of the bureau. She took out things while Aunt Eunice gasped, as amazed and as delighted, too, as Caroline herself. There were white frilly underthings for a little girl of eleven, and socks of black silk, and shoes of black patent leather, with buckled straps. There was a frock of fine brown and white checked gingham, with flame-colored silk stitchings on the belt and cuffs and collar, and a little chemisette of sheer white lawn.
“I got these in the city,” said Cousin Penelope, smiling and unashamed. “I was going to send them to you, Carol, as a present for Sunday wear. There’s a little coat, too, in the closet and a fall hat. To-morrow we’ll go to the city, and get you more things, and we’ll go to the dentist’s, too, and Madame Woleski will take you for a lesson the last of the week.”
And when the sun went down on that Saturday night, in great splashes of color into the sea, Jacqueline was a happy little girl, as she stood with feet firmly apart on the deck of the great ocean liner, at her Uncle Jimmie’s side, with new sights and new experiences in a new world before her. But she was not half so happy as was Caroline, all clean and fresh in clothes that were her very own, not Jacqueline’s, as she sat at the table in the softly lighted dining room at The Chimnies and beamed at Aunt Eunice and Cousin Penelope. For Caroline was telling herself:
“They want me—really me myself—not Jackie. I’m theirs—and they love me, but oh! not more than I love them, and will love them all my days.”
But if you’ll believe it, Cousin Penelope was as happy as anybody. For she had changed back to her old place at the table, and she looked straight at Great-aunt Joanna’s portrait. Blood will tell—once more she said it defiantly! Weren’t the Taits and Conways and Gildersleeves and Holdens, all those sturdy pioneers who were her forbears, just as much the forbears of little Caroline?
“Do you know, Mother,” said Cousin Penelope serenely, “Caroline really looks very much like Great-aunt Joanna?”
Caroline twisted round in her seat. She didn’t feel afraid to look at Great-aunt Joanna, now that she wasn’t pretending to be her great-grandniece.
“She looks fiercely proud, doesn’t she, Cousin Penelope?” she said.
Cousin Penelope laughed. They were all three very quick to laugh that evening, perhaps because they could as easily have cried.