“Oh, Jackie!” Caroline turned wildly to her friend, like a frightened kitten that doesn’t know which way to run.
“Wipe your eyes, kid, and don’t weaken!” bade Jacqueline stoutly. “Porter, take the books, too—her hands are full. Beat it now, Carol! Ask for Mrs. Eunice Gildersleeve and don’t forget there’s sure to be a piano!”
CHAPTER VI
CLAIMED AND CALLED FOR
In the wake of the grinning black porter, Caroline stumbled out of the drawing-room. She had only a few steps to take through the narrow passage to the vestibule, and in those few steps she hadn’t time enough to reconsider, and call up her courage and run back to Jacqueline, with a refusal to go on with this naughty deception. She had time only to feel, in Jacqueline’s finery, like the poor little old woman in the nursery-song:
Lawkamussy on me,
This can’t be I!
Then she stood in the swaying, cinder-powdered vestibule. Through the open door she saw the dark red walls of a country station creeping by and people hurrying to be alongside the steps when the car should stop. Strange people—hundreds of people, they seemed to her. Oh, she wanted her half-aunt—she even wanted the cows! Jacqueline’s Great-aunt Eunice would be terrible. She would know at once that Caroline was a little fraud. She would send her away to an Institution.
But now there was no turning back. The train had stopped. The porter had leaped nimbly off. A stout man in the vestibule behind Caroline was bumping her silken calves with his heavy bag, and fuming at her for blocking the way. Caroline clutched Mildred tight to the bosom of Jacqueline’s henna-colored frock, and scrambled down the steep steps of the car. She was glad that the porter steadied her with a hand on her arm. She felt so sick and dizzy that she could scarcely see.
A tall lady was beside her instantly. In the strong sunlight of the station platform, so different from the stuffy dusk of the train, Caroline could not make out her features but she had an impression of white clothes and she caught the scent of violets.
“This is Jacqueline, isn’t it?” the lady said, in a clear, low voice.