Caroline nodded, blinking between tears and sun-blindness.
“You’re Great-aunt Eunice?” she faltered.
“No, my dear,” said the low voice, with a ripple of laughter in it. “She’s waiting over there in the car. Bring along her things, Frank. Come quickly, Jacqueline! Let’s get out of this frightful press.”
The stout man had bumped the lady with his clumsy bag, and his gruff “Beg pardon!” did not seem in the least to mollify her. She put her gloved hand on Caroline’s shoulder and hurried her away across the wide platform, with its pillared red roof.
In the shade of the elm trees at the other side of the platform a stately limousine was parked among humbler touring cars and sedans. A stout elderly lady looked eagerly from the window.
One desperate glance Caroline cast behind her. She saw a self-assured small figure, in a scant brown and white gingham dress, propel itself down the car steps, behind a big shabby suitcase. She saw a squarely-built woman in an old straw hat hurrying toward the car steps, and she saw the little figure cast itself into her arms. Jacqueline had taken possession of half-aunt Martha.
Caroline had no chance to see more, for now she was at the side of the limousine.
“Mother, here’s Jacqueline,” said the lady in white, who was evidently Jacqueline’s Cousin Penelope. “This is Aunt Eunice, Jacqueline.”
The old lady, who wore gray clothes and had pretty white hair, nodded and smiled at Caroline from her cozy seat. But Caroline, all confusion and on the verge of tears, had no time to greet her, for Cousin Penelope asked just then for the trunk-check.
“It’s here—in my bag,” quavered Caroline, as she struggled with the unfamiliar clasp of Jacqueline’s vanity bag.