“It’s nice to see a little girl that loves dolls,” she said. “Not many of them do, nowadays.”
She smiled at Caroline, and Caroline, looking up at her, smiled back. It didn’t matter whether she were Jacqueline or Caroline—she knew that she was going to like Aunt Eunice.
CHAPTER VII
LIKE A DREAM
Smoothly and softly the limousine glided out from among the brick buildings of Baring Junction—not a great many of them!—and along a country road which was edged sometimes with a rail fence, and sometimes with a stone wall, but always with a green wayside growth of blackberry and elderbush, alder, and in the low places, young shoots of willow. Pastures slipped by the windows of the car, and farm-yards, and meadows. Once they drove slowly over a wooden bridge, with a roof and sides that made a tunnel where their wheels echoed in a rumbling, hollow fashion; and Caroline wondered if Mildred were afraid.
Then they came to a wide street, with green lawns between the sidewalk and the road, and elms that almost met above them. The street was bordered with big comfortable houses, white or cream or red, which were set well apart in lawns and gardens, unlike the cramped suburban houses to which Caroline was accustomed.
“This is Longmeadow Street, dear,” explained Aunt Eunice. “That brick house with the horse-chestnut trees before it, is the John Gildersleeve place, where your father was born, and his father before him. And here’s the William Gildersleeve place—our place—and we’ve got home.”
A smooth white driveway carried them behind a tall hedge of box. The color and fragrance of an old-fashioned garden were on the left hand, and on the right a plushy green lawn, and a white house, very square and big and substantial, with windows set with many panes of glass.
“It’s such an e-normous house,” thought Caroline, in a panic.
Would there be a butler? In the motion pictures to which Cousin Delia had sometimes taken Caroline, there were often butlers, and they were always very proud and fat. And would she find a lot of knives and forks at her place at table and not know which one to use first? And would she be found out at once and sent away in disgrace? She hoped not—at least not until to-morrow! She couldn’t stand it to meet any more new people today, now that she had found Aunt Eunice so kind.
They went from the porch through a wide doorway with a paneled door and a big brass knocker, into a long hall with a curving staircase. The dark floor was as shiny as glass, and the white paint of the woodwork was as dazzling as snow. The furniture was of dark wood, with red winey gleams beneath its polished surface.