The Turned-About Girls

by Beulah Marie Dix

And while she whispered the words, Caroline was aware that she meant to stay just as long as ever she could. Any vague scruple of conscience which might have driven her to confess to the deluded Gildersleeves, was now quite done away with. Jacqueline, inventor of the deed, had told her to keep still, and as long as the reward of silence was to live in this wonderful house with a piano, and take lessons from an exceptional Polish lady, she would keep still. She only hoped and prayed that Jacqueline might not find it too terrible with the cows and half-aunt Martha, and so be moved to come at once and claim her rightful place.

CHAPTER X
THE CAPTURE OF A HALF-AUNT

When Caroline walked out of the drawing-room on the train, in the wake of the black porter, you will remember that she left Jacqueline in the patched brown and white gingham (Caroline’s dress!) restrapping the shabby suitcase (Caroline’s suitcase!).

Jacqueline was not in the least flustered. Through the open door of the drawing-room she could see that a stout man with a bag, and several other passengers were making their way toward the open vestibule. She had a couple of minutes to spare. And she fully meant to be the last person to leave the train at Baring Junction. She wasn’t going to cloud the issue and spoil her little plot by having the groups of waiting relatives see two little brown-eyed girls, with bobbed brown hair, descend in a procession from the train.

Jacqueline felt pretty sure—and the event justified her—that when a nicely dressed little girl, with J. G. on her smart suitcase and her hatbox, came timidly down the steps of the car, the Gildersleeve relatives would pounce upon her and bear her away. Then later, when Caroline’s shabby little substitute appeared, she would naturally fall to the share of half-aunt Martha.

So at the latest moment she dared to risk, Jacqueline took the red sweater over her arm and the big suitcase in her hand, and trailed along at the end of the line that was leaving the car. She felt very jubilant, for she loved to play-act—and this was the most perfect piece of play-acting that she had ever invented. She wasn’t in the least afraid for, if she found half-aunt Martha horrid and her house impossible, she would simply go to her Gildersleeve relatives and explain who she was, and ask Caroline to back up her story, and then she would have back her own clothes and her own rightful place, and everything would be just as it was before.

A little hard on Caroline, perhaps, but still, she would be no worse off than she would have been, if she hadn’t met Jacqueline in the first place. At least she would have had the society of the piano—why should any one yearn for a piano?—for several days.

You see, Jacqueline was a selfish little girl, and a thoughtless little girl. But perhaps young Aunt Edith Delane, who now was Edith Knowlton, hadn’t been the wisest of foster-mothers. In some things she had indulged Jacqueline foolishly, and in others she had checked her with equal folly. Jacqueline had had lovely clothes and toys and all manner of semi grown-up pleasures, but she had not been allowed to make friends when and where she pleased, nor do the foolish “rowdy” things, as Aunt Edith called them, that she had seen other children do—such as riding their bicycles through the streets to public school or flying hazardously down hill on rollerskates. Of course Jacqueline had longed to do the very things that she was forbidden to do. And now she could. She was rid of Aunt Edith, and governesses, and teachers, and chaperons. She was just Caroline Tait, and she was going to have the free, untrammeled time of her young life—always with the Gildersleeves to shield her in the background!

Staggering under her suitcase, Jacqueline reached the head of the steps. In the distance she caught just a glimpse of Caroline in the henna-colored frock being hurried off to a tiresome old limousine by a prim-looking lady in a mauve silk sweater. Thank goodness, she wasn’t Caroline! She knew just the sort of dull old poky house they’d take her to.

Then Jacqueline gave her attention to getting herself and the suitcase, with the porter’s help, down the steps of the car. She landed in a little knot of people who were kissing their friends and sorting out their hand-luggage, and she saw a woman hurrying toward her, a solidly-built woman with a weather-beaten face, who wore an old black skirt and a white shirt-waist, and a black straw sailor-hat, a little askew. The woman began to smile as soon as her eyes met Jacqueline’s.