“This is a bad candy,” she protested. “It ought to be white sugar inside and instead it’s all gooey gum.”
“It’s nice jelly, you goop,” said Jacqueline. “Throw it away, and have another.”
“No!” Aunt Martha struck in. “You can’t waste good candy like that, Nellie. If you don’t like what Caroline gives you, leave it alone. But you can’t have another. Caroline may want to save a piece for each of the boys.”
It seemed to Jacqueline pathetic that mere candy should be so precious.
“Oh, let Nellie find one that she likes,” she pleaded, and added, without thinking: “I’ll get a whole box of candy to-morrow for the boys.”
Aunt Martha smiled rather quizzically.
“Not a box of that sort of candy, Caroline. It must have cost at least a dollar a pound. Does seem sort of wicked to throw money about that way, when times are so hard.”
Aunt Martha spoke seriously, and the gray eyes that she suddenly bent on Jacqueline were very grave, and even stern. Jacqueline suddenly reconsidered her plan to be naughty and get sent to an Institution. There might, she concluded, be unpleasantnesses before she got there. Not of course that she was afraid of Aunt Martha!
“I’ll keep what’s left of the chocolates for the boys,” she said quite meekly. “How many of ’em are there—the boys, I mean, not the chocolates. I’ve kind of forgotten.”
“No wonder, either,” Aunt Martha answered heartily. “You can’t have heard much about your Longmeadow relations. Your mother and I were only connected by marriage, and both of us busy women, so correspondence sort of languished after your father died. Can’t say you favor him in looks. You must take after your mother’s folks.”