“How do you do, Mrs. Conway,” she began.
“Guess you’d better say Grandma, and have it over with,” the old lady said, and kissed her. “My, but you’re a fine big girl for ten years old—not a bit spindle-legged like some city children. You come right in now and wash up while they’re getting the things out of the car. I got some water hot on the oil stove.”
At Grandma’s side, with Freddie peeping at her round Grandma’s skirts, Jacqueline went into the kitchen of the old Conway house. It was a long room, with many-paneled doors, and windows set with little lights of glass. On the well-scoured floor were mats of braided rags. At one side a huge fireplace had been bricked up, and projecting from what had been its hearth, stood a big cookstove, ornamented with polished nickel, which was quite cold. At the other side of the room, between the windows, was an iron sink with two pumps, and near it a big three-burner oil stove, on which a kettle gently simmered.
“Hard water in the right-hand pump,” Grandma rapidly explained to Jacqueline. “Cistern water in the left-hand. Cistern water is good for the complexion—but that will interest you more a few years later. There’s the hand basin—don’t ever take the tin one—it’s for the vegetables. Don’t touch that yellow soap—leave it for the dishes and such like. Here’s the white soap for your hands, and you’ll find the clean roller towel on the closet door.”
Why, this was roughing it, thought Jacqueline. She had known nothing like it since she went camping in the Yosemite. She washed her face and hands in a blue enamel basin, with a white lining—soft water from the left-hand pump, warm water from the kettle.
“Don’t waste none of it!” warned Grandma. “Martha and Nellie and the boys will want a lick before supper.”
She dried her face and hands on the clean, coarse roller towel, and then with great bumping and thumping her trunk (Caroline’s trunk!) was brought into the kitchen, and she met Caroline’s cousins, who had served as baggage smashers. Of course she knew them at once from their mother’s description. The tallest one, with the direct gray eyes like Aunt Martha’s and the cowlick, was Ralph, and the thin brown one with the big mouth was Dickie, and the red-head who grinned at her engagingly was Neil. Ralph wore long pants and shirt of khaki and heavy shoes and stockings, but Dickie and Neil were barelegged in sneakers, and their old shirts and knickers, like their hands, might have been cleaner. But they looked nice boys, and even if they hadn’t been, Jacqueline wasn’t in the least afraid of boys.
She shook hands all round, and then Nellie wished her to look at Annie, the wonderful baby. Off the kitchen was a little bedroom, which had been Grandma’s for years and years, and here in a little crib beside Grandma’s bed with its white dimity cover, sat Annie. She was a blue-eyed, serious person, in faded pink rompers, and she divided her attention between a string of empty spools and her own toes. Jacqueline felt sorry for her. Poor baby, with so little to play with! She sat down beside her and dangled the spools before her eyes. Then the serious Annie suddenly gurgled and clutched at them and clapped her hands and laughed, with adorable dimplings. She was more fun than a kitten. No, she wasn’t like a kitten. With her firm little body she was much more like a wriggling, happy, affectionate small puppy.
“Bring her along, Caroline,” called Grandma, from the kitchen. “Supper’s ready.”
Jacqueline didn’t know much about babies, but she wouldn’t admit her ignorance, especially before Nellie. She picked Annie up in her arms, and holding her tight—for to drop her would be more dreadful even than to drop a puppy—she followed Nellie to the supper table.