Jacqueline had rather expected that the Conways, being poor people, would eat in the kitchen, but she found the table laid in the big square room off the kitchen that looked into both the side-yard and the lilac bushes at the front of the house. It was a shabby room, with faded brown wall-paper and a painted floor. There was a well-worn couch in one corner, a wicker armchair, and a couple of rockers, a sewing machine by the side-window, and a whatnot in the farthest corner, filled with school books and farm papers. The table was spread with a checkered red and white cloth, and the dishes were of three or four different patterns. The silver was plated, and the glasses were thick. But the table was neatly set, Jacqueline realized, and everything was spotlessly clean.
Annie sat in a highchair beside Aunt Martha, and Freddie sat on a hassock placed on a chair at Grandma’s right hand. Jacqueline sat between Grandma and Dickie. It was Aunt Martha, of course, who brought in the supper. Such a supper Jacqueline had never heard tell of—a huge shortcake, made of two layers of biscuit-dough that must have been baked in the grandfather of all drip pans. Luscious red strawberries, crushed to a pulp and mixed with sugar, were between the layers and oozed their richness, as Aunt Martha cut great squares for her hungry family. Besides the shortcake there was milk for the children, and tea in thin white cups, adorned with jocund green dragons, for Grandma and Aunt Martha. That was all the supper.
Jacqueline looked questioningly round her. Was there nothing else to begin with—or to end with? But her cousins (Caroline’s cousins!) were wading into the shortcake, as if it were all that they asked or expected. She took a bite—a large one. Oh, but she found it good!
She looked sidewise at Dickie, and Dickie, with his mouth full, looked at her. She nodded toward the juicy piece of shortcake on the platter that was all ready and waiting for the first child who should ask for a second helping.
“Bet you I’ll beat you to it,” murmured Jacqueline. Instinct told her that invasions of decorum had best not be shouted aloud in Aunt Martha’s presence.
“G’on!” said Dickie softly.
CHAPTER XIII
“CALL ME JACKIE!”
Strawberry shortcake is a bond in common. By the time that supper was over Jacqueline was no longer a stranger to Caroline’s cousins, and when she had shared with them the rather squashy chocolates that still survived in her pockets, they were friends.
“I wish you’d call me Jackie,” she told them. “That’s what they always called me at school.”
“I don’t take much stock in nicknames,” said Aunt Martha. She had such an uncanny way of always being there, although you couldn’t say she snooped.