“I’d feel more at home if you called me Jackie,” Jacqueline suggested artfully.
To that plea Aunt Martha yielded, as Jacqueline had guessed she would.
“All right, then—Jackie. Now you can unpack your trunk. That’ll be chore enough for to-night.”
“But after this Jackie can do the dishes,” suggested Neil teazingly, “because she’s a girl.”
“No, sir,” said Aunt Martha promptly, “you can keep right on doing your share of dishes, because you’re a boy.”
Unpacking the trunk was really chore enough, Jacqueline decided, before she was through. To take even a steamer-trunk up the steep stairs that led from the kitchen was impossible. All Caroline’s possessions had to go in armsful (Jacqueline’s arms!) to the room that she was to share with Nellie.
It was a square room—Nellie thought it a large room—with a bricked up fireplace and a narrow white wood mantel, on which were a china dog, with a basket of matches in his mouth, and a little figure of a boy in a short tunic, kneeling at his prayers. On the walls was a paper strewn with baskets of roses. Unfortunately the paper had been hung upside down, which gave the room a somewhat rakish atmosphere. There were only two pictures, an engraving of a dog, after Landseer, and a resigned-looking Evangeline seated beside a grave. The floor was covered with matting, and there were rag rugs over the thinnest places where the boards showed through. The bed was high and old-fashioned, with a chintz valance. The bureau and the washstand were of black walnut, with marble tops. The chairs were of painted wood, with slatted backs.
Jacqueline could claim for her own two drawers of the bureau, and most of the hooks in the shallow closet, and as no one offered to arrange her things for her, she arranged them herself and took a certain pride in doing so. Only there were so few things in Caroline’s battered trunk; socks for summer and stockings for winter, faded and much darned; undergarments, thinned with frequent washing and set with neat patches; skimpy-looking gingham dresses; one dress of wool that had been dyed; a winter coat, with a collar of worn velvet.
“Try on that coat, Jackie,” bade Aunt Martha, as she turned from straining the milk.
Jacqueline tried it on, and felt that she looked indeed the part of poor child. Such a shabby, outgrown little coat it was. Wasn’t she glad that she was only playing at being Caroline?