There were only four shops on Longmeadow Street. They stood in the very center of the village, in the shadow of the Orthodox church, and just across the street from the little inn. There was a general store, and the Post Office, where you bought hardware and sundries, and a meat market, which was open only twice a week, and Miss Crevey’s little shop, where you could buy talcum and tape, peppermints and pins, and altogether the funniest mixture of drygoods and druggist’s supplies, confectionery and notions that ever was seen outside the shop that the old sheep kept in the Looking Glass Country.
“Eighty cotton and sixty cotton,” said Cousin Penelope, as she and Caroline, in their cool pretty frocks, stepped out of the limousine. “I’ll get a cube of black pins, too, and some laces for my walking shoes. One ought to encourage the little local shops—they’re a great convenience.”
Caroline smiled, but not at Cousin Penelope’s words. She was smiling at the world. Because she had on a party frock, and was going home to dinner with dear Aunt Eunice, and she was a pupil of Woleski’s.
Smilingly, Caroline tripped up the steps at Cousin Penelope’s side, and into the little crowded shop, and then the smile left her face just the way figures leave a slate when you draw a wet sponge across it. For she saw two children standing at the counter, where the cheap candies were displayed. One was a boy in old knickers and a shabby shirt, the other was a girl in faded Peggy Janes, and Caroline had recognized those Peggy Janes and knew what was coming, even before the girl turned her bobbed brown head and showed the face of Jacqueline Gildersleeve.
CHAPTER XV
TWO PENNIES TO SPEND
Jacqueline waked early on her first morning at the Conway farm. With a rooster crowing under your window, you need no alarm clock, and with a cozy six-year-old at your side, inclined to snuggle on a warm morning, you have no inducements to lie abed.
So Jacqueline jumped up and dressed herself. She put on the Peggy Janes that she had marked with approval the night before, and she slipped her bare feet into Caroline’s old sneakers. She washed her face and hands at the marble-topped washstand. The washbasin had a green landscape in the bottom, very pleasant to look at through the clear water, but the pitcher belonged to a different set and was ornamented with purple bands.
Nellie chattered in a lively manner all through the hasty dressing process, mostly about some new kittens and a rooster named General Pershing. She dressed herself very handily, but she didn’t scorn Jacqueline’s help when it came to the back buttons of her underwaist and overalls.
Early as the children were, they found, when they climbed down the funny steep stairs into the kitchen, that Grandma and Aunt Martha and the babies were up before them.
“That’s a nice rig for the country, Jackie,” Aunt Martha said approvingly, as she spied the Peggy Janes. “I’m glad you didn’t bring any starched up city notions to the farm. There’s time and place for everything, of course,” she added tolerantly, “but high heeled shoes and frilly dresses don’t go with the soil.”