He meant it, too. Jacqueline looked at him in wonder. She counted her spending money usually, when she troubled herself to count it at all, in dimes and quarters, never in copper pennies.
They went into Miss Crevey’s shop. A funny little shop Jacqueline thought it, and she thought Miss Crevey with her false front, and her ill-fitted false teeth, and her alpaca sleeves, was like a character in a story book. They got the toothbrush readily enough—that part of the shopping was simple and uninteresting. But to spend the precious two pennies was different. There was such a choice of things for a penny—a tiny glass measure of hard red and white candies—or a stick of gum—or two large white peppermints—or a stick of striped candy. Jacqueline wanted the gum very much, for at home she had never been allowed to chew it. But Neil, she could see, hungered for a dreadful confection of molasses, imperfectly covered with chocolate.
“We’ll get both,” suggested Jacqueline.
“Well—you see——” Neil hesitated. “If we get all those little jiggers for a penny, we’ll have something to take home to the kids.”
Jacqueline looked at him and slowly reddened. She hadn’t thought of the kids. Indeed she had thought two pennies hardly big enough to divide between two children, let alone five. But Neil had thought of the younger ones.
“We’ll have that chocolate stick, please,” Jacqueline told Miss Crevey with sudden generous resolve, “and a glass dingus of the little jigs. After all, I don’t care for gum.”
And just as she said the words, she heard the door creak open behind her and she turned her head. There on the threshold stood a prim lady in a white summer frock, and with her a little girl in a posy-strewn muslin (Jacqueline’s muslin!) who looked as scared as if she had seen a ghost, and the little girl, of course, was Caroline!
CHAPTER XVI
A FAIR ENCOUNTER
For poor little Caroline the moment was tragic.
Quite sincerely she expected Jacqueline to step up to her and say in a loud voice: