“I am Jacqueline, and you are Caroline. Take off that dress of mine, and go away with this horrid little staring red-haired boy. I shall go home with Cousin Penelope in the limousine.”
What else could Caroline expect? Why should any living child continue to wear clumsy, hateful Peggy Janes, with patches, too, when she could have a beautiful muslin, with yellow roses? No, Jacqueline surely would never go on with the deception, now that she saw with her own eyes the glories of which she had deprived herself!
But to Jacqueline the encounter that to Caroline was tragic seemed downright funny. To think of her, standing there in Caroline’s Peggy Janes, and Caroline in her muslin, and that prim-looking Cousin Penelope (whom Jacqueline disliked at sight!) innocently lavishing attention on the wrong child. So good a joke it was that Jacqueline wanted it to last a little longer, and she was afraid that Caroline, with her shocked face, was going to give it all away.
So the moment Cousin Penelope spoke to Miss Crevey—and she spoke to her almost instantly, for the two children had taken stock of each other in far less time than it has taken to tell—Jacqueline edged up alongside Caroline.
“Hello!” she spoke softly, like a child who wanted to scrape acquaintance.
Caroline stared at her dumbly. Her lips quivered. If she should begin to bawl, she certainly would spill the beans, thought Jacqueline, and acted with a wisdom that was almost inspired.
“My name is Caroline Tait,” said Jacqueline, slowly and emphatically. Like the Ancient Mariner, she held Caroline with a glittering eye.
Caroline drew a fluttering breath—the first she had drawn since her eyes fell on the Peggy Janes. If Jacqueline said that, why, perhaps Jacqueline meant still to keep on being Caroline!
“I live at my aunt’s farm, down to the Meadows,” went on Jacqueline calmly. “What’s your name?”
“C-C——” clucked Caroline helplessly, and quailed before Jacqueline’s furious eye. “C—Jacqueline,” she achieved the name with something like a sneeze.