“Is it like the amusement park at the Pines with the puzzle-house?” Neil asked hopefully. “I was there once.”
“Something like, I guess,” Jacqueline answered vaguely.
She was busy staring at the Gildersleeve place, as they skirted the tall hedge. The sort of place where you mustn’t step on the lawn or pick the flowers. The sort of house where there wouldn’t be enough sunshine, and you must walk softly. She thought of Cousin Penelope, who had snubbed her, and she made the sort of face she was going to practice now for Cousin Penelope’s benefit. Then she thought of Caroline, the dear little silly, and she chuckled again.
“Aw, say,” said Neil, “you got bats in your belfry?”
“I’ll say I have—not,” Jacqueline threw off, with cheerful unconcern.
Wasn’t it funny that Caroline should have put on the muslin with the yellow roses? Jacqueline hated that dress above all dresses. She had only brought it in her trunk because Aunt Edith, who had selected the dress, had made her. She hated the floppy hat, too, and those nasty old green and blue and yellow beads of Cousin Penelope’s that it always made her feel seasick just to look at. If she had claimed her rightful place that Caroline was filling, she might have had to wear those odious clothes. Hateful clothes and bossy old Cousin Penelope, against dish washing and bed making. On the whole she preferred the latter—for a time.
“Hey! Hey!” Neil suddenly broke in upon her reverie with a mighty yell.
A bronzed raggedy man in a little truck, which was creeping past them on a flat tire in a scuff of dust, heard the call and checked his clumsy vehicle.
“Come on!” Neil cried to Jacqueline.
She didn’t pause to ask any questions. She flew at his heels across the wide green sward that skirted the sidewalk, and into the dust of the road. She swarmed after him in the accommodating Peggy Janes, up into the body of the truck. Here was a heap of dusty sacks on which she dropped herself at his side.